Owner: Tales From My Tiny Kingdom URL:http://www.mytinykingdom.com Join Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2007 12:47:24 -0600 Rating:0 Site Description: The tooth fairy gets drunk and forgets leave Finn money for his tooth, Drew has burning buttocks and Porter is spying for the government. Another day in Anne Glamore's life in the Tiny Kingdom. Site statistics:Click here
Looks Like I Won 2007-10-17 15:39:27 Bill and I joke that when we got married he gave up big-titty women and I gave up long-haired men. His girlfriend before me was a lacrosse playing, Cuban, large-breasted classical pianist, and hell if I know what order to put all those adjectives in to reflect their importance to Bill, but I bet the tits were near the top.
He didn’t get those when he married me. I’ve even posted a picture of my pancake/Tootsie Roll breasts on this very site.
All marriages involve compromise, though, and I gladly live with a man who not only has short hair, but who also expresses his love for me by scraping his long toenails against my calf in bed at night, although he knows the maneuver skeeves me out.
Bill has long been meaning to make my long-haired dreams come true.
After an inspired stop at Party City, an Adonis entered my room.
I am truly the luckiest girl alive. Read more:Looks
My Mac Daddy And Me 2007-10-21 11:54:25 When Drew asked me what a Mac Daddy
was, I was stunned by the question, but I swiftly recovered and said confidently, “A Mac Daddy is a man who dresses in fancy suits and plays drums in a jazz band.” Drew and I hadn’t had the sex talk yet, and I saw no reason to enlighten him about the world of pimps and whores.
“Could he play the bass instead of the drums?” Drew asked hopefully. He’s been taking bass lessons for three months and is learning to accompany Porter on the first verse of “Free Fallin’.” They’re improving, though slowly.
“Of course he can,” I said. Although I’d originally defined a Mac Daddy as a drummer, there was no reason he couldn’t play the bass, the tuba, or the ukulele for that matter.
Later I heard Drew practicing his bass, and I went downstairs to gauge his progress. While earlier Drew had been in his soccer uniform, he’d traded this in for full Mac Daddy regalia&ndas
Mourning But Moving On 2007-10-24 09:57:36 This Friday, the 26th, is the second anniversary of my mom’s death. Here is the first column I wrote about her death, and “A Blessing” provides a few more details. Here is what I wrote about the occasion last year.
You’ll see that some of these columns have tags under them– you can click on the tag “ovarian cancer” to locate other posts discussing my mom and her disease.
If you live in Alabama and you want to support research efforts for ovarian cancer, you can go to your county license plate office and ask the clerk for a commitment to purchase a special plate demonstrating your support. The plate costs $50, and $41.25 of that goes to the Oncology/Gynecology Department at UAB. This department performed my ovarian cancer risk assessment and is top-notch.
In Jefferson County you can go to the main courthouse or any satellite office and get in the tag line to fill out the paperwork. The $50 is tax deductible. The number to call is 205 856 8 Read more:Mourning
, Moving
Take Off Your Pants 2007-10-24 09:53:51 “Hell’s bells! Those are way too short. Take them off immediately and put them in Drew’s pile,” I told Porter. He wiggled out of them and tossed them into the mountain of capri-length pants he’d already tried on.
Later I dismissed him and summoned my mac daddy. Drew and I went through Porter’s discards and were delighted to score seven pair of wearable pants, plus three pair of jeans from the Finn era, as Porter refuses to wear blue jeans.
The boys went back outside and amused each other by kicking soccer balls at each other on the trampoline, while I stayed inside, patiently crossing the “P’s” out of waistbands and replacing them with “D’s” in black Sharpie.
The boys have grown at breakneck speed. Wrists and ankles dangle out of shirts and pants, hair and toenails always need trimming. I look at their faces and see more of the teens they’ll be than the toddlers they were.
The seasonal Sharpie w Read more:Pants
The Math Geeks And Me 2007-10-30 21:02:42 The Math Geeks
are a tough crowd. Several weeks ago I submitted my post Beyonce and I Fail Division to a couple of sites that were publishing articles about mathematics. I thought the mathematicians would enjoy a comical diversion from the rigors of string theory as well as a peek into the world of sixth grade Everyday Mathematics homework.
It turns out that the readers of these particular math sites may be skilled at equations, but they don’t appreciate them being treated as a source of humor.
The Math Geeks were dejected that I wasn’t overjoyed about the opportunity to perform long division at ten o’clock at night with my surly sixth-grade son. A software engineer at Google who posted the articles said about mine:
I was very surprised - and depressed - when I received that as a submission …. Not just that an adult had a problem with something as simple as basic arithmetic, like long division, but that they thought that it was so benign, so unremarkable tha
How Close Friends Know They’re Aging 2007-10-29 10:01:42 My Artistic Friend had a birthday last week. I keep a stash of things I pick up during the year to give as gifts, but as I started to wrap her present, I had a sinking feeling that I’d given her the same thing last year.
So I called her.
Artistic Friend: “Hello?”
Absentminded Me: “Happy Birthday! I was wondering, did I give you something having to do with chickens for your birthday last year?”
AF: (mystified) “Like a casserole?”
Me: “No, more like something that features chickens doing things.”
AF: “I don’t think so. But don’t feel bad; two other friends have called since Friday wondering if they’d already given me the new Frank Stitt cookbook. And they had.”
That made me feel somewhat better.
The book I gave her was Bitter with Baggage Seeks Same: The Life and Times of Some Chickens.
It’s hilarious and a perfect gift for your friends. What, did you think I was going to give her a stat Read more:Close
, Friends
, Aging
Holiday Gift Guide - Help Wanted! 2007-11-03 17:33:57 Thinking up gifts is difficult any time of year, but it’s especially challenging in December when you have to buy for family members you barely see.
Last year I published a Gift Guide
For Boys with lots of suggestions of items that boys between four and twelve might like. Readers commented with additional fantastic ideas.
This year I’m going to do the New and Improved Gift Guide. I plan to publish it earlier than I did last year, to give non-procrastinators more time to take care of this aspect of the holidays, because what else do you have to do now that the Christmas cards are done?
Second, I’m going to expand the coverage to gift suggestions for all types of people - spouses, elderly aunts, teachers, and girls. I hope to cover a variety of budgets.
Take a minute and think– have you ever given the perfect gift and been very proud of yourself? Have you ever received something wonderful? If so, and you’d like to share, let me know in the comments belo Read more:Holiday
, Help Wanted
Hussies? 2007-11-08 21:16:41 Sixth-grade girls are calling the house. They’re polite when they ask to speak to Finn, but after I’ve gotten him to the phone and debated and rejected the idea of eavesdropping on the conversation, my curiosity turns, just a little, to disapproval.
Back in my day, we didn’t call boys on the phone. The first time I called a boy was to ask him to a high school dance.
It just wasn’t done. Now that I think about it, that’s a Southern reason for a lot of forbidden activities. Last year I wrote about the fact that we weren’t allowed to go in boys’ rooms, either.
Wow, considering this and my last post, I’m either one of the last holdouts for morality here, or I’m way behind the times.
Or maybe we just didn’t have time to call boys because we were expending so much energy getting up off the sofa to change the channels on the TV, dialing the rotary phones, and popping popcorn on the stove. Hard times!
Last year in My Tiny Kingd
Fact Or Crap? 2007-11-06 12:03:52 Apparently “crap” is no longer the semi-cuss word it used to be, although I’m not sure who okayed its inclusion into mainstream conversation. It certainly wasn’t me.
One culprit must be the board game Fact or Crap. Several of Finn’s friends brought it over yesterday afternoon and introduced it to the Glamore family.
The game is nothing more than “True or False” dressed in a tuxedo. Picasso was a Cubist. Fact or Crap? Titanium is the hardest natural substance in the world. Fact or Crap?
The game got off to a slow start when Drew thought the game was called “Fact or Take a Crap.” He was worried about his ability to produce every single time an incorrect assertion was read.
Once the misunderstanding was cleared up, the boys played enthusiastically. Shouts of “FACT,” “CRAP,” “CRAPOLA,” “LOAD OF CRAP,” and “THE HUGEST PILE OF CRAP EVER!” reverberated throughout the
A Cheater’s Guide To Spiffing Up Your House 2007-11-13 22:21:33 WARNING! This hint for making your house look fresh should NOT be read by interior decorators or perfectionists, as the system I advocate may cause you to retch.
Tools: Can of white latex paint, old newspaper, paint brushes of various sizes, paint stirrer if stirring is important, paper towels, painter’s tape. No ladder! (A small brush for pretending to paint the trim around windows and a sponge brush for quickly running over the baseboards are great).
Don’t worry about second coats, thickness of paint, or even doing an entire door. The theme here is that women will only look at the walls from their eyes down, and men will not look at them at all.
Background:
Our baseboards and trim were sparkling white when we moved into out house in January 1998. Five minutes later Finn had run around the kitchen a thousand times, dizzy with excitement about his new home, falling against the walls in the process. Two days later, after we’d carried the twins in and out of the hou Read more:Cheater
, Guide
, House
Bloody Sunday 2007-11-13 08:43:56 It wasn’t the pickax Drew wielded overhead, bringing it down steadily onto a concrete block, repeatedly, until it was crushed into Oreo-sized bits. When I saw the shards flying about, I made him put on a pair of safety glasses. That was a good mom-move, but I could have made it fifteen minutes earlier.
While Drew chipped away at the block, Porter collected a variety of sharp, rust-covered objects and placed them into the sand pile, creating an ancient village. All of us are up to date on our tetanus shots, so I let this activity continue.
Nor did I stymie their attempts to climb onto the roof of the storage shed. They worked up quite a sweat in the process and came in for water and Goldfish.
Later the duo got their BB guns and walked to the pond to hunt. They returned in high spirits, having shot the head off a turtle. Was this part of growing up male, I wondered, or did it foreshadow Dahmer-like tendencies?
Either way, I didn’t have time to ponder long, because that& Read more:Sunday
, Bloody Sunday
Gift Guide Part Deux: You’re So Hard To Buy For 2007-11-20 20:23:40 Some people are hard to buy for. They have everything. They engage in esoteric hobbies that are impossible to acknowledge with a present. These are people who never express appreciation but that you might feel obligated to purchase gifts for because of blood or marriage. Many of us have ancient relatives with closets full of bedroom slippers and scented soaps.
I hope these ideas will help you with the hard to buy for people on your list. Remember, though, that you can always make a donation to their favorite charity in their honor if that will bring them pleasure.
Do your parents already have a set of salt and pepper shakers crafted to look like themselves? If not, they don’t truly have everything. For the single recipient, the wine stopper would be a hilarious choice.
This next gift won’t win you any points for bringing sexy back, but it will be put to good use. Have you discovered the wonder of Tervis tumblers? They don’t sweat, they don&rsq Read more:Guide
, Gift Guide
Fighting Over Soulja Boy (With Video!) 2007-11-19 11:58:32 Am I the only adult fighting with her child about the proper moves to Soulja Boy?
Last night the boys and I watched some of the Music Awards, but what should have been a relaxing evening of music quickly disintegrated into a shouting match between Finn and me. It was totally his fault. He was teaching Porter and Drew how to do the Soulja Boy dance, but was leaving out the all important third step: the “lean wid it.” He refused to admit his mistake until I dragged everyone to the computer to watch Soulja Boy himself go over the moves.
Watch and see for yourself, know what I’m sayin’?
Thus instructed, we went upstairs to practice, or Drew and I did, while Finn sulked on the couch and UNBEKNOWNST to me, took illicit video of us diligently rehearsing. It’s most humiliating, especially as we had no music and I was wearing my pajamas.I have no shame, I’m posting it anyway:
Hey, remember that time I wrote about What Not To Wear In Bed? Bill took Read more:Fighting
Holiday Gift Guide: A Kajillion Ideas! 2007-11-17 13:24:31 Y’all, what’s up with it being mid-November already? It totally took me by surprise, but I’ve recovered enough to present my second annual gift guide. It’s grown exponentially, as I’ve included ideas for everyone, not just boys. I’ll post it in installments so you don’t fall asleep reading.
I looked over last year’s post and I stand by all those gift ideas for the boys. The safes are being used. Drew was re-reading Little Lit just last night. The pillows are now beloved. The jump rope has been used for nefarious purposes, but I can’t be everywhere at once, can I??
Best of all, the boys have been taking music lessons and are collaborating on actual songs now, so the years of buying cheap instruments have paid off. You haven’t parented until you’ve tied a red bandanna on your head and moaned “Where do we go now? Where do we go now?” into a hairbrush while your kids drum and strum “Sweet Ch Read more:Guide
, Holiday
Friday Caboodle 2007-11-16 15:42:47 If one of your boys ties a rope around his willie and asks one of his brothers to pull hard on the other end, don’t panic. Apparently (because I only heard about this adventure– don’t you think I would have terminated it if I had witnessed it?) your boy will be a bit bruised, but his penis won’t pop off.
I never do memes - people tag me and I have the best intentions, but something happens, and it’s not the meme. This week, though, I was tagged by both Maggie and Lynda to provide either 7 or 8 random things about me, and I have to wonder - don’t y’all know ENOUGH about me? The fact that Bill and I have matching tattoos? That we’re not that great at remembering the tooth fairy?
I guess not.
1. During my life, I’ve had crushes on at least 3 gay men, (not counting George Michael) but I couldn’t convince any of them to play for the other team.
2. I love vegetables, including the ones you’re not supposed to enjoy, like Read more:Friday
Gift Guide For Good Kids (Or Even Merely Tolerable) 2007-11-29 16:11:47 Herewith, gift ideas for the kids. I’ve tried not to duplicate the ideas I put in last year’s gift guide for boys, so if you need more thoughts, click here and see what I recommended last year.
If you’ve missed the other installments, the gift guide for teachers, babies and toddlers is here. Part Deux, including suggestions for people who are hard to buy for, is here.
READING
All three of my boys are on the fifth Harry Potter book at the moment. Last night we’d stuck Porter in the bed, but he popped out and came in our room to inform us that “all the house elves except Dobby are drinking lots of butter-beer, and it’s very strong for house elves. I’m worried about what will happen.”
For those of you who haven’t been hooked by these books yet, they are a gift to this generation of up-and-coming readers, and are responsible for my younger boys making huge leaps in their reading ability this year. I haven’t been able to Read more:Guide
, Gift Guide
The Sex Talk 2007-11-28 09:20:43 It was time to give Drew the sex talk. If you’ve been reading, you’ll remember that he’s been showing signs of readiness. He snickers whenever he hears the word “sex,” which is often in today’s society. He giggled when he saw that his hospital wristband contained the words “age/sex” as part of its identifying information.
We drained the pond at the Auburn house last week, and it’s been dredged and treated with chemicals to kill the existing fish so it can be restocked. All three boys were wading through gloppy red mud, filling dead carp with BB holes, when Drew began taunting Finn.
“Porter and I came out of Mommy’s tummy, but you came out of her lady parts!” he yelled, then laughed so hard a snot bubble came out his nose, according to Finn, who reported the incident to me immediately after they returned to the house.
For Finn, the final straw came that night when the boys were upstairs getting ready for be
Elves, Round 2 2007-11-26 11:17:36 Damn, the duo is at it again! Remember a couple of years ago when elves were all the rage and I refused to go along, reasoning that Santa is enough?
Last Tuesday I walked by the fireplace and noticed this:
The boys didn’t have any Nerds this time, but it was obvious they were trying to lure an elf. Drew was extremely polite about it:
I’m still not going to succumb. I can’t deal with Christmas gifts, Finn’s birthday, the Christmas card, my regular schedule and remember to move a fuzzy green elf around the house. I told Bill that if he felt the boys would be emotionally scarred by the absence of an elf from their childhood memories, he could come home from work and move the damn thing from the washer to the refrigerator and give his boys a cheap thrill. He declined.
The notes and crackers have sat untouched for almost a week now, but the boys are still hoping an elf will appear.
They may not learn the truth about Santa this Christmas, but they’ll Read more:Elves
Iron Bowl: Fighting Words & Face Paint 2007-12-03 20:16:20 My boys went to their first Alabama-Auburn football game Thanksgiving weekend, and they were fired up. I don’t give two hoots about football so first I resisted these obnoxious flags and stickers, but later I relented and let the boys decorate the minivan for the drive from Birmingham to Auburn.
You can’t see the tiger tail hanging out the trunk, but you get the general orange and blue tiger motif. Though the van may look somewhat gaudy to those of you from outside the state, in fact the adornments helped us blend in with all the other cars traveling southeast on highway 280.
My sons weren’t done showing their spirit. Thanks to Bill’s purchase of some oily (and certainly not non-comedogenic) facepaint, they carefully applied orange and blue until they looked like goofballs true Auburn fans.
Auburn won (I forgot the score) so that was fun for the guys, but their big news was that they had seen plenty of drunk people and heard prime cuss words during the g Read more:Fighting
, Words
, Paint
G-Strings & Tube Socks 2007-12-05 15:21:04 Apparently “Weagel Weagle” isn’t the only nonsensical verse of a football fight song out there.
When I wrote about the animus good-natured rivalry between Alabama and Auburn fans, I quoted the Auburn fight song, part of which causes many a confused Alabamian to ask, “What the hell is a weagle?”
Bodygetta Bodygetta Bodygetta Bah
Rah Rah Rah
Sis Boom Bah
Weagle Weagle
War Damn Eagle
Kick ‘Em In the Butt Big Blue!!
Hey!!!
Joy wrote in to say that she’d been taught to say “Regal eagle,” and she surmised that years of drunkenly attempting such linguistics had morphed the phrase into “weagle,” which seems a good explanation.
Kelly then pointed out that at Ole Miss the fans proudly yell a ditty which makes them seem confused, if not amnesiac:
Hotty Toddy, godalmighty,
Who the hell are we?
Flim, flam, bim bam,
Ole Miss, by damn!
As she said, “Flim flam? Also, we wonder who the hell they are too.”
That led me to wonder Read more:Socks
Go Outside And Play With Guns 2007-12-18 16:22:44 I lost the battle over having toy guns in the house way back when Finn was a toddler, and then I handed the whole firearm issue over to Bill.
So while we are notorious hard asses about media, you might describe us as incredibly lax in another area (besides haircuts). Each boy owns an air soft gun, a product I’d never heard of until recently.
It’s like a paint ball gun without the paint. The boys put on protective goggles and run around the yard SHOOTING EACH OTHER ON PURPOSE, which is exactly what I don’t want them doing in video games.
Bill says, “Lighten up, Frances,” and I guess he’s right. We can’t ban everything. At least there’s no blood, flying body parts or scantily clad women involved.
But I bet the neighbors across the street worry when they see this:
Is this a Southern thing, a boy thing, or what?
A year ago in My Tiny Kingdom: Drew Discovers Santa’s Limits Read more:Outside
An Experiment & Gift Ideas! 2007-12-15 12:02:49 Yo home slice!
That’s the way Finn is greeting people these days. Is anyone else’s kid speaking indecipherable jargon? I mean, this goes way beyond being psyched, and it’s a ginormous buzz kill to interpret.
I’m experimenting with a new feature that should add the title of your latest blog post to your comment. Please comment and let’s see if it works or if the whole shebang crashes to bits. Thanks to Jennifer for this cool idea.
I don’t have to tell you that the holidays are upon us. I realized that I totally forgot to put up a guide for spouses, and I’m not going to do it now. Instead, you men who are floundering, get ye to the jewelry counter posthaste!
Before you go, check and see if your lover wears silver or gold. I say this only because MY lover once gave me a gift of silver jewelry, and while I acted appropriately grateful, inwardly I was miffed, as I never wear the stuff. It makes me look as if I might faint.
Some of you may b Read more:Experiment
You Think YOU Have It Hard? 2007-12-13 08:25:57 Do you remember getting up off the floor and walking up to the television to change the channel to one of the other two options - the 1970’s version of “channel surfing?”
Did your mom heat hot dogs in boiling water on the stove?
If so, I think you’ll find this as funny as I did. I don’t know who wrote it; it’s one of the endless forwarded emails I received that was actually worth reading.
Hey- add your own memories in the comments!
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When I was a kid, adults used to bore me to tears with their tedious diatribes about how hard things were when they were growing up; what with walking twenty-five miles to school every morning … uphill BOTH ways ..
I remember promising myself that when I grew up, there was no way in hell I was going to lay a bunch of crap like that on kids about how hard I had it and how easy they’ve got it! But now that I’m over the ripe old age of thirty, I can’t help but look ar
Last Night, At The Band Concert 2007-12-12 09:25:36 I was a dismal failure as a spectator at Finn’s Holiday Band Concert
last night, earning at best a D in my latest rite of passage into teen parenthood.
Up until the concert began, the information I’d received from the band had been sparse: mandatory attendance at concert rehearsal on Thursday (check), strongly encouraged “donation” to band account (check written), and reporting to auditorium for concert in black pants and solid shirt, with instrument, at 6:40 for 7 pm concert.
I was under the impression that the concert was going to be sixth-graders only, and this seemed to be confirmed by the casual dress code. Finn assured me that collars weren’t required. We focused on the “Band” portion of the Holiday Band Concert, and he chose a long-sleeved black T-shirt that whispered, “CBGB may be defunct, but this ass will see plenty of other smoky bars before my drumming career is over.”
CBGB apparently wasn’t factored in the f Read more:Night
Gutter or Stars? 2007-12-10 08:30:09 I have one twin firmly planted in the gutter, while the other is looking at the stars. The weekend revealed the vast disparity between their personalities once again, as if we needed any reminding.
Bill was driving with Porter and Drew and asked them if they had any ideas about what to get me for Christmas.
“Me me me me me! I do I do I do! Call on me!” Porter screeched, waving his hand in the air wildly.
“Okay, Porter, what’s your idea?”
“An Auburn thong! She’d love it! She’d wear it every day! She doesn’t have one. She doesn’t. We should buy her one.”
Perhaps you are wondering, as Bill was, how Porter knew about thongs at all, much less a college football version.
No, Porter wasn’t in the Bible Club riding group that became obsessed with the pink thong discarded by the side of the road.
Last week I was careless with my laundry and Finn found a recreational thong while sorting the clothes. He immediately
13 Crucial Tasks To Teach Your Children 2007-12-22 09:52:16 I’m all about teaching my kids how to do things by themselves. Sure, it’s great for them to be self-reliant, but it’s even better for them to take a little of the load off of me.
While I could have named this 1001 Things To Teach Your Kids, I’ve got crap to get accomplished while the boys are folding, stuffing and stamping the Christmas cards.
1. Teach your kids to gift wrap. Buy cheap paper and don’t expect perfection. Then again, if you have a kid like Porter, after a couple of years he’ll invent something like this.
View A: View B:
It looks like Porter wrapped two presents for Drew.
The Big Reveal:
It’s Two-Sided Wrapping!!
How Does He Do It??
I don’t know. I let him run amok with the wrapping supplies and this is what happens. He tells me that for best results, you should turn and move the gift each day to a different spot under the tree so your prey believes he has more presents than he actually does.
2. I came across thes Read more:Children
, Tasks
, Crucial
The Girls Who Came To Visit 2008-03-10 12:26:16 Boys were draped and dashing all over my house this weekend. Finn’s best friend Jay came in from Nashville, and we invited another friend over to hang out with him as well. Drew had company to spend the night. From Friday night to Sunday morning there were between five and eight [...] Read more:Girls
Why Not Be A Tiny Cocktail Sausage? 2008-03-05 10:56:35 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 [...] Read more:Sausage
Prank O’ The Day 2008-03-03 07:56:53 What’s the best way to freak Mom out in the morning, without even being present?
a) Go to school without cleaning up your breakfast dishes.
b) Go to school without making up your bed.
c) Go to school without putting your dirty clothes in the hamper.
d) All of the above, plus forget to untape the kitchen [...] Read more:Prank
Science Lab 102 Exam 2008-02-28 21:30:29 1. Place marbles on a large magnet, cover them with the contents of a dishwasher detergent pod, and subject it to an eerie light. Let sit for three days.
Will the light and detergent cause the marbles to become magnetic?
a) Yes
b) No
c) Depends on brand of dishwasher detergent.
d) Depends whether the light is regular or [...] Read more:Science
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