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While My Boyfriend Was Sleeping

What I write after Joe and Henry go to bed

Archives for January 2011

A fine line between writing and living

January 27, 2011 by heidi 7 Comments

There’s something to be said for not writing.

This. Coming from a writer.

Shut-ins who function as writers may disagree with me, but I sense there’s a fine line between writing and living.

I say this as I watch the home-schooled boy, who lives across the street from my house, ride his scooter around and around my circular driveway.

He’s about 10 or 11 and incapable of exploring our neighborhood on foot. He’s glued to his scooter. When other boys his age are tied to their desks at school, this boy is outside, tearing around Coffee Pot Bayou on an aluminum scooter.

I think he loves my driveway because it has a slight slope and provides a thrilling change in elevation on an otherwise flat ride.

He has no idea I’m watching him from my office window.

Sometimes I wonder what he’s thinking, as if I forget what it’s like to be a daydreaming kid.

I have not forgotten what it’s like to be a daydreaming kid.

It’s clouds and Popsicle sticks. Big words in poetry books. Splices of sunlight and windburned cheeks. Ankle socks and white Keds. Ease and perpetual un-worry.

Sometimes in moments of anxiety or frustration I lose sight of these things, but the flicker of memories is always there like a tingly bundle of neurons tucked inside a lock box, stored somewhere in my head for safe keeping, at my disposal whenever I need to pull from it.

As a kid, all that concerned me were the things I could see and feel in fleeting windows of time, marked by what I had studied that day in school, by what my mother had packed in my Igloo lunchbox, by what chapters I had read in a particular Judy Blume book, by what boy had captured my attention, by the pop song lyrics stuck in my head. The taste of red Kool-Aid.

I used to ride a scooter too. Around and around my parent’s driveway. It was purple. Skidding up and down the driveway, I would get lost for hours in my head, making up stories ruled by the forces of magic and imagination, not realizing at the time how these daydreams would shape me, how well these fantasies would serve me, how material things could never eclipse my capacity to think, how in my head I would always have everything I’d ever need.

Remember in the Shawshank Redemption when Andy locks himself in the jail library and blasts Mozart over the PA system? Remember how he says there are places in the world that aren’t made of stone? That no one can ever take away how you feel when you listen to music; that it will always be yours wherever you are?

This is how I feel about storytelling.

Even when I’m not doing it.

[Read more…]

Pregnancy Confession No. 3

January 20, 2011 by heidi 7 Comments

[I ran a triathlon pregnant.]



I was one month pregnant.

Yes, I had morning all-day sickness.
In hindsight, I think mind-over-matter helped me finish the race.

Actually, I think mind-over-matter helped me start it.
Once I was into a groove, it didn't matter
that I was living off oyster crackers and carbonated water.

Once I trudged into the Gulf of Mexico at 7 a.m.
and began swimming half a mile
the nausea and fatigue I feared would keep me from competing
seemed to evaporate temporarily.

And in its place adrenaline began to pump.
Adrenaline can make you do anything.

When I finished the race,
I ate my weight in free beans and rice.
And like everything I ate that trimester,
it was unsatisfying and tasted like metal.

Yet I returned to the food tent for seconds.
I was ravenously hungry.

When I first learned I was pregnant
I worried I might not be able to continue training.

I was running, biking and swimming nearly every day.
I wondered if this regime was detrimental to pregnancy.

[Read more…]

Pug brethren Down Under

January 16, 2011 by heidi 7 Comments

My latest obsession: wombats.

I want one really bad.

PK and I were poking around the Internet last week when we came upon this picture of a colossal wombat. We both agreed that it’s the funniest (and cutest) critter we’ve ever seen.

Next to pugs of course.

The more I thought about the wombat, the more I began to picture my pug and the wombat as best friends.

I’ve been thinking about writing a children’s book about their adventures.

The Pug and The Wombat.

I picture the pug and the wombat embarking on transcontinental adventures.

The last time I had an animal obsession like this it was with manatees, which I refer to as “the pugs of the sea.”

I guess I’m just obsessed with blobby, amorphous creatures.

If it weren’t for the wombat’s medieval claws, I’m certain we’d have a loving relationship.

—

PS. Photo courtesy of this blog post on giant wombats ruling the earth.

The reliability of a man’s intuition

January 8, 2011 by heidi 11 Comments

About two months ago Joe had a dream.

He actually remembered his dream.

(He never remembers dreams.)

He dreamed that he met our baby, except our baby was older –– perhaps six or seven years old.

She was a girl.

He said she was beautiful.

And that was that. From that moment on, it was a she. He was convinced of it.

When we went to Myrtle Beach, S.C. for Thanksgiving, we walked into a photo booth on a beach boardwalk — the kind that morphs two faces into a baby — and because of Joe’s premonition, we forked over $5 and selected girl.

We were with PK, Ro and her husband Tom, my sister Heelya and her fiancé Brian.

We all laughed so hard when the machine spit out an androgynous child with a crop of brunette hair.

And then we walked to a honky-tonk bar where the band Alabama first got its start and we ordered a round of drinks.

I had water.

[Read more…]

The deli girl with the blunt tattoo

January 2, 2011 by heidi 2 Comments

The deli girl at the grocery store up the road from my house has a tattoo on her forearm that reads, “Sucka Free.”

I once asked her about it when she was making me a veggie sub.

I said, “What’s with the tat?”

And she said, “I got so sicka takin’ shit from suckas, I figured I’d make it clear.”

“That you’re sucker free?”

“That I’m sucka free.”

And that was the end of the conversation. She returned to my sub, returned to slicing cheese and we never spoke about the tattoo again.

That was a year ago.

She’s since been promoted to deli manager. I see her head shot framed above the double doors behind the counter. This sucker-free thing must be working pretty good for her.

She’s my favorite deli girl. She’s quick. She’s got a big-city attitude. She uses the perfect amount of mayonnaise and the perfect amount of pickles. She doesn’t waste time with frivolous small talk. She has little patience for indecisiveness. She’s got a thick hide and long, painted fingernails. When she’s not working I wonder what she’s up to, with whom she lives.

If she has a significant other, I imagine he or she is fairly browbeaten.

Or maybe not.

Maybe she comes home, removes her hair net, slips into a cotton nightgown, curls up like a cat next to her lover and falls asleep watching reruns of Grey’s Anatomy.

—

PS. Illustration by Philip Bond

Why do I even blogger?

If you really want to know why I continue to write here, read this post.

Lance lately

  • Old School Values
  • Land of Hives and Honey
  • The Happy Camper
  • Truth Bombs with Henry [No. 2]
  • Truth Bombs with Henry [No. 1]
  • By now I’d have two kids

Social commentary

  • Crystal on Pug worries, or what to do when your dog starts having seizures
  • heidi on Land of Hives and Honey
  • Roberta Kendall on Land of Hives and Honey
  • Jane on Pug worries, or what to do when your dog starts having seizures
  • reb on The Happy Camper

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Oddities

Reading material

Wild by Cheryl Strayed Travels with Charley Home Game bossypants just kids the time travelers wife Boys Life The-Liars-Club My Uncle Oswald Stephen King On Writing

Me.

Heidi K

Joe.

Joe on guitar

Henry.

henry as werewolf

Chip.

Chippy in a cupboard

Buzzy.

Buzzy

Why Lance?

This blog is named after my old friend Sarah's manifestation of a dreamy Wyoming cowboy named Lance, because the word blog sounds like something that comes out of a person's nose.

About me

I'm a journalist who spends my Mondays through Fridays writing other people's stories, a chronic procrastinator who needs structure. I once quit my job to write a book and like most writers, I made up excuses why I couldn't keep at it.

My boyfriend fiancé husband Joe likes to sleep in late on the weekends, but since we have a kid now that happens less than he'd like.

Before Henry and Chip, I used to spend my mornings browsing celebrity tabloid websites while our dog snored under the covers. Now I hide my computer in spots my feral children can't reach because everything I own is now broken, stained or peed on.

I created Lance in an attempt to better spend my free time. I thought it might jump start a second attempt at writing a novel.

It hasn't. And my free time is gone.

But I'm still here writing.

I'm 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 and I've yet to get caught up in something else, which is kind of a big deal for a chronic procrastinator.

How I met Joe

If you're new here and looking for nirvana, read this post.

And if that’s not enough…

heidikurpiela.com

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