April 25, 2006

Lions And Other Animals

I didn’t care much about exotic animals and how they lived before I went to Africa. Going to the zoo was a chore, not an adventure. The boys were always bringing home books and telling me random facts about various critters that I heard and promptly forgot. It was Finn who ruined the allure of my leopard print Snugglebutt pajamas by identifying them as a jaguar print, which was not nearly as sexy.

Once I got to Kenya and began driving observing the wildlife in its natural habitat, learning about animals became much more exciting. For example, on one game drive we came upon a group of lions lazing about. Even to me, it was obvious that they had eaten recently. They could hardly keep their eyes open.

Our guide told us that in the lion world, the lionesses do all the hunting. After they kill the prey, the men muscle in and eat until they are full. Only then do the ladies get to eat what is left. This fact made an impression on me. Our home is not so different from the Serengeti in this regard.

When it comes to providing food for my family, I am much like a lioness. I go to Publix and purchase the ingredients.

I prepare them, while also watching the news, helping with homework, administering first aid, and mediating fights.

When dinner is served my three cubs pounce. Often I have to restrain them from gobbling everything up until a blessing is said.

If I don’t hustle to the table on Taco Night, I am left to graze upon the sparse remnants of the meal.

Sometimes I just have to fix myself a bowl of cereal instead. I sympathize with the plight of the hardworking lionesses in Kenya.

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Since the tragic death of the hermit crabs I have added another Animal to this household, and it cleans messes instead of making them.

Yes, I purchased the purple Dyson Animal, and I am a satisfied customer. Here is proof of the vacuum’s remarkable capabilities. I performed a test that any nitwit could think up. First, while Bill lay on the sofa laughing at my enthusiasm, I vacuumed the den rug thoroughly with my old Hoover Wind Tunnel.

(This is the miniskirt that in an extreme lapse of judgment, I wore to my 20th high school reunion. Bad fashion choice. My little sister later helped me clean out my closet, and told me not to wear it out of the house; thus I wear it only around the house when doing things like making tacos or vacuuming.)

Then the boys gathered around and helped me assemble the Animal, which was quite easy.

The boys were begging to use the Animal first, but after spending that kind of money I wasn’t about to cede the virginal scouring of the rug to them. I vacuumed the den with the Dyson, and then we all gathered around to inspect the contents of the dirt chamber. Look what 100,000 G of centrifugal force sucked out of my “clean” rug:

Whoa! Seeing all that dust and dirt was so satisfying that I immediately vacuumed the rest of the house, with equally stellar results.

The Animal comes with about eight different attachments, which were pretty intimidating. I’ve never been one to sit down with an instruction manual and work out how to insert part A into part B. Fortunately, Porter had an innate feel for the workings of the Dyson, and soon had it in full stairway mode.

Those giraffe skin stairs were spotless when he was done. (Spotless– ha ha ha!! That’s the kind of joke you make when you return from Africa.)

March 1, 2006

From The Mail Box 3: Dirty Drew

To: Mrs. Pankey
From: Anne Glamore
Re: Two Things: Book, Shirt

Mrs. Pankey,

Thanks so much for sending home books that do not deal with monkeys and are not easily memorized and chanted. It has been a great relief.

Also, I owe you an apology. I noticed this afternoon that Drew was wearing the same brown shirt he put on after his bath last night and slept in, and then I remembered that he wore that exact shirt to school yesterday. After intense questioning and the threat of withheld Goldfish, he admitted that he wore that shirt the day before yesterday, too.

I know you probably wonder how something like this could happen. I started to wonder the same thing, but I didn’t wonder very long, because I don’t actually focus on what my kids are wearing in the morning. I’m more interested in making sure they don’t drip syrup on my newspaper, which makes the pages hard to turn, or let the dog run out of the house where he’ll roam the neighborhood and frighten away the mailman, preventing timely delivery of my New Yorker.

Anyway, I know the shirt is a mess, and I’ve already confiscated it and hidden it in the depths of the laundry basket. I’ll try to do a better job of monitoring Drew’s appearance in the morning, and I’m sorry if he stank up your classroom.

Sincere apologies,

Anne Glamore

November 16, 2005

Cleaning Out My Closet

“Do you wear this outside the house, or is it ‘exercise-wear’?” my sister asked, holding up a stretchy T-shirt festooned with a picture of the Eiffel Tower and other French landmarks, all accented with gold sequins at intermittent intervals. I didn’t have the guts to confess that the shirt was not one I wore to the gym. In its heydey, I wore it to fancy restaurants and parties.

We were cleaning out my closet– something I hadn’t done in years. It’s an activity best conducted with a special person. She needs to be tactful enough to convince you that a five year old pair of pants is hideous, not fashionable, without pissing you off. At the same time, she should be stylish enough that you believe her when she says she’d never let a certain piece of clothing touch her body.

I needed her help. I tend to reason that most clothes are worth holding on to. If ponchos and gauchos are back, I can’t think of any trend that’s too ugly to make a comeback. Consequently, my closet is full of clothes dating back to Duran Duran’s “Hungry Like the Wolf” days. I am drawn to colors and patterns. Also, it’s been well-documented that I walk the line between trashy and trendy, and often I need someone to tell me when I’ve gone too far.

My sister is always well-dressed, and has a knack for organization combined with enough OCD to allow her to be ruthless in discarding the unwearable, after which she hangs everything on matching hangers facing in the same direction in a complicated closet classification system.

She pulled a striped miniskirt from the closet and looked at it apprehensively.

“You know, Anne,” she said, “There’s just an age where you have to draw the line at skirts of a certain length.”

“Are you saying I’ve reached that age?” I asked meekly.

“I’m afraid so,” she said.

“Well, I’ll try it on and you tell me if it is too short,” I proposed.

I stripped off my jeans, put on the miniskirt, and posed. She laughed in disbelief.

“Have you worn that out of the house lately?” she asked.

I knew good and well that this was code for “Who’s been dressing you– Lil Kim?”

“Have you seen my legs?” I retorted. “I’m the queen of the baseball field when I wear this,” I said as I wiggled out of the skirt.

She took it from me delicately and tossed it in the “Donate” pile.

“Wait!” I shrieked. “That’s much more than a skirt that is too short. Bill picked it out for my birthday several years ago. All by himself. He gets all hot and bothered when I wear it.”

“Okay,” she relented. “It can go in the ‘For Romance Only’ pile,” she conceded, “but you have to swear you won’t wear it out of the bedroom.”

“I promise,” I agreed.

After she had left, and all my clothes (or what remained of them) were hanging neatly, categorized and subdivided by sleeve length and color, I thought about our conversation. I know the general rules of fashion here– white only between Easter and Labor Day (although the temperature may hover in the 80’s until November), no velvet after Valentine’s Day, and so forth.

But the rules about changing your look as you age are far murkier. When do you admit to yourself that you’re not getting any younger, and that perhaps you should be shopping at Banana Republic instead of Express? Until now, I’ve stayed away from Banana Republic. I could always find a fabulous top (preferably with beading or sequins) at Express that suited me just fine.

A couple of days ago, I went into Banana Republic, just to see what would happen. Most of the clothes were solids, but I didn’t let that scare me. And when I walked out, I had created an outfit, one that my sister would be proud of. I paired a solid cranberry blouse with a pair of solid gray pants. I put them on with my new shoes, threw on a bunch of necklaces, and wore the whole thing two days in a row. I didn’t look all soccer-momish, or matronly. I looked chic.

I’m sure my sister would have done it differently– she would have worn flats, not shiny dancing shoes, and her jewelry would have been subdued, and of course her hair would have been all one color, rather than the three I have going right now.

But I’m going to attribute those differences to personal style, not inappropriate fashion choices on my part. Am I finally growing up?

October 20, 2005

Don’t You (Forget About Me)

The class of 1985 held its 20th high school reunion this past weekend. In the weeks leading up to the event, I experienced a fair amount of angst over how best to present myself to people I hadn’t seen in twenty years. What did I have to show for all that time? I didn’t have a Grammy, a corner office, or a fancy car. I still didn’t have boobs, real or fake. I have some new scars, three boys and a husband, and a paid off minivan. How would I measure up?

I read an article recently in which a man who interviews a lot of job applicants says he always asks interviewees to describe themselves in high school. He thinks that the way people say that they used to be in high school is actually the way they see themselves now. I had a hard time believing that when I first read it.


In high school, I dressed like Madonna in the “Borderline” days, complete with fishnet hose, stilettos and fingerless lace gloves. I was boy-crazy. I was on the dance team– we wore sparkly leotards and gold boots and performed at the football games. I had lots of friends, but I didn’t belong to any particular clique. My drinks of choice were Riunite or Bartles & Jaymes wine coolers. I was smart and took several Advanced Placement classes. My favorite subject was English. I was a leader, and I was going places. I’ve changed a lot since then.

Friday night we gathered together for the first time in twenty years. Almost everyone was there:

The tall, beautiful brunette who’s still tall and beautiful, and also has five boys. I don’t know how she’s managed to do both.

The guy who says he’s discovered the perfect martini.

The girl who works for the State Department AND sings and plays guitar in a band.

The girl who’s living in L.A. and takes pole dancing lessons as a hobby.

The idea of pole dancing as a hobby garnered lots of interest from the attendees. Because I am a faithful US Weekly reader, I was well aware that pole dancing is not just for strippers anymore. It’s a bona fide form of exercise, at least on the West Coast, although a lot of the Southerners had to be convinced of that.

Everyone ogled the pole dancing girl and agreed that pole dancing does provide physical benefits. I heard one man ask his wife if she’d consider canceling her gym membership if he had a pole installed in their bedroom.

(That night I did a little pole dancing research and discovered that there are companies that teach pole dancing, and businesses that supply the accouterments. Apparently anyone can do it, although the sport can be risky, especially if you have breast implants.)

Saturday there was a gathering for graduates and their families at the high school to “see how much it had changed.” I wasn’t fooled by the invitation. I knew no one wanted to see the new baseball fields. The point of the lunch was to show up with your spouse and children to prove that in family life, at least, you had been successful.

I didn’t let the fact that both Drew and Finn had fever stop me from participating in the show. I put all three boys in clean shirts and made them brush their teeth in the middle of the day, which caused a great amount of consternation in the Glamore house.
I impressed upon them the importance of looking my fellow classmates in the eye, saying yes ma’am and no ma’am, and shaking hands. No boogers were to be removed from noses and all farts were to remain in bottoms and released only inside a bathroom. Once I was satisfied that my boys were going to act like proper denizens of the Tiny Kingdom, we departed.

Seeing my fellow classmates with spouses and offspring was surreal. All the kids ran around, threw footballs and jumped in an inflatable moonwalk while the adults caught up on what everyone had been doing the last two decades.

Some developments were not surprising. The boy who was always called upon to fix the film projector when it broke is now a successful software engineer. Others had taken surprising career paths, like the quiet girl who runs a lobbying firm. Some had exotic jobs– one of my oldest friends lives in Paris and arranges walking tours of the city.

My boys behaved like gentlemen. Bill was his usual sexy self. I, on the other hand, apparently listened to “Private Dancer” too many times while getting dressed. My denim miniskirt was entirely too short, and I was showing a lot more skin than any other graduate there. It was my good fortune that the organizers did not hand out an award for “Most Whorish Housewife.”

Saturday night the adults assembled one last time for a band party. The 80’s cover band ground out “My Sharona,” “I Will Follow,” and “Jessie’s Girl.” We danced and drank and talked some more. The discussion turned to what we were glad to leave behind from high school, including:

–Boy George

–Bad taste in men

–Certain people

–Datelessness

–Hormonally spawned feelings of inadequacy

–Fake IDs

–Physics

Overall everyone seemed very happy, and most spoke of their friends and families, not their cars or houses. I’m sure some people have corner offices, but they weren’t discussing them. They debated Pampers vs. Huggies, the cost of ballet recital costumes, and sleep schedules.

After I got home, I thought about myself, then and now. Maybe the job interviewer is right– in some ways I’ve changed, but in some ways I’m just the same.

The Riunite and wine coolers have given way to gin and tonics and wine, but I relive my dancing years everyday in Jazzercise. I confess that lots of times I find myself in the gym, pretending I’m wearing gold glitter boots instead of sensible aerobic shoes. I dance and smile at the wall as though I was in front of a stadium full of screaming fans.

I continue to make bad fashion choices. I’m still an English geek and I may have lost a few brain cells along the way, but I persist in thinking that I’m intelligent.

And of course, I’m still boy-crazy. But now it’s better than ever. The boys whose love I crave are not only attainable, but undeniably mine: true love always.

June 7, 2005

Anne Glamore Commits Le Fashion Faux Pas

There’s been a trend towards dressing down in the past few
years. Casual Fridays are the norm at many offices. Jeans are now
considered dressy if you wear them with a flirty top and heels. But
while fancy restaurants and corporations have been relaxing their dress
codes, I recently discovered an unlikely place that has suddenly
imposed a dress code where there was none before, catching many of us
by surprise.

I was so rattled by these changes that I guess you could say I behaved oddly, but I don’t know what else someone in my situation would have done.

Apparently the new millennium has wrought some changes in the
skating world, and not for the better, in my opinion. Yesterday I went straight from the ballpark,
where Finn had a game, to the skating rink to pick up Drew and Porter from a skating party. It’s hot at the ballpark, and I was wearing a colorful skirt, brown sandals, and a ruffly top with thick straps over each shoulder.

When I walked in, I checked with the woman at the front door
to see which room the party was in. The woman was wearing teeny tiny
denim shorts and a tight T-shirt dedicated to Jeff Gordon. Her
fingernails were salmon with flowers painted on the tips.

I could see my blond headed boys skating behind her, so I pushed on the glass door to enter the rink.

“Hold it right there, missy,” Mrs. Fingernails said to me. “You can’t go in there like that.”

“Like what?” I asked.

“You’re indecent. We have a dress code. You need to go back home and put on a T-shirt,” she said, gesturing to a new sign above her head.

It said: “Dress Code: No spaghetti straps. All straps must be at least two inches wide.”

I looked at Mrs. Fingernails in her too tight T-shirt, and down at my Gap camisole. It wasn’t held up by spaghetti straps, but they certainly were not two inches wide. I was at least twenty miles from home.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said. “I’ve been to Publix, the ballpark, and the church to decorate for Bible School in this shirt. Suddenly the skating rink thinks I’m indecent?”

The lady shrugged and said in her smoker’s voice, “Sorry hon. I don’t make the rules.”

I looked through the glass door and considered my options. I tried to catch Drew’s eye as he skated past, but he did not see me. Porter had wandered off somewhere and it was evident I was going to have to go inside to round them up.

When Mrs. Fingernails bent under the counter to get a phonebook for another customer, I quietly slipped through the glass door. I was immediately accosted by a skinny boy with a bad case of acne. He was wearing a shirt with the skating rink logo on it and a badge that identified him as an employee.

He stopped in front of me and mumbled something. It was hard to hear him, but I did catch the words “shirt” and “dress code” and “change.” I stared vacantly at him, and in a burst of brilliance, performed the sign language movements to “The Rose” as I mouthed silently, “I must retrieve small blonde boys.” Then I walked on by. (I did learn something useful from “Napoleon Dynamite”.)

I found Drew quickly, pulled him out of his skates, plopped him into his shoes, and dragged him around as we searched for Porter. Unsurprisingly, Porter was at the food table eating the remnants of the birthday cake. As I told him we had to leave, I saw the acne faced kid out of the corner of my eye, so I punctuated my conversation with a few hand rolls and taps on my chest and head in the manner of Marlee Matlin.

“Why are you making those funny things with your hands?” Porter asked.

“Because the people at the skating rink don’t want me to be in here in this shirt,” I said, wiping icing from his face and pulling him off the chair.

“When people don’t want me to be somewhere, I don’t do funny things with my hands,” he said. “So why are you, Mom? Why Mom? Why are you doing funny things with your hands?”

“Shh,” I said.

Drew tapped me on the hip. He was trying to ask me something in his regular voice, which is very quiet. I bent down to hear him. “What’s wrong with your shirt?” Drew asked

We were getting close to the exit so I bent down to whisper to him.

“I’ll tell you when we get to the van,” I said.

As I straightened up, the acne faced kid was right in front of me. This time I could hear exactly what he said. “You are not deaf,” he said accusingly.

I stopped.

“What does deaf mean, Mom?” Porter asked. “What does it? What does deaf mean?”

My cover was blown.

I had already resolved that I was not going to return to a skating rink with such an outlandish dress code, so I figured I had nothing to lose.

I looked at him haughtily. “Je ne sais pas la tour de france et la croissant avec fromage,” I frenchified. “Je dois a la maison maintenant et tout de suite a la pas de deux de corps de ballet chassee!”

He stared at me.

I grabbed each twin and hurried toward the exit, still spouting the rest of my high school french vocabulary.

“Mon Dieu, le chat est noir et ma tete est tres mal,” I exclaimed as we hustled back through the glass door.

” Voila, j’aime la voiture dans la cafe au lait et La Louvre,” I finished as we ran through the outside door and ran to the van.

“What were you saying, Mom?” Porter asked as I buckled them in. “What were you? What Mom?”

“I was just telling the nice man thank you for the party and that we are very sorry that the skating rink is closing down,” I said. Although my answer was a lie, it made me look polite, not indecent, and it made it clear that we would not be returning to that skating rink again.

I saw Mrs. Fingernails in her tight shirt glaring at me as we loaded up. Had I told her the truly uncharitable things I was really feeling about that skating rink, I bet she would have pretended to be deaf, too.