April 16, 2007

The Penis Project & More

There’s been lots of talk about sex around the Glamore house this week, mainly by me. I’ve been reading Strong Mothers, Strong Sons, which says that boys approaching adolescence should be told everything their parents know about puberty. I thought I did a fabulous job of giving Finn a technically descriptive, exhaustive sex talk a while back. As I read the book, however, I realized that I had completely failed to mention wet dreams. What kind of mother advises her son so thoroughly on the care and feeding of a menstruating woman (back rubs and chocolate) and neglects to inform him about nocturnal emissions?

I called Bill at work and got his voice mail.

“Honey, I forgot to tell Finn about wet dreams when I gave him the sex talk, and I’m afraid he’s going to start having them soon. Do you think you could go over that with him tonight while y’all are driving from baseball practice to drums? You should have twelve minutes to cover it if there are no wrecks and you drive five miles over the speed limit. Love you!”

Bill wasted no time responding. His parents had not discussed the subject with him, and he would not be talking to Finn about it between drums and baseball. Frankly, given the way he’d comported himself during the sex talk, this was what I had expected.
Nevertheless, I called him back and complained that I was ill-equipped to discuss nocturnal emissions, having never experienced one myself. Bill was not swayed, so I resorted to rummaging through the depths of Finn’s closet until I located It’s So Amazing!. I marked the page about wet dreams with a sticky tab, and inserted a note:

Dear Finn: I wanted to make sure you knew about the stuff described in the first paragraph because I forgot to mention it in our talk. If you have any questions you can try asking Daddy, but honestly, he might die of embarrassment. I don’t mind if you just come to me. Love, Mama

I tucked the book under his pillow where he’d be sure to find it when he went to bed.

The next day I looked in his room and the book had been returned to its hiding place in his closet. I worried that he hadn’t seen the blue sticky tab, so I retrieved the book and put it on top of his pillow and pulled up his bedspread until the book was covered except for the very corner where the tab stuck out.

That afternoon the boys came home from school and the twins ran straight outside to squirt fire ants with the hose. I decided I’d had enough of stealthily circling the subject. I’m more of a straight shooter.

“Finn,” I said, “did you see the part I marked in your book about sex?”

“Oh yeah,” he said nonchalantly, pouring a glass of milk. “I already knew about those.”

“Great. And you know how below that it talked about what to do if your penis gets hard like a stick in class? I think you don’t need to worry about that because you wear really baggy shorts and no one’s going to notice it if you have an erection unless you start wearing tight leather pants to school.”

Finn gasped and spit milk onto the counter. “Mom, no way I’m wearing anything leather to school. And when I pop a boner in class, I just sit there a minute and it goes away. It’s no big deal.” He ate a tremendous slice of chocolate chip pound cake in two bites. “Anything else we need to talk about?”

It was my turn to freak.

“No,” I whispered. I was having a hard time standing up. “Pop a boner…pop a boner…pop a boner” reverberated in my head. Did my first-born, my eldest, just say that, so casually?

“Cool,” he said. “Is it okay if I go ride bikes with Henry? I’ll be back by five.”

What I said was,”Sure.” What I was thinking was “Pop a boner…pop a boner…pop a boner.”

Finn grabbed a bottled of water and headed for the door as I steadied myself on the counter. Before he walked out he turned around.

“You know what, Mom? It’s really cool that you can talk about things like sex and popping boners without going all nuts. Henry’s parents haven’t even said anything to him about sex. He has to ask his brother when he has a question, and he’s got tons of acne. No way he’s come close to a girl. I’m glad I can just ask you, and it doesn’t embarrass you, like, at all.”

I nodded and smiled, trying to maintain my reputation for not going bonkers. Finn yelled “See ya!” as he slammed the door.

I walked back to his bedroom and got the book from his pillow. I lay back on his bed and thought about how it seems like yesterday that I was reading Forever and learning about the mysterious penis.
Now I’ve married the owner of one and birthed three more. The mystery is gone: the penis is the master of the man and the boss of the boy. It’s my job to make sure the penises under my control are clean and well-behaved. It’s a challenging project, to be sure.

April 10, 2007

Birth Of Two Salesmen

Few events inspire more joy than entering the den to find your sofa has been turned into a marketplace where you can purchase the Easter candy you gave your children the day before at a nifty 300% markup.

April 8, 2007

It’s Official: Eye’m Old

I’ve been forty for barely a month now.  I’ve always devoted considerable energy to keeping myself fit and healthy.

I Jazzercise.  I don’t smoke.  I eat fish.  I learned that you should take fish oil capsules at night unless you want to taste tuna fish burps all day.  When sexy television doctor Sanjay Gupta warned me to consume plenty of antioxidants to fight off free radicals, I listened and began adding a generous splash of POM Wonderful to my gin and tonics.

All my ministrations have been in vain.  I now have proof that my body, which wasn’t so healthy at thirty-nine, has begun a steep descent into old age and decay.
When Bill and I were in New York, he noticed that I kept yanking my reading glasses on and off whenever I had to read something small– a menu, a price tag, a paper.

“Why don’t you buy a chain to keep those around your neck like other women do?” he asked.

“Because those other ladies are a lot older than I am.”

By the time I’d constantly pulled my glasses on and off for another day and almost left them at a Turkish restaurant, I gave in and purchased the tiniest, most inconspicuous “eyeglass necklace” possible.

Things went further down hill last week when I had a chin hair I needed to pluck.  I could feel it, but I damn sure couldn’t see it.  I tried looking in the mirror with my contacts on, and saw nothing but a blur.  I put on my reading glasses but still couldn’t spot the hair well enough to grip it with my tweezers.  Sighing, I removed my contacts and tried again.  No luck.  I resigned myself to the fact I’d have to wait until it grew to the length of a whisker before I’d be able to distinguish it from my skin.

I told my hairdresser, Teppie, about the incident, and she told me I needed a magnifying mirror.  I told her that distressingly, I was using one at the time and I left out that detail only so I wouldn’t sound blind.

“I think you should see a doctor,” she advised.

So I did.

The most irritating aspect of the eye doctor’s exam is that they have not changed the letter and number combinations since the Bicentennial, when I first started wearing glasses.  I have an astonishing aptitude for remembering strings of meaningless letters and numbers, which is invaluable for remembering everyone’s home, cell and social security numbers, but poses a problem when I’m asked to read the next line on the chart.  Am I reading it, or merely remembering it?  Trying to erase the patterns from my memory takes a great deal of concentration.

Perhaps that’s why I was caught off guard when Dr. C finished his exam, slid back his chair, and asked, “You know what I’m going to tell you, right?”

“I need stronger glasses?” I inquired.  “Did I tell you about last week when I wasn’t able to see my chin whisker?”

“No, but I believe it.  You need bifocals,” he said calmly, as if were recommending a new book and not an accessory that screams ‘OLD LADY! OLD LADY!’  He might as well have prescribed a walker and a case of Depends.

I snickered. “You know I’m not getting bifocals, don’t you?”

“Don’t laugh,” he said seriously.  “They’ve come a long way. They make progressive lenses now that don’t have the line in the center of the lens.  They take some getting used to and they don’t work for everyone, but no one can tell you’re wearing bifocals.”

On the drive home I convinced myself that getting bifocals wouldn’t be a complete catastrophe.  I’m already used to wearing glasses a good deal of the time.  If no one knew they were bifocals, I would still be as pert and sexy as ever.

I got home and googled the newer models.  What I learned wasn’t reassuring.  It was downright devastating.

The “progressive” lenses are crafted so that they correct for distance at the top of the lens, for intermediate vision in the middle of the lens, and for reading at the bottom of the lens, like so:

As you can see, the area corrected for intermediate, or “walking around” vision is quite small.  Thus, you can’t move your eyeballs back and forth to gaze at things that are not directly in front of you, as you’d be looking through the area that is not corrected for anything.  Wearers report that the non-corrective part of the lens is generally fuzzy and one woman reported seeing an upside-down image of a cow there while standing in a room in which no cows were present.

Users who enjoy the glasses noted that the solution is simply to turn your neck to follow moving objects.  People who have little neck movement, due to previous spine surgeries, perhaps, would have to move their entire bodies to watch an object in motion.  Remember Joan Cusack in Sixteen Candles?  That’s how I’d move every time I put those bifocals on.

What I found more alarming were the frequent warnings not to look down at your feet as you walked while wearing the progressive lenses, for the ground would appear closer than it actually is, resulting in falls.

Last time I fell I broke my wrist which led to good home training for the boys but also to fashion felonies on my part.  It was a painful and expensive way for the guys to learn to load the dishwasher.

By the time I read reviews from wearers who complained of “whirlies,” nausea and headaches and the comments from the visually-impaired who’d never learned to safely walk in them, I’d had enough.  My bones felt brittle, my eyes were fatigued and I actually heard gray hairs springing from my scalp.

Then I felt a bit sorry for myself.  I’ve had a decent attitude about the scoliosis, the bum liver, the crowns and root canals and the frequent checks for ovarian cancer.   I’m ready for some anatomy to work correctly without major effort on my part.
So when Bill got home and I told him about my appointment, I’d narrowed down my objections to even trying the glasses to one succinct statement.

“I can’t make love to you with a pair of bifocals on the nightstand,” I decreed.

I’m making an appointment to see a surgeon for Lasik next week.

April 7, 2007

Splash

Four years ago the boys and Bill would hang out in the driveway doing this:

We’d consider that the bath for the day.  Good times.

April 4, 2007

How An Eight-Year-Old Views The World

The Tiny Kingdom Museum of Art is pleased to unveil its latest exhibit, “HOW AN EIGHT-YEAR-OLD VIEWS THE WORLD.” The photographs were taken by the emerging star Porter Glamore, and document his unique insight into Lisbon, Portugal. Using an inexpensive camera he received for Christmas, the young photographer set out to take as many pictures as possible, with seventy-two million as his goal. Porter’s work demonstrates that youth is no barrier to capturing images which speak to our shared humanity. His visual acuity and offbeat aesthetic make this an enthralling collection of pieces you will not want to miss.

Several themes are apparent in Glamore’s images. “Pondering Pigeons” is a series of photographs of the common bird. Although some city-dwellers may view the bird as a nuisance, Glamore’s compelling snapshots and detailed titles impart personality to the creatures.

“Hungry Pigeon Eating A Crumb Of My Cheeseburger Bun”

“Pigeon With A Green Neck That Probably Glows In The Dark”

“Pigeon With Hot Feet”

“Pigeon Who Wants To Be My Pet But My Mom Says He Has To Stay In Lisbon”
Birds were not Glamore’s only focus. It is common for Lisboans to hang their laundry outside to dry, and the group “Drying Lingerie” illustrates the practice. Here Glamore’s photos combine the tedium of daily life with a touch of seductiveness, hinting at the activities that take place behind shuttered windows.

“Look At Those Way High Up Panties”

“Hey– My Camera Can Make The Black Underwear Look Closer”

“The Saggiest Panties I’ve Seen The Whole Time”

“This Is My Favorite Picture I Took Of Ladies’ Underwear”

Nourishment is essential to our survival, yet Porter’s chilling images of various wares at a Lisbon market portray food in an unnerving manner. His graphic shots in “We Are What We Eat” force us to rethink our relationship to the creatures we consume.

“My Dad Says Those Pink Things Came From Inside A Fish And That People Eat Them But I Don’t Believe Him”

“All The Squid I’ve Seen Had Crust On Them But Not These”

“I Think This Silver Guy Is Watching Me Take His Picture”

“Is That One Of The Three Little Pigs, Because His Head Looks Really Big”

“This Is The Monkfish We Ate For Dinner But We Didn’t Get To Keep His Teeth”

“I’m Pretty Sure That’s Poisonous And We Should Not Buy Any”

The exhibit contains experimental photographs as well. A true artist never ceases to explore the limits of his medium, and Glamore is no exception. From his examinations of language and time to his intense scrutiny of the female form, Porter Glamore’s pictures reflect his inner muse.

“Me And Drew Stayed Up Late But I Don’t Know How Late Because The Clock Is Broken”

“A Grownup Man Was Taking Pictures Of This Naked Lady So I Did, Too”

“That’s My Mom’s Bottom”

“This Is When I Took A Picture Of A Cuss”

“My Shadow Looks Like A Ghost”
Lovers of photography should keep young Glamore’s name in mind, as he is sure to make great strides in his chosen art form.

Many thanks to the sponsors of our Photo Exhibition: