Archives for July 2009

Old clothes and tortured lizards

July 31, 2009 by heidi 15 Comments

Surely I’m not the only girl who does this before leaving the house. Surely I’m not the only girl who tears through her closet like an animal trying to find something decent and cute and flattering to wear to parties, interviews, or dinners with friends. Surely we all do this.

I blame the fact that I work from home. I blame the fact that I spend a good chunk of my day conducting phone interviewing and writing stories in a T-shirt and underwear. I blame the fact that I now despise shopping in any store that sells trendy summer scarves. I love summer scarves. I’ve always loved summer scarves. Why did they have to become trendy?

I blame the fact that my sister PK gives me her hand-me-downs. That the pug sheds on everything I own. I blame sweatpants. If sweatpants are so unacceptable, they should be uncomfortable and smell like sewage. If something is soft, loose and moderately clean, I’m wearing it. But why must these rules change in public? Why!?

Tonight I spent 30 minutes trying to find something to wear to a company party. My wardrobe is so G.D. old you’d tell me to shut up if I told you when and where I purchased my stuff. For example, I wear a pair of Old Navy jeans from 9th grade on a regular basis. They’re Joe’s favorite jeans. As you might recall, last year I purchased a pair of $150 7 For All Mankind ass jeans from Stein Mart. But of course it’s the saggy bottoms from 9th grade that Joe loves best. (Note: Yes, I shop at Stein Mart. It makes me feel old and retired in all the best ways.)

The black shirt I ended up wearing tonight was PK’s when she was in high school. I used to steal it and wear it to work at Waldenbooks when I was in college. It has a tiny pocket on the shoulder, so tiny my friends nicknamed it “the condom pocket.”

The white pants I wore came from Block Island, Rhode Island. My best friend Ro and I pedaled across the state in 2004. When we got to the coast we decided to cross the Atlantic Ocean on a ferry, where we landed on a tiny island with big biking potential and too many bars. After three hours on the island we were so drunk and tired we missed the 8 o’clock ferry back to the mainland. The third reason why we missed the ferry was because I came across a killer sale at an uppity boutique, where yes, I bought the white pants.

So tonight I wore the Rhode Island pants and PK’s condom shirt. After 30 minutes of ripping off one ill-fitting garment after the next, (including a new tweed dress from Ann Taylor) I decided to go with an old and well worn outfit. I always do this.

Anyway. I digress. My sloppy fashion sense wasn’t supposed to be the focus of this post. Instead I signed on here to tell you that a couple of weeks ago, while my sister PK was watching The Bachelorette, a gecko shot across her living room floor. Freaked by the sight of this reptilian invader, she decided to trap it under a ceramic Japanese cereal bowl. She said it was her only option, that she was too engrossed in The Bachelorette and therefore incapable of relocating the beast. I know this because I unknowingly called her during a commercial break.

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The skinny on my wedding…

July 24, 2009 by heidi 19 Comments

I’m incapable of writing about every bitty detail of my September 12 wedding. I do however love pictures and I wanted you guys to know that despite my bridal aloofness, I did not boycott all frivolities. I embraced many of them with an open and girlie heart. I love throwing a party!

So for those of you who have asked me to share wedding details, here’s a picture play-by-play.

(FYI: I’m not wearing this lovely Sarah Seven dress, but I do think her designs are wonderful. Visit Sarah’s website. She lives in Portland, Ore., where I imagine her life is endlessly hip.)

Today I was inspired to add blue to my wedding. (See above collage by Blissful Mama.) It wasn’t until I walked past my bathroom and saw Joe’s orange towel draped over the shower curtain that I realized why my brain has been swimming with turquoise, brown and orange. I see it as a homage to Florida and New York, though I haven’t settled on it yet. Who knows, by tomorrow I might think it’s awful.

My mother thinks I’m nuts, but you can see now where the color combo came from.

I’m in the middle of making personalized birds nests. While these will function as placeholders and favors, they are not the only wedding favor. Joe blew my cover on the nests last week when he announced on his Facebook status that he was, “sitting on the couch working when the UPS man arrived with a box of 120 bird’s nests. You never know what the day will bring.”

bird-feeder-Robin-eggs

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Roger that.

July 23, 2009 by heidi 6 Comments

This one is for my buddy Roger, who just last week put in his two week’s notice at the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, where he worked as a city hall reporter for two years, notching more front page stories than anyone I know.

Prior to that, Roger worked with me at The Sarasota Observer. Next to Zipper Boy, he is my oldest, truest friend in Florida. And by August he’ll be living in Miami, near his beautiful and talented writer girlfriend Rachel. I don’t know how they’ve done it, but Roger and Rachel have successfully managed a healthy long-distance relationship for what seems like an eternity. (In actuality, probably one year.)

Roger was accepted to Florida Atlantic University’s MFA in Creative Writing program. Even more impressive, he was one of only a handful of students to receive a teacher assistantship.

Back in December, he asked me to write a letter of recommendation to three Miami grad schools. He was worried his journalism background might quash his chances of getting accepted to a creative writing program, so he asked me to stress the fact that despite his newspaper sensibilities, he’s really just a tortured writer; a victim of poetry, romance and longing. No more grounded or level-headed than say … Truman Capote.

“Of course I’ll write you a letter,” I chirped, meanwhile inside my chest, my heart hardened into a heavy blue brick. Sure I’ll write you a letter of recommendation, so you can move away like every other awesome and amazing friend I’ve made in Sarasota. Of course I’ll recommend you. It would be my pleasure to rub salt in my own wounds.

A few weeks later, I sent three copies of the letter to English department chairs at The University of Miami, Florida International University and FAU. I refused to let Roger read it. I told him I’d share it with him if he received at least one acceptance letter.

So as promised, here’s the one I mailed to FAU:

December 30, 2008

To whom it may concern:

The first time I met Roger Drouin, I was an entry-level reporter at a weekly newspaper on Longboat Key. Roger, the paper’s government writer, offered his pick-up truck to help move my dresser, and in a muted New England drawl, inserted a Charles Bukowski quote into the conversation.

Like most of Roger’s colleagues, I grew accustomed to his Bukowski quote habit. His propensity to introduce the poet’s words into everyday discourse was a knee-jerk colloquial quirk. And when he left our weekly newspaper three years later to write for the New York Times-owned daily in town, I secretly hoped this humbling idiosyncrasy would not be eclipsed by daily newspaper success.

It wasn’t.

Nearly five years have passed since Roger and I met in that bungalow-of-an-office out on Longboat Key, and I’ve come to learn his stock of quotes is not limited to just Bukowski. He’s as devoted to Hemingway and Hiaasen, Hunter Thompson and Tolstoy, as he is to Bukowski.

Employed as a newspaper reporter for as long I’ve known him, Roger has always worked the city hall beat. He’s a pen-to-paper traditionalist and a staple at government meetings. Though his job is more black and white than I think he’d like it to be, the grind has never snuffed out his love of fiction.

Roger writes and reports for newspapers with contagious affability and nary a complaint. When he’s not working, he scrawls poems in a tiny gray journal. On Sundays, he writes short stories and shares passages with established writers’ groups in downtown coffee shops.

To Sarasota’s daily newspaper readership, Roger Drouin is just a city hall reporter. To those of us who read his creative work, he is, at heart, an aspiring novelist.

His characters are feisty, pensive and sometimes jaded. As cynical as reporters can be, Roger’s imagination is still colorful. His characters are sweetly ordinary, believable and honest. Even better, his dialogue is sparse, touching and instinctive.

I credit his journalistic wit. A slave to newspaper inches, Roger has developed a skill for choosing words wisely. Some friends compare his style to that of Florida swamp lit writers, Tim Dorsey and Elmore Leonard. I say give Roger Drouin a few years to ferret out his first novel. With the proper guidance, tools and time, Sarasota’s 29-year-old city hall reporter will hammer out his own story soon enough.

Sincerely,
Heidi Kurpiela

My red carpet needs vacuuming.

July 21, 2009 by heidi 5 Comments

Sigh.

It’s been 11 days since I last posted. I’m all clogged up. I need some brain drain-o. When I get my hands on some, I’ll be back with entertaining stories. I promise.

In the meantime, let it be said that tonight I beat Joe 500 to 265 at Rummy. I shall sleep like a baby.

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PS. I took this picture at the Sarasota red carpet premiere of HGTV’s Design Star. Jason Champion, one of the show’s contestants, lives in Sarasota. I was really happy with how my profile of Jason turned out. To read it, click here.

Thunderstorms make me sentimental.

July 10, 2009 by heidi 7 Comments

I love afternoon thunderstorms, especially because I live in the sunshine state, especially because I work from home, especially because they kick-start my imagination.

Bianchi however does not like thunderstorms. They make her antsy and irritable. Shoved up against a grimy wall in our dank shed, she quickly loses her cool with Joe’s Target bike, a foul-mouthed rust-bucket with a persistent sex-on-a-motel-bed squeak.

Speaking of Bianci. Remember how I said I schlepped her to Buffalo in a giant airport-issued cargo box? In case you couldn’t picture it, here she is curbside at the Southwest check-in counter. I considered coloring in the illustration with an appropriate celeste marker…

… but Photoshop will have to do.

bianchi colored

After reading some of the thoughtful comments in the previous post, I started wondering if all this wedding pomp is making me unromantic. I’ll write something mushy this weekend to remedy that, rattle the gag reflexes a little. However, if you’re new to this place and never caught this post, it’s a total mushfest – and my favorite Lance story.

One more thing: it’s Friday. I’m in love.

Even tombrides have their moments.

July 8, 2009 by heidi 10 Comments

Hey lovelies!

Finally. A post about weddings! It’s about time, Heidi. Some people who read this blog are surprised by the fact that I’m getting married in two months, not because I’m a shrew, but because I’ve been annoyingly terse about my wedding plans. I’m one of those writers who details her life better in rewind, but last night I managed to crank out this in-the-moment post for The Stimulist about the things I never knew about wedding planning.

(UPDATE: The Stimulist folded in late 2009. Here’s the post as it appeared on the site. I should point out that despite my disdain for The Huffington Post, the news aggregating giant picked up the story shortly after it went up. I was flattered, but slightly irritated. HuffPo built its brand by plucking content from other websites and paying NOTHING to most of the writers who submit original content.)

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**From to-do to “I do” (The Stimulist, July 2009)**

No one told me when I got engaged that I would have to bring my own cake knife to the wedding.

I never daydreamed about my wedding day. I never closed my eyes and pictured myself teetering down the aisle in a cloud of tulle. I never stared longingly at my left hand, with its nibbled-on fingernails, and envisioned the space above my knuckle bedecked in anything other than the scar I got when I was 12 from a jagged can of cat food.

I never paged through bridal magazines in line at the grocery store. I never ached to be a bride. Sure, I’d get married—absolutely. But the technicalities of the affair have always been hazy, underscored by what some people might call a no-frills attitude. I would fall in love. I would wear white. I would sign my name. I would kiss my groom. I would not belabor the day with bouquet drama and centerpiece woes.

I would plan, skimp and save for only one thing: my honeymoon.

So why am I sitting in my home office, surrounded by 25-count wedding invitation kits, stacked with envelopes hand-stamped with a brown leaf and adorned with prissy return-address labels custom made for me by a graphic designer in Nova Scotia?

Why is my sister, the maid of honor, calling me from New York to ask whether or not I’m cool with her wearing a flower hairclip when all my bridesmaids are going hair clip-less? Why have I bookmarked a website on how to make 150 paper mâché birds nests? And why, dear holy mother of wedding gods, did I burst into tears last month when my fiancé Joe told me he didn’t want pine cone place card holders and sunflower boutonnières?

Because my wedding is in two months and appears that somewhere between picking truffle bridesmaid dresses and snubbing fondant frosting, I sneakily and insidiously became the bride I never thought I would be.

I used to come across stories like this and pity the woman sweating in satin, but I promise you no fiancée is spared the burdensome task of wedding planning. Here’s a CliffsNotes version of what this one learned in the first six months of her engagement:

You can buy your wedding dress alone

While I would have loved to have my mother at arm’s length as I clumsily zippered the skin on the sides of my boobs into two-ton gowns with vintage beading, she lives seven states away. Of all the tedious wedding tasks, purchasing my dress was the easiest of them all. I promise, it doesn’t have to be a weepy or expensive undertaking. It can be as simple as running to the supermarket for a half-gallon of milk—whether or not you want to treat it as such is totally up to you.

You handwrite your guests’ addresses

According to theknot.com—the go-to source for every piss-ant wedding tradition every concocted—it’s in bad taste to stick computer-generated address labels on the outside of your wedding invitations. One of the few things Joe and I both agreed on was that we wanted tidy-looking envelopes with people’s addresses printed on transparent labels. Had we never nosed around The Knot looking for font suggestions, we’d have printed off 150 transparent labels in what we thought was an attractive typewriter font.

You will be bullied into registering for stupid things

Long-regarded as a thrill by newly engaged couples, registering for shower gifts sent cold chills of gluttonous consumerism down my spine. Not only did Marcie, our customer sales associate at Bed, Bath & Beyond, horde the scanner the entire time, she trailed Joe and I for two hours, steering us toward any gadget with a plug, directions and a $300 price tag. Feigning my zeal for brass toothbrush holders and bamboo shower rings, I edited my registry the next morning on the store’s website. After consulting with another newly engaged couple, I learned that the screaming match Joe and I got into over a $179 garbage can was completely par for the course.

You must purchase a wedding cake serving set

Another tradition I’m not familiar with. Not only do caterers nail you with a cake-cutting fee, they also assume you’ll shell out unnecessary cash on your own Williams-Sonoma serving set. Many brides register for these things. Retailers hawk them as “keepsakes.” I told my mom I wasn’t into bulbous ornamental handles on my knives and that she should go with whatever she finds marked down to $10 at Pier 1.

And don’t forget the toasting flutes

Many engaged couples register for champagne flutes embellished with ribbons, charms and lace. Like the cake serving set, his and hers glasses are sold as mementos, often with engraving options. My parents have monogrammed toasting flutes. For years they collected dust on the top shelf of a cabinet beside the Care Bear drinking glass collection we got from Pizza Hut in 1989.

CC your bridesmaids on all shoe-related emails

As a journalist you’d think communication would be my forte. But it seems I’m no good at dictating what kinds of dress-shoe-hair ensembles my bridesmaids should wear. Just last week I told my future sister-in-law Rosey to purchase gold high heels and my best friend Ro to purchase brown. They both dutifully followed my orders. Whoops.

You can break tradition where you see fit

Wedding blogs are the new bridal magazines. Ask any newlywed. The Internet is swimming with posts on do-it-yourself favors, centerpieces, place cards and invitations. Looking for a rustic bouquet wrapped in twine and dried anise? Your dream arrangement is only a Google search away. Clever brides and grooms showcasing highly personalized soirees have planted wild ideas in my head and loosened the reigns on what I perceived as an industry fraught with “rules.” Thanks to the addition of a few subtle and quirky touches, I’m still chipping away at the to-do list. Joe and I are using a typewriter in lieu of a guestbook. Our guests are arriving at the mountain-top ceremony via chairlift. I’m crafting bird’s nests as placeholders. And at this very moment Joe is strumming the song that will play when I walk down the aisle.

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PS. Special thanks to Heather at alis grave nil, who let me interview her yesterday for an education story I’m working on. It was the first time I’ve actually talked to a Lance reader, and as a journalist mucking around in social media, I was both relieved and thrilled to use my blog for work-related matters.

PPS. I’m currently sitting at a coffee shop in Sarasota, between interviews, eating a Caprese sandwich that is causing me to sweat profusely. I’m considering going to the restroom to splash water on my face. Anyone have suggestions on how to cool off? I’m usually impervious to heat. What the freak?

Chipmunks celebrate independence too!

July 4, 2009 by heidi 11 Comments

chipmunk pig

And now for a funny short story from home:

My mothership has a pet chipmunk. He’s not a pet in the sense that he sits in a cage in the house and runs on a wheel or plows around the living room in a clear plastic ball. He’s an outdoor pet and he lives, for the most part, by his own means.

He popped up five years or so ago, a little brown chipmunk with a racing stripe on its back. My mom found him nosing around her garden. She says he appeared shortly after I moved away. He was nibbling on sunflower seeds and millet in her bird feeders, which explained why her feeders were mysteriously losing seeds within hours of filling them.

Rather than shoo him away, my mothership, the patron saint of woodland creatures, stray cats, one-eyed bunnies, wayward frogs and ailing birds, started filling the feeders with extra seeds and extra millet. And the chipmunk that she had so cleverly named Chippy did not protest.

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Day job stories to hold you over

July 1, 2009 by heidi 5 Comments

I’ve got some work to catch up on, so in the meantime I thought I’d link to a few of my recent stories in The Sarasota Observer.

I’ve written for The Observer since I moved to Florida in 2004. It’s a great gig that I’m grateful for every day. My editors are great, my coworkers are great, and the subject matter is great. I’ve covered everything from city hall meetings to chicken barbecues to art fairs to swim meets. I’ve interviewed circus jugglers, mayors, lion tamers, nudists and Patty Duke. These days I write arts and entertainment features. I wish I could link to older stories, but the O site recently launched and the archives only date back a few months.

The humble maestro

Swan Song

Ring around the museum

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PS. Photo of my desk. I keep all my old Post-it notes under a rubber donut.