Previously, on Poor Impulse Control, we played my very favorite game: SNOW DAY! Because it’s October, let’s recap:

I.
I’m not much of a game player, but I have a few favorites. My sister Daria and I compare grocery store register tapes with ferocious game faces and end zone dances; I play bumper cars with traffic on my bicycle twice a day and my crappy memory makes all of life a constant game of Concentration, but my absolute favorite is Snow Day.

Stuff’s gonna happen. Weather’s going to kick your ass now and then, and depending on where you live, in invigorating ways. Here in the eastern part of Central New Jersey, weather is fairly mild most of the time, but once or twice a normal winter, snow is going to tie up traffic and macramé brainwaves. The game has three parts:

1. Prepare.
2. Get home before I cannot.
3. EVERYBODY DANCE NOW!

When snow is in the forecast, I count on about half the people around me to head to the grocery store to buy bread and milk and the other half to forget they’re out. Most people are not good at this game. But look: this is fun. Imagine yourself cozy inside your happy house for – let’s say – two days, even three. What would you need? What would you want? What would make these three days awesome?

Need
Food
Water
Cat Food
Cat Litter
Light
Heat
Snow Melt (for the sidewalks)
Toilet Paper
Shovels

Want
Enough Extra For Additional People, Animals
Ability To Travel Locally
Warm Outdoor Clothing
Warm Indoor Clothing
Fun Things To Do, Including Each Other

Awesomeness
Adult Beverages
Clean Laundry
Human Treats
Cat Treats
Mariachi Band!

It’s a complicated bit of imagining. What if your neighborhood loses power in this fantasy? What if you find yourself stranded with guests? What if you, whoever and whatever you are, have to take care of an injured person? Can you do it?

Need
First Aid Kit
Candles
Mouthwash
Toothpaste
Antiseptic
Antibiotic Ointment
Clean Towels

Want
Extra Blankets
Ability To Wash Dishes Manually
Books/Magazines

Awesomeness
Power Generator
TV
Music

I don’t have a generator and probably never will, but that’d be great, wouldn’t it? Maybe. But then you have to store combustible fuel for it. Here, where power outages are few, far between and brief, keeping a generator is probably not a great idea. Where you live, it may be absolutely necessary. How do you feel about a mariachi band? So let’s amend:

Awesomeness
Drink Umbrellas
Festive, Warm Costumes
What, you think a party just happens?

Look, I’ve been broke. I don’t mean out of pin money for the weekend, I mean ate once mashed potatoes a day while pregnant, and I have a rule: Every grocery list that includes ramen noodles must include paper drink umbrellas. Life is short! But everyone has a different definition of Need, Want and Awesomeness, and some things you can build into your regular life and count as part of the game. A really good example: batteries. Locate your flashlights at the beginning of October, replace all the batteries and store enough new batteries to replace what you’re using in January, should the need arise. Bonus: you can feel very smug when a TV PSA asks if you’ve thought of it.

Another thing: coffee. I don’t know about you, but I am going to be very unhappy in a situation where I’m denied some caffeinated swill. A power outage does not threaten my ability to make coffee, however, since I’m perfectly willing to build a fire in the backyard, boil water and use the french press to make coffee, which I can store in a thermos. Do I sound desperate? Maybe, but a warm drink on a snow day sounds like a basic need. So: charcoal or small logs, newspaper, coffee grounds, french press, clean water, a thermos or large carafe. Or: you could make the coffee before the snow hits and set aside. Fewer conflagrations for you! By the way, do you have a fire extinguisher?

II.
The more you think about it, the more it becomes clear that sometimes in an emergency you’re going to be on your own or with one other person. Pete and I have lived where we do nearly our whole lives, so we’re not surprised when the river rises over the small bridges or when low roads become fast-moving creeks. It happens now and then that I’m at work when the river comes up. I don’t hang around and wait for the inevitable four-hour crush to drive two miles. I stupidly did that once in snow: lesson learned! When the weather map says it’s going to snow for a whole day and the clouds deliver I’ll be at my house.

You’d be surprised how many people think this is dumb. I bet they’re out of milk and bread.
Listen, I try to be ready for predictable things, but I get caught flat-footed all the time. Yesterday, we drove down to Delaware to see Pete’s elderly aunt and uncle. We thought we were having lunch, then heading home, but when we got there, no trace of lunch could be found. We’d had breakfast, but that was hours before. By the time dinner was ready, Pete and I were ravenous. I wanted to pick up the bowl of meatballs and pour them into my mouth, and it was really hard to not imagine us making growling sounds when someone else reached for the plate of sausages. We were unprepared for this situation despite the facts that we are hypoglycemic and this has happened with our retired relatives twice before. You know: we could’ve had a V8, but we didn’t. Oops?

What if I can’t get to my house, which I love love love and want to be in? The river between my office and my house sometimes floods four out of five nearby river crossings, and getting to that fifth bridge can serve as an IQ test, and this can happen when our skies are clear but North Jersey has had rain for two days or a sudden thaw. Surprise! A flood! But that’s not part of our game. What is? Here in Central New Jersey, people get in cars and panic with the fall of the first flakes. If you drive, take cabs or buses, your job is to get off the road before people with their hair standing on end drive their giant SUVs into a ditch, tying up traffic, emergency personnel and tow truck drivers past your bedtime. If you take trains, keep in mind the Long Island Railroad, for instance, goes haywire when the tracks get wet. No, I don’t understand that. Yes, I think we should all be able to take trains, but what the hell? Anyhoo: my mother’s house is on the other side of the river and about two miles from my office. If I couldn’t cross the river I still have places on higher ground I could retreat to. Bonus: mom’s house has a wine rack I could find in the dark.

If I couldn’t get home, I could still win the Snow Day game by retreating to a backup shelter I know stocks a pantry, a wine rack and warm clothes – but only if Pete is at home with the cats, and they are wearing little sombreros and eating meaty treats.

III.
This morning, I shut the kitchen door on my way to the garage, and even before my hand slipped off the knob I knew I’d left my keys in the house, and that my chances of bicycling to work on time had just gone POOF! So I called Pete’s cell and left a voicemail because he was in the bathroom, which I knew because I could see the second floor light on. After twenty-five minutes of shouting, “PETE! PETE! PETE!” I heard him grumble, “What?” – like I was nagging from the backyard. He stuck his head out the window. “Ya locked out? I’ll be right down.” Instead of my usual three small stupid things before breakfast, I did one large stupid thing just afterward. So what’s in your car’s emergency kit?

Believe it or not, there are websites and experts who can help, but in order for you to win your own version of the Snow Day game, you’ve got to take into account your locale. Miss Sasha lives in North Dakota. I’d like the state to send everyone shiny-shiny GPS pendants every September 1st, but as long as she prepares sensibly for extreme cold, long miles and a fussy toddler, keeps her cell phone charged and keeps a regular schedule, I’ll worry less and that’s important, because it’s all about me.

Here in Crowded Mild Weather Land, if I drive my car into a ditch, tying up traffic, emergency personnel and tow truck drivers until past your bedtime, someone will violate local ordinances and dial 911 before my wheels stop spinning. Obviously, I should add a cheese platter and sandwiches to my emergency kit. It would really help if I had a reliable car, though: two days every month, one of my tires goes flat. In a new and exciting quirk: the tire won’t re-inflate unless the car’s jacked up. So how can I win with this much left on the board? AAA, and a willingness to abandon the car and hoof it. Fortunately, I’m seldom more than two miles from home, and I know I can walk that in 35 minutes, even with hip pain.

When that big blackout hit people mention, then laugh nervously about, my friend Audrey was in a meeting in Newark. She got up from the table in the dark, made her way down innumerable flights of stairs and walked in a mini skirt across the city to a ferry terminal, where a full ferry was getting ready to get under way. At the top of her lungs, Audrey shouted, “WHO DO I HAVE TO FUCK TO GET ON THIS BOAT?” A young deckhand said, “That’d be me, ma’am,” as he helped her onto the boat, but then didn’t say another word. Everyone was spooked. She walked from the opposite ferry terminal to her Prospect Park apartment and stayed there for three days. I mean, the bitch is fierce.

What are you prepared to do to get home? Are you prepared to stay in place, wherever you are?

IV.
’ve been writing these posts so pressed for time I’m not sure every sentence features tasty verbs. Please forgive me. I don’t usually write like I stuck my finger in a socket while sorting my silverware. Let’s talk about the most important part of the Snow Day game: winning.
For me: we are in our house, which we leave on foot to shovel the sidewalk or to help someone else since our little town is full of elderly people and mommies with babies, some of whom are my relatives. Our indoor cats are warm, well-fed and play little ocarinas. Our outdoor cats have plenty of food and look okay. Pete obsesses merrily on an indoor project that doesn’t involve injuring his back. We have plenty to eat. I am writing something worth reading. With or without electricity or running water, our house is snug and warm. Maybe we take long, luxurious naps. After a spectacular dinner, we cozy up on the couch with glasses of wine and our musical felines, and if the cable’s working, we watch TV and our clothes drip dry by the front door. When we go to bed, we wish every day could be like this, and if the storm continues, we might even get a second snow day.
It may sound to you pedestrian and dull. To me, it sounds idyllic. I totally win!
Even if you live somewhere tropical, you can play this game. Are you prepared for a hurricane? A tornado? Another blackout? A flood? A more likely scenario: are you prepared if your town suffers an outbreak of flu and you’re advised to stay home for two weeks? Could you do it? I like to think I shop carefully and keep a good pantry, but every week or so I run out of something, so plainly, I too have a lot to learn.
What do you think? Do you like this game?

As I was leaving the library at the unnamed university this afternoon, two cars on the sidewalk barreled toward me and jumped the curb to enter a driveway. Despite the near-death and even nearer annoyance situation, I could not shake this fucking story.

The new management did transform the work culture, however. Based on interviews with more than 20 employees and former employees of Tribune, Mr. Michaels’s and his executives’ use of sexual innuendo, poisonous workplace banter and profane invective shocked and offended people throughout the company. Tribune Tower, the architectural symbol of the staid company, came to resemble a frat house, complete with poker parties, juke boxes and pervasive sex talk.

The company said Mr. Michaels had the support of the board.

“Randy is a tremendous motivator, very charismatic, but he is very nontraditional,” said Frank Wood, a member of the Tribune board. “He has the kind of approach that motivates many people and offends others, but we think he’s done a great job.”

The next paragraph of that story is about how the company’s sinking into bankruptcy, so a great job at what, exactly is a question hanging heavy in the air. And speaking of hanging heavy:

“Working at Tribune means accepting that you might hear a word that you, personally, might not use,” the new handbook warned. “You might experience an attitude you don’t share. You might hear a joke that you don’t consider funny. That is because a loose, fun, nonlinear atmosphere is important to the creative process.” It then added, “This should be understood, should not be a surprise and not considered harassment.”

The new permissive ethos was quickly on display. When Kim Johnson, who had worked with Mr. Michaels as an executive at Clear Channel, was hired as senior vice president of local sales on June 16, 2008, the news release said she was “a former waitress at Knockers — the Place for Hot Racks and Cold Brews,” a jocular reference to a fictitious restaurant chain.

Un-fucking-believable emphasis mine. And:

In 1995, Mr. Michaels and Jacor settled a suit brought by Liz Richards, a former talk show host in Florida who filed an E.E.O.C. complaint and a civil suit, saying she had been bitten on the neck by Mr. Michaels and that he walked through the office wearing a sexual device around his neck.

“They were like 14-year-old boys — no boundaries at all — but with money and power,” Ms. Richards said in an interview.

During and immediately after Mr. Michaels’s tenure at Clear Channel, three lawsuits were filed contending sexual harassment at the company. One plaintiff, Karen Childress, a senior executive, said she was fired after complaining about receiving lewd e-mail from senior company executives. In her complaint, Ms. Childress also stated that women who slept with male executives at the firm were promoted. The cases were settled out of court. Clear Channel declined to comment on the lawsuits.

Apparently, lunkheads driving right at me don’t bug me as much as lunkheads with money fucking around in a skyscraper in Chicago. Ever worked in a poisonous atmosphere? I have, and the memories are so vivid and remain so raw I can’t be distracted by traffic on the sidewalk.

But don’t worry about Chicago, because these people in California are about to be in real trouble.

“There’s this American flag, apple pie thing about libraries,” said Frank A. Pezzanite, the outsourcing company’s chief executive. He has pledged to save $1 million a year in Santa Clarita, mainly by cutting overhead and replacing unionized employees. “Somehow they have been put in the category of a sacred organization.”

The company, known as L.S.S.I., runs 14 library systems operating 63 locations. Its basic pitch to cities is that it fixes broken libraries — more often than not by cleaning house.

“A lot of libraries are atrocious,” Mr. Pezzanite said. “Their policies are all about job security. That’s why the profession is nervous about us. You can go to a library for 35 years and never have to do anything and then have your retirement. We’re not running our company that way. You come to us, you’re going to have to work.”

Traditionally, libraries employ people who are either too quirky to fit in or too damaged; either way, they’re odd but they do honest work. That’s what we’re all supposed to do, right? Our conservative brethren will say we’re all supposed to hold jobs and pull our own weight, but they really mean we should make money for them. The kind of people who work in services like libraries cannot make them money. Libraries are an investment, not a profit center. This is disaster is rolling toward the very people who can least defend themselves.

On the other hand, I walked toward the speeding sidewalk drivers with my arms out in the Jersey whattayadoin’ gesture, shouting, “Get the fuck out of my way!” So not all library workers are delicate, or taking anybody’s crap.

Your eyes do not deceive you: Pete and I rode our bikes on the bike path around Sandy Hook on a pleasant day, and the air was indeed blue. A week of storms approaches; the cloud cover kept the air cool and moist and perfect for a ten-mile ride. As we were leaving, what appeared to be an accidental convention of people walked oddly large and exceedingly happy poodles onto the beach. Later, we had plates of fried seafood on a pier because you have to do that.

My brain hurt all day. As a human barometer, I knew that meant weather approached so I was not surprised when the tornado warning interrupted Ghost Whisperer. Okay, something about that should be surprising.

A really winning quality of this song is its timelessness: it could have been recorded at any time since 1960.

The meaning of the video? Ya got me.

Millie: Did anyone tell you what happened on Friday?
Tata: No.
Millie: No one knew where you were.
Tata: What? I had a wedding. Everyone knew about it.
Millie: No one knew a thing, but no one noticed you weren’t here until the afternoon. Everyone asked everyone, “Have you seen her?” and no one had. Finally, Gianna called Lupe at home and Lupe knew you were at a wedding.
Tata: I told you all about it. Don’t you remember how miserable I was?
Millie: You never said a word.
Tata: What are you talking about? I complained for months!
Millie: Nope.
Tata: Honest to God, my whole life needs subtitles.

Millie: So what happened?
Tata: Pete and I and my niece Lois drove down to the Tintin Falls Holiday Inn, where we met up with my sister Daria and her husband Tyler and our baby sister Dara and her new boyfriend Josh who looks just like Justin Bieber so all evening I kept asking, “What’s Justin’s name again?” That doesn’t go over as well as you might think.
Millie: I bet it doesn’t!
Tata: We got dressed in a room the size of prison cell and drove over to this barn on the beach at Long Branch, which is so corporate we checked the ocean for sponsors. The wedding took about fifteen minutes in a room overlooking the ocean that was set up for another wedding. I don’t know what we were doing there. Anyway, minutes later, we piled into cars and drove four miles back to the Holiday Inn. It was about 90 degrees, my AC’s broken and Route 36 was wall-to-wall construction, rush hour and shore traffic, so the ride took almost an hour, by which time my hair was a foot high. I pinned it down with a barrette but I looked like the Contadina lady’s mother-in-law in kitten heels.

Millie: I’m sure you looked fine.
Tata: I looked awful, but that’s not important. Daria has been very depressed, so at the cocktail hour, where we all dove face-first into gin & tonics, and we were joined by my Fabulous Ex-Husband and his current wife Karen, which could be traumatic except we love them. But there was this lull in the conversation and I picked up the camera and took pictures of myself. Daria said, “What are you doing?” I said, “I went to a wedding and had a great time. See? Here I am at the cocktail hour and here I am eating stuffed shells. There were other people at the wedding but they were in my way.” She was in a better mood after that.
Millie: How was the food?
Tata: It was okay, but that’s not important either. I can’t explain that. Anyway, the reception room was so cold people wrapped themselves in tablecloths. A year later, we had dinner. I looked up from my plate and Karen was wearing her napkin like a schmatta. There’s photographic evidence of my laughing in a public place. The whole thing was an expensive, silly ordeal and I complained about it for months. I can’t believe all the noise in my head never made it past my lips. The happy couple got married before my cousin got deployed to Iraq and now they’re pregnant, and why did we do this? The prime rib?

Millie: You never said a thing. I would have written your vacation day on the calendar.
Tata: It snowed formal wear! I wore two different pair of expensive, painful shoes!
Millie: You can keep a secret.
Tata: Nuh unh. Daria’s redecorating Facebook with photographic evidence as we speak.
Millie: That’s nice.
Tata: Yeah, she’s not good at crime.

Pete and I recently had a house guest from Los Angeles. After dinner, she made a beeline for the kitchen sink and the soapy dishpan I’d set up before we sat down. Washing up proved quick with everything in place, but I watched quietly from across the kitchen as she rinsed with even less water than I would have imagined possible. Ah, I thought, she lives in a desert. The rules are different. Then we got almost no rain for three weeks while, north and south of us, we saw Wrath of God storms speeding across weather maps. Lawns baked brown and trees lost their leaves. Bees get angry, and you just don’t want your bees angry.

I was raised by hippies and hairdressers, both of which cared about water conservation, though for different reasons. The former urged us kids to turn off the spigot because clean water is a finite commodity; the latter because water costs money, goddammit, and we are not made of money. I’m pretty careful with my resources, but not perfect. We use a rain barrel but could use three or four more. We are accustomed to water falling out of the sky every three or four days. When it stopped, we felt shitty and when it started again, better. I’ve been sick for two days and couldn’t get out of bed until 10 this morning. A full day of gentle rain? Bring it.

All of this is to say the rain caused me to look out the empty bedroom window. In June, I sat in the backyard, pitting cherries with an old plastic cherry pitter when – THWACK! – the pieces in my hands flew apart and the spring disappeared. The cherry pitter recently disintegrated in my hands a final time and I threw away little pieces of a former kitchen gadget. A paring knife turns out to pit faster anyhow, and we find so few of those on the roof.