March 13, 2008

Dear Elyssa, Sarabeth and Jenna

I was shocked when I heard the news about Eliot Spitzer. As the details emerged, I had a flashback to the mid 80’s that made me sick to my stomach. I’ve experienced many of the same feelings that I’m sure the Spitzer girls are now, although I didn’t have to do it under a media spotlight.

Plenty of experts have already weighed in on how a man’s adultery can affect his daughters for the long term.  What he’s done doesn’t just influence the marriage—- his actions alter the entire family dynamic.

If Mr. Spitzer is going to regain his daughters’ trust, he’s going to have to ask for their forgiveness. It will take plenty of work and therapy on his part to earn it. He’ll have to be committed to working on his relationship with each daughter, and it won’t be easy.

If I had fifteen minutes to spend with the Spitzer women, I’d make sure they knew that they are all entitled to feel angry, hurt and betrayed.  It’s not their job to make him feel welcome; it’s his burden to make them want to welcome him back.

I wish he’d never screwed up so royally. Now that it’s done, I am praying that he takes the high road, which is harder, as high roads tend to be, and thinks of his family first in going forward.

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A great book about putting your family first is Finishing Strong: Going the Distance for Your Family by Steve Farrar. It’s aimed at men and is written from a Christian viewpoint, but I read it every year or so as well. If any of you have recommendations for books about putting your priorities in order, let us know in the comments.

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One year ago in My Tiny Kingdom: Thong Gone Wrong

March 5, 2008

Why Not Be A Tiny Cocktail Sausage?

Why be a tiny cocktail sausage when you can be a mighty weiner?

– question pose by Naveed Ozcan in my spam folder

I’ll tell you why not. The world is full of mighty weiners, and we don’t need any more. However, there’s a definite shortage of tiny cocktail sausages. Fortunately, Naveed’s spam reminded me that I have the most delicious recipe for tiny cocktail sausages ever, and they’re ridiculously easy!

My Mom’s Slurpy Good Cocktail Sausages

1 pound mild sausage

(roll this into small balls and bake 15 minutes at 350)

Mix together:

1/2 cup ketchup

1/2 cup white wine vinegar

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 tablespoon soy sauce

1/4 teaspoon ginger*

Dump the meatballs in the mix and marinate 24 hours. (Can freeze at this point.) Heat before serving. A chafing dish, toothpicks and plenty of napkins are good accompaniments.

* my recipe is blurry here and says gin– I’m assuming it means ground ginger since we started making these in the 70’s when fresh ginger was unheard of, and 1/4 teaspoon of gin would be useless.

If y’all beg me, I’ll share her equally yummy (and groovy) recipe for olive tarts. Boy, the appetizers of the 70’s rocked!

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Why do the people in my spam folder who are not selling enlargement products want to know if I sell wheelbarrows? Is there a sexual connotation to a wheelbarrow that I’m missing? Is it the new drug of choice among today’s partying people? Or do I just seem like I have time to sell garden products on the side?

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One year ago in My Tiny Kingdom: The Boulder On My Shoulder

February 25, 2008

The Mysterious Disappearance of Feathers

It’s been a gloomy evening chez Glamore. Porter was reading with Feathers perched on his shoulder, and somewhere along the way Feathers disappeared.

None of us was aware of the problem for several hours, as Porter was confident that Feathers had gone exploring and would soon return. I was in the kitchen fixing dinner when Porter came in, wearing only underwear and ski gloves, carrying a box which emitted scritches and tweets.

“Have you seen Feathers?” Porter asked.

“Isn’t she in the box?”

“No, this is Texas Ranger. I’m using him as bait to find Feathers.” He put the box on the ground and opened it, plucked Texas Ranger out and crooned, “Go find Feathers” in a high voice.

Texas Ranger wasn’t having any of it. He squawked and wriggled himself into the corner by the dishwasher and refused to move. It took Porter several minutes and a spatula to return him to the box and then his cage, per my command. I’m proud to report that I remembered to put the spatula into the dishwasher and avoided cooking with it.

We spent the rest of the evening looking for Feathers. Our search was hampered by Porter’s inability to remember precisely where he’d last seen her and the ongoing chaos of his room, which could hide a small bird for weeks.

Do you see a bird in here? We didn’t either.

On the positive side, his habit of creating parakeet playgrounds featuring pools of birdseed made it unlikely that Feathers would starve if she was wandering through the clutter.

Overview of playground, featuring Styrofoam all-you-can-eat birdseed buffet, slide, wine cork obstacle course, gold ring perch

Feathers playing on playground in happier days. She was particularly fond of sitting on my mom’s old bracelet which balanced on the tambourine.

It had been raining for most of the day so Elvis had spent a great deal of time indoors. This made me uneasy. When the birds first arrived, Elvis had snuffled around the birdcage quite a bit. One time he had wandered in Porter’s room while both birds were on the playground. Elvis sniffed them more in the manner of someone wondering what was for dinner than like he was greeting fellow family members. Since then, we’d emphasized that dog and birds were best kept apart.

I had special reason to be concerned.

Growing up, we adopted a dog named Peaches. We guessed that a crazy person had named him. He was shaggy and black with a ribbon of white at his throat, and looked like no particular breed. He most resembled Grover on Sesame Street, with more hair and four legs. He was a fabulous dog. That’s hard to believe based on this picture of him circa 1975.

It really doesn’t matter that you can’t see his face, as we couldn’t see it when looking at him either.

I could write loads about Peaches and his adventures: the time he humped the dog across the street and got stuck to her, the time he ate the plastic covering the newspaper and it came out his rear, completely whole, and so forth.

Our next door neighbors growing up had kids our age, and when the oldest was in fifth grade his class hatched a chick to learn about the miracle of nature. He won the raffle to keep the chick and raise it at home.

My sisters and I were so jealous. The baby chick was the size of a couple of cotton balls and super-cute. My neighbor called us to come outside so he could show her off. He made it clear that we weren’t to hug her, because we’d squeeze her too tight and suffocate her.

Although the baby chick was tiny, she was fast, so he’d fashioned a weensy chick leash out of dental floss and tied it to her leg. They paraded down their driveway at a fast clip and over to us. Aunt Su and I were wearing our matching maroon and yellow Izod sweaters in honor of the occasion. We oohed and ahed for about three seconds before Peaches darted from the bushes and swallowed the chick whole. There was nothing left but a small strand of dental floss protruding from Peaches’s mouth, but he quickly lapped that up as well.

We were stunned by that example of nature in action. It was years before I got over the image of Peaches hoovering up the chick as if it were a marshmallow.

I had no desire to see the scene repeated at my own home, but as we checked every room in the house and heard nary a tweet and no rustling feathers, I began examining Elvis more closely. I didn’t think he’d been appropriately hungry for dinner. Was that because he’d had an extra-special hors’d'oeuvre?

Feathers was larger than the baby chick had been, and Elvis is half the size of Peaches, so I theorized that Elvis would need at least two bites to finish off the bird. Surely that would leave blood, or at least pin feathers. I found no evidence of either around the house.

After dinner I resorted to prying Elvis’s mouth open. I saw no evidence of a birdie meal, and his breath, while rank, wasn’t particularly redolent of parakeet.

By bedtime Porter was upset over Feather’s disappearance. He was also outraged to learn that if he bought another parakeet he’d have to pay not only the $16.99 the bird cost, but also 8% sales tax, which added another $1.36 to the transaction.

Thus, in our nightly prayer we asked God to keep Feathers safe if she was still here on earth, and for help in finding her. Porter reminded God that Feathers likes to sit on a person’s shoulder while he’s reading so He could make proper arrangements if Feathers was already in Heaven. Then, at Porter’s insistence, I asked God to consider our city’s sales tax and strike it down if he found it unfair, Amen.

(I had already told Porter that this was a government issue, not a religious one, but he came back at me with “Ask and it will be given unto you” and I couldn’t get into a theological discussion with a missing bird and possible carcass somewhere in the house.)

Bill and I checked all the toilets, the laundry room, the basement, and every closet once more after the boys went to bed. No Feathers.

Missing: Feathers

Main Suspect: Elvis Glamore

I didn’t eat no parakeet

We’ve lost pets before (remember when we lost the hermit crabs while they were racing?) but Feathers has been much loved.

Updates as they occur.

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One year ago in My Tiny Kingdom: What To Buy? Don’t Axe Me

Also, I’d forgotten that the hermit crab post contains a diatribe helpful suggestions from someone who is really devoted to her hermit crabs, and even makes them homemade food!

February 22, 2008

Still Cool

The fashions were awful during my high school and college years, but I listened to some great music. Unfortunately, those were the days of the cassette and mixed tapes, so some of the more obscure artists have been lost to history.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve got some fantastic, yet unplayable mixed tapes, which were as much fun to name as they were to play:

Fried Okra & Black Eyed Peas: featuring REM, Lone Justice, Primitons, Connells, Guadalcanal Diary, HooDoo Gurus (back then REM was “alternative”)

A Deadly Mixture: with Jesus & Mary Chain, Figures On A Beach, Depeche Mode, Smiths, Echo & the Bunnymen

Club MTV: with the “top 40″ hits of the day, including Fine Young Cannibals, Bangles, INXS, “Goin’ Back To Cali” (the B side of the tape is labeled “Downtown Julie Brown”– anyone remember her?)

I have one with Wall of Voodoo on one side and the Sex Pistols on the other. The Smithereens and Dwight Yoakam. A couple of random songs from the Gun Club.

For years I’ve been saving a few cassette tapes in my attic, hoping I’d be able to dig up that music again. I tried in the days of Napster, with no luck. I’ve kept watch on eBay, to no avail.

I was updating the music recommendations on my right sidebar the other day and discovered that some genius has started converting some of this old music to CD, and in some cases, mp3.

Exciting finds included the db’s Like This (”Amplifier”), the Long Ryders Native Sons (”Tell It To The Judge”), Let’s Active Cypress/Afoot (two albums) (”Every Word Means No”), Translator Heartbeats & Triggers (”You’re Everywhere That I’m Not”) and the super-rocking Jason and the Scorchers, who I saw at the Cavern on Morris Avenue with about four other people. That Warner Hodges can play the guitar in a mighty sexy manner. A combination of Fervor/Lost & Found is available on my birthday, and I’ll be purchasing this. (”Broken Whiskey Glass,” frantic cover of “Absolutely Sweet Marie”)

Sampling all these songs is making my basement smell like a frat house - beer plus urine and sweaty socks.

Someone needs to reissue The Connells. A sealed record on eBay from 1987 doesn’t do this iPodder much good. Although I suppose I could purchase one, like Darker Days, and show it to the boys as a historical relic. (”Hats Off!”)

After digging through all this music, I spent an enjoyable afternoon driving to Target in the (much needed rain) listening to The Reivers (formerly Zeitgeist) sing Freight Train Rain. I felt like I was (mentally doing math… that can’t be right) eighteen again.

Oof– that was a painful calculation. I was eighteen in 1985, and I’m turning 41 in a few days. There’s not much to say about that, except that I’ve been slathering all kinds of potions on my face, and as soon as I look as good as Tina Turner I’ll let you in on my secret.

What bands and songs remind you of college or high school?  Were there local bands that were awesome and should have made it big?  (If you read the Amazon reviews for the db’s and Let’s Active, you’ll see people who thought THEY should have enjoyed U2 and REM’s success.)  How about mixed tapes?

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Three years ago in My Tiny Kingdom: Finn Glamore: Poet Laureate

January 30, 2008

Coincidence?

Things are getting suspiciously groovy chez Glamore. Long hair is the trend. Two-thirds of my boys are wearing necklaces. Yesterday I helped Drew tie-dye a shirt. (The kit was a Christmas gift from Aunt Lulu.)

Today I went into Finn’s room and saw this “water glass” by his bed.

I was alarmed, and I smelled something that made me feel woozy.

I hope it was the severed deer’s tail, and not something else.

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THREE years ago in My Tiny Kingdom: Name That Kid