January 29, 2007

George W. and Porter: BFF!

Porter and George Bush have become pen pals. Imagine my dismay when I found out.

You’ll recall that I was worried about Porter’s actions earlier this fall, when I feared he was spying for the government. Now I have proof he’s gone even farther and is writing the President directly. So far the President’s correspondence hasn’t made him appear any smarter than his speeches or actions do.

Porter first wrote W. before Christmas. I was dimly aware of the activity but refused to encourage it. Bill was the one who located the stamp and wrote out the White House address for Porter to copy.

Dear President Bush When is your
Birthday? My Birthday
is August 14 I have a twin too.
Do you go for Auburn or Alabama?
I go for Auburn!
Merry Chistmas!
December, 19 2006
Love, Porter

I’ll say one thing– George wasted no time mailing a reply. In fact, his spies were watching our house so closely that his answer was apparently typed before Porter’s note made it to the mailbox. Who says Bush is slow to react? Not the Glamores.

Although he addressed Porter by name, George exhibited one of his less admirable attributes in his letter. Rather than responding to the questions that Porter had painstakingly written on the page, he chose to tackle another topic completely and pretended that Porter had invited him to visit his school, despite the fact that nothing resembling such an invitation had been issued. I certainly don’t want to host the President and his entourage here. I can barely get the guest room clean for Aunt Lulu when she visits, and I like her.

Porter was crestfallen. I’m cynical and used to this administration reading documents and completely dismissing their contents. However, it’s one thing to disregard the Iraq Study Group’s recommendations and another thing entirely to ignore an eight-year-old’s simple questions. If possible, George’s treatment of my child made me dislike him even more. So which is it, Mr. President, Alabama or Auburn?

Porter’s initial huffiness was more easily remedied than mine, as President Bush had included a large photo of himself and Laura smiling beatifically into the distance.

Porter was so thrilled with the “personalized” note and photo that he wrote the President again.

Dear President Bush
You are a good Presid
ent and I thank
you are Doing great
!!!!!!!!
Porter was extremely proud of this second missive and brought it into the bedroom one night as Bill and I were reading.

Bill read it and said, “Wow, you and the President are getting to be good friends, aren’t you?”

“We are,” Porter replied. “I never had a pen pal before but it’s fun to have a famous one. Do you think he’ll invite me to spend the night?”

“Don’t get your hopes up, because he’s really busy these days, but that would be cool if he did, wouldn’t it?” Bill asked.

“Cool, my ass,” I muttered into my New Yorker.

Bill handed me the note.

“That’s beautifully written, Porter,” I told him. “I definitely think you should send it. The President probably doesn’t hear such nice compliments very often.”
Porter took the note and came back a few minutes later with it addressed.

“Can you mail it for me, Mom?”

“I’ll be happy too,” I said half-heartedly, and then I kissed him good night.

Mailing the letter wasn’t at the top of my list of things to do, but it fell even further the day after the President’s State of the Union Address, when I came into the den and saw this:

I called Bill, who had watched the speech with Porter, and learned that Porter had set up a shrine of pictures and correspondence while he worshiped at the altar of bullshit and obfuscation.

I mailed the letter anyway. I suppose Porter has a lifetime to become disillusioned. It’s not a mother’s job to hasten the process.

January 26, 2007

Why I Don’t Get More Done

Today’s Email to all three teachers:

To: Glamore Kids’ Teachers

From: Anne Glamore

Re: Assorted Illnesses and Absences

E:

Please excuse Finn’s absence yesterday. Once again, he was snotty and runny. If I didn’t know his (alleged) stance on kissing, I’d think all the kids were smooching and spreading all their germs around. Have you checked to see whether they’re really going to the bathroom when they ask for a hall pass?

C: Please excuse Drew’s absence today; he broke his elbow yesterday afternoon. He’s going to the orthopedist today. You know how skinny his arms are; it was just a matter of time until this happened.

K: Porter is fine today, but I have no idea whether his homework is done because I had to leave him and Finn at home to rush Drew to the emergency room. He may be dirty for the same reason. He was asleep by the time I got home. He and Drew will finally be getting their braces fixed next week. I’ll have to check them out. He’s rinsing his cheeks where his braces are rubbing everyday with oral peroxide so hopefully his mouth doesn’t smell like a dead rat.

If you have a minute, please pray that no one requires stitches today. A look back at my journals indicates that our deep, bloody wounds are 80% more likely to happen on Fridays, especially during rush hour.

Your admiration for me will surely grow when I tell you that I am managing all this with second degree burns on my hand, which occurred when I was teaching the boys to make Chicken Scallopini al Fredo and decided to incorporate an X-treme, reality-based lesson on the dangers of cooking oil. Finn had to finish the dish while I tended to the wounds. It hurt like hell.

Anne Glamore

January 22, 2007

Virtual Book Club Meeting #7

It’s been ages since I hosted book club. I apologize. I’ll get right to it, because I’ve read some wonderful books recently. (If you’ve missed the last meeting, click on the “Book Reviews” tag at the top of this post and you can see them all. Don’t neglect the comments; readers always have great suggestions. None of my posts from iVillage days have comments because the comments stayed with iVillage, so if you recommended a book then you may want to re-suggest it here.)

I. BOOK CLUBBY BOOKS

I’ve read three books recently that are very different, but which were each captivating in their own way. Name All the Animals: A Memoir by Alison Smith is a memoir, and it’s a devastating one. The author lost her brother in an accident when she was fifteen and he was eighteen. The accident happens quickly; the story is about her family’s struggles after his death, and her memories of their childhood. Smith’s writing is simple and pure, and she depicts details that resonate perfectly, especially with those of us who are roughly her age and remember the songs (Billy Idol’s “White Wedding”) and fashions she recounts. If you’ve lost someone close to you (and perhaps if you haven’t) her descriptions of her thoughts and actions in the aftermath of Roy’s death will seem eerily familiar. I stayed up way too late reading this book and had to hold my eyeballs open with my fingers during Drew’s basketball game the next day.

If I were forced at gunpoint to summarize The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova in just one sentence, I’d have to say, “It’s a thinking person’s DaVinci Code, with librarians and Dracula.” But really, that wouldn’t do the book justice at all. It’s DaVinci Code- like only in that it involves a search that takes the protagonists all over Europe, they puzzle over clues and strange languages and a couple of weapons are employed here and there. The structure of the book could be confusing but mostly works well; the narrator tells the story, which sometimes quotes her father’s stories to her and then his letters to her once he disappears. The tale is convoluted yet entertaining.

I found myself reading each chapter twice, not only to ensure that I had all the characters and events straight, but to prolong the delight of reading the book. There are a couple of points at which the search for Dracula (the historical figure, not the Bela Lugosi blood-sucker you are picturing) becomes overdramatic, but it’s well worth buying into the story.

Erik Larson’s The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America reads like a novel, but in fact it’s based on actual events. At the same time Chicago was preparing to host the 1893 World’s Fair, young women and children began disappearing from Chicago. Larson writes about the men determined to make the Fair a success, and focuses on one man in particular, whose view of success was more macabre. Yes, it’s a book about architecture and a serial killer, subjects that would seem impossible to combine into one adventure, but Larson provides proof that it can be done, and well.

II. A PARENTING BOOK WORTH A LOOK

I read a book about addressing the ways having children can affect your marriage, and I intend to give it to Aunt Lulu, with a few caveats. Babyproofing Your Marriage: How to Laugh More, Argue Less, and Communicate Better as Your Family Grows imparts some valuable messages for those couples expecting a baby or having a hard time dealing with the changes children add to the marital relationship. The book makes several very good points: that both spouses have to sacrifice to raise a child, that everyone needs to hear words of affirmation and appreciation, that sex is just plain harder to get to when you’re working on little sleep and there are toddlers hanging around.

Bill and I have some experience in practical application of some of these principles. We went to a marriage retreat organized by our church long ago, and it was one of the most valuable weekends we’ve spent. The church also emphasized constant appreciation, and we’ve taken that to heart. We try to remember to say gooey things like, “Thanks for unloading the dishwasher” or “thank you for taking out the trash,” even though these are chores that must be done once, if not several times a day, just to acknowledge that we noticed that the other person did something for the good of the family.

At the retreat we spent a whole day discussing sex. My take-away was that not every rendezvous has to be a gourmet dinner. Sometimes a quick Happy Meal is enough, and sometimes you only have enough energy for a Chicken McNugget, or even one fry. (I’m really hoping you can read between the lines here and fill in the corresponding actions for each food).

Remember that Kenny Rogers song “Daytime Friends” that goes:

Daytime friends and nighttime lovers,
Hoping no one else discovers
Where they go, what they do,
In their secret hideaway

Those lovers were either childless or empty nesters. If you’re going to do the gourmet dinner, you and your husband should try being nighttime friends and daytime lovers. No one else discovers where you go and what you do if you sit your children in front of videos that are otherwise strictly rationed and the turn the volume up loud. Don’t forget to lock the bedroom door!

The book does have some weaknesses. I was not the only reader to feel that the female authors were unfairly harsh in their depiction of the husbands in the book, who came across as lazy, sex-crazed sports-watching thugs. In fairness, I should note that the writers apparently met plenty of men who provided the numerous caveman quotes in the book, such as:

Women have been doing this for thousands of years. There have been centuries of human history where women have had a lot more children than we have, and they had to do a lot more work, churning the butter and washing clothes in the river. Why is she always complaining?

–Bobby, married 7 years, 1 kid.

How did Bobby get enough nookie to make a child, with an attitude like that? If I were giving him a Chicken McNugget, I might be tempted to pull his wanker right off.

III. BOOKS INTENDED FOR SMARTER READERS OR GENERATIONS Y AND Z

I tried to read two other books with less than stellar results. I’ve recently moved my website from TypePad to WordPress, and I bought WordPress 2 (Visual QuickStart Guide) to help me navigate the unfamiliar code. I alluded to this in my last post, and I’ll be mentioning it constantly in the future, but I’m about to be forty years old. Technically, this makes me a part of Generation X, but I’m almost a Baby Boomer.

I remember filmstrips in classrooms. I got contacts in fifth grade– hard lenses, that scraped against your eyeballs when they weren’t rolling back in your head near your brain somewhere. I remember when having a pushbutton phone was a big deal. Our first VCR was the size of a small suitcase. To make mix tapes, we sat with our tape recorders near the radio and waited for our favorite songs to come on, then carefully pushed the “Play” and “Record” buttons together. That’s a long way of saying that none of the coding or texting or plugins and so forth come naturally to me. I don’t understand what this means: “Use your favorite text editor to open the theme template file in which you want to display the feeds.” I don’t have a favorite text editor and in fact am not sure what a text editor is, although I probably use one.

Similarly, I use photos in my blog, and wanted to try fixing some of them without spending the money on Photoshop. I downloaded and installed GIMP, then purchased Beginning GIMP: From Novice to Professional to try to use the program. So far I have succeeded in cropping one picture, and I have been unable to recreate that accomplishment again. My friend can perform plastic surgery on the people in her pictures, from whitening their teeth and deleting wrinkles to smoothing their skin. I would love to do cyber-surgery on my pictures. I think I’m going to recruit a Generation Y bag boy from Publix to show me the basics and explain it in English, not techno-speak, and I’ll be a lot better off. These are probably wonderful books and I’m just not savvy enough to make the most of them.

Sigh.

IV. DUSTY BOOKS WHICH I SHOULD HAVE READ BUT HAVE NOT

I’m really proud that I made it through Memoirs of a Geisha: A Novel, and enjoyed it. That was probably the last unread dusty book I made it through thanks to your encouragement. I’ve had a copy of East of Eden (Oprah’s Book Club) for ages, and I can’t seem to get excited about it. In fact, I have yet to make it past the third page. If you love it, please comment and inspire me to read it. I feel like there’s a hole in my education due to my failure to read this. Am I right, or should I take a pass?

V. CONCLUSION OF THE MEETING

Whoa– I can’t believe we drank all that wine! It must be time to go. I’m taking suggestions on books to read in all my “spare time.”

AG

**Click on the “Book Reviews” tag at the end of this post to read the six other Virtual Book Club Meetings!

January 19, 2007

I Talk To Grownups And They Listen

Yesterday I was hurled back into the business world, and it was a thrilling experience. My father-in-law’s Rotary Club invited me to talk about blogging and my blog in general. I haven’t practiced law in over a year. When I did, I gave speeches on a regular basis. Having the chance to talk to people who would actually listen without breaking in to say, “Mom, Porter is feeding the dog Trix and that’s the only cereal I like for breakfast” and who’d ask questions I could actually answer, instead of “Why is France part of Europe? How do you say ‘I need a bagel” in Morse code?’ or Can you give me a fouteen dollar bill for these ones?” promised to be fulfilling.

I am facing a disturbing birthday next month, and have been vigorously applying creams and lotions to my body in an attempt to look 35, or even 38. I don’t say this as a plea for gifts or compliments. Instead, it’s that when I say my audience was not exactly of the spring chicken variety, I don’t want you to think that I’m being insulting. All of us (except for a few young guys) were united in our need for reading glasses and our ignorance of the workings of many technical geegaws that younger generations manipulate without difficulty, such as text messages, instant messages, cameras on phones, MySpace, and blogs.

Based on the number of hearing aids I saw, and my instructions to “yell into the microphone,” I predict that a fair number of members still own and use rotary phones and will die having never had the pleasure of experiencing the touch-tone.

So.

Once we established what the Internet was, and that a “blog” can be thought of as a column published on the Internet, we were off and running. We discussed the fact that some bloggers, such as Dooce, make a living from their blogs. They were busily writing down the site address until I spelled it and explained it’s about a woman, her family and her constipation, and has nothing at all to do with online poker.

I told them you can make friends with other bloggers, as I have done with MetroDad and BusyMom. I told them there are blogs devoted to sports (sparks of interest from the men in the crowd) and politics, both conservative (continued interest) and liberal (uncomfortable shifting in chairs).

I understand that my father-in-law was extremely nervous about my speech, and was quoted as telling a friend earlier in the day, “I don’t know what the hell she’s going to say.”

Knowing that, being on his home turf and not wanting to piss off a devoted grandfather, I tried to choose my words carefully. I slipped up when I was asked a question about what HTML editor I use. Actually, I’m not sure of the answer to the question, and I digressed into a discussion of the HTML learning curve, my experience with Typepad and its templates, incorporating Flickr, and Technorati tags. I saw faces glaze over at this point, and finished this topic by confiding, truthfully, “You know, Bill doesn’t know a thing about any of this stuff either, and he thinks it’s really sexy when I say things like ‘Honey, I’ve messed up the HTML somewhere’ or ‘what the hell is up with this RSS feed?’”

I had a momentary brain spasm as I remembered my husband’s father was in the audience and might not ever take my boys hunting again as a result of my alluding to the fact that his son and I are physically attracted to each other, so I quickly changed the subject to blogs about SEC football.

The Rotarians asked insightful questions, most of which I could answer, and I concluded by reading the column about The Missing Macho Valentines.

I basked in the applause that ended the talk, as there is a definite scarcity of maternal praise at my house. And then I got back in the minivan, littered with Magic Treehouse books, a couple of Slim-Jim wrappers (Porter saw a twin-pack and insisted on buying it and sharing it with Drew) and other crap.

And I headed home.

January 16, 2007

Overheard

Setting: Typical wrestling between Porter and Drew in the den. Drew delivers a final wallop and kicks Porter in the rear for good measure. Porter starts giggling.

Drew: “Victory tastes sweet, but I’m still hungry. Let’s get something to eat.”

Porter: “I’ll scramble eggs!”

Sound of feet running toward the kitchen.

Finis