• Motherhood
  • Love & Marriage
  • Roots
  • Writing
  • Best of Lance
  • Pregnancy
  • Photography

While My Boyfriend Was Sleeping

What I write after Joe and Henry go to bed

Archives for October 2011

Nano Nano

October 31, 2011 by heidi 6 Comments

 Hair Replacement Systems Australia

Last night I walked into the living room with a bowl of Halloween candy for Joe to distribute to our trick-or-treaters.

(Note: I will not be home tonight for Halloween. I’m “celebrity” judging a costume contest at a burlesque show in Sarasota, so Joe has been tasked with handing out our loot. )

I take tremendous pride in my Halloween candy assortment. Every year I fill a giant bowl with Reese’s, Twix, Hersheys, lollipops and if I’m feeling generous, Kit Kats. And every year, two or three shy kids show up in the company of nervous parents who advise them to only take ONE measly candy.

“One candy!” I cry. “NONSENSE! Take five candies! Hell, take 10. You’re the only little goblins I get all night. DIG IN.”

I’m bummed I won’t be here tonight to push candy.

(Note: If you’re in Sarasota and you’re planning to attend tonight’s contest, please know I’ve got eccentric taste in costumes. Ladies: I don’t have much love for those of you who dress as floozies for Halloween. Just so you know who you’re dealing with, my last three Halloween costumes were a Wheel of Fortune game piece, a Chinese takeout box and this year, a fugly mom – fupa and all. Timely, no?)

[Read more…]

The forest through the trees

October 22, 2011 by heidi 12 Comments

https://www.groupdress.com/

[ A little baby bliss goes a long way. ]

Swinging in this tree, in this backyard, with this little boy on my lap takes me back to a place I’ve not been in awhile.

It takes me back to my childhood, to the days I spent lounging in the sun, reading Alice In Wonderland, climbing old trees and performing front handsprings for passing cars. It takes me back to a trampoline and the poetry I wrote about lilacs, reckless dreams and young love. About why and where and how I would become a writer one day when I grew up.

I don’t know when I grew up.

Sometimes I catch myself looking in the mirror with Henry resting on my hip, our reflections bouncing back at us. His round face and his round eyes patterned after mine and Joe’s and all the family members that came before us.

I look in the mirror at this baby with the big eyebrows and the big grin telling me that I’ve grown up. And I think: what and how will you grow up to be?

Sometimes I beat myself up about things. About not achieving enough. It irritates Joe. He likes to point out that I’m the kind of person who can’t see the forest through the trees.

He’s so right.

I’m the Little Picture Girl and he’s the Big Picture Boy.

But now we’ve got this baby and he’s got us wrapped around his pinkie finger. He’s turning the big pictures and the little pictures inside out and upside down.

We created him using nothing but biology and now the world is different. Or at least it’s different for us.

The day he was born was unlike any other day of my life. I can’t explain it. Everything looked strange and beautiful. Things I had seen one million times looked as they did the first time I saw them. Businesses we passed on our way home from the birth center, places I had entered dozens of times, looked brand new. The air smelled exotic. The traffic lights glittered. The sounds of cars and birds and airplanes were louder than ever before.

You know how you feel when you move somewhere new? Or when you’re on vacation and you pass through a place you’ve never been? How your senses are heightened and your brain feels sharper than it has in months or years?

That’s how I felt in the days following Henry’s birth.

I felt like I was on drugs. The high was so beautiful and intoxicating. It felt just like floating – yet I was in some of the worst physical pain of my life.

In those early days, the very tough early days of wrapping my head around the fact that I had brought a person into this world, I did something I don’t do often.

I saw the forest through the trees.

This week, while swinging in the backyard with Henry on my lap, I saw it again.

The sun was slicing through the oak leaves. The air was cool for the first time since March. The church bells were dinging and Henry was giggling.

We swung this way for an hour. Back and forth, back and forth. Me and Henry just looking at the forest through the trees.

Envelope brainstorming

October 20, 2011 by heidi 4 Comments

I write post ideas on anything I can get my hands on.

Sometimes the only thing I can get my hands on is an envelope. This is a Blue Cross and Blue Shield envelope. Inside is a statement explaining Henry’s health care coverage.

On the outside I’ve scribbled a laundry list of Lance topics.

• Zantac for babies who have reflux: why would you prescribe a foul-tasting medicine that TRIGGERS a baby’s gag reflex when that baby already suffers from reflux?

• Demi Moore is finally in a movie and suddenly there’s an Ashton cheating scandal. Coincidence? I think not.

• St. Pete trend alert: bums pedaling bikes with pull-behind baby trailers heaped with beer cans.

• It’s finally getting chilly in Florida. Break out your hoodies.

These are the PROFOUND topics I’d discuss on here if I didn’t have a newspaper deadline to meet tomorrow. Consider yourselves lucky.

The long and short of it

October 17, 2011 by heidi 15 Comments


So I was thinking …

Since I’ve got a full plate right now and since it’s bugging the hell out of me that I’m too busy to write the lengthy narratives I sooo love writing for you guys …

I ask you:

Is it better to have frequent, but shorter and less thoughtful posts? Or to have sporadic, but longer and more careful posts? The essay-style stories now take me years to finish due to my recent evaporation of free time.

When I started the Lance I told myself I would never fill it with blather. Now I’m beginning to think that approach is stifling me, or in the very least preventing me from keeping the site current.

I find myself starting posts only to abandon them in my draft folder because my mood has shifted, or because I’ve gotten bored with the topic, or because Henry has woken from his 30-minute power nap, or because when I’m writing for work I’m usually too mentally exhausted to write for pleasure.

So tell me: would you rather I just post stuff, regardless of whether it meets my stupid self-imposed standards? Or would you rather I continue to chip away slowly at longer stories – a process that seems especially daunting these days as I struggle to finish everyday chores such as, you know … laundry, cooking, cleaning and all the other domestic nonsense I’m forever sucking at.

I ask because I honestly don’t know if anyone cares. Your feedback on this matter would be incredibly valuable to me.

Thank you,

♥ Heidi

—

PS. Growling photo by Joe, taken this weekend at a beautiful wedding in North Florida.

Mon ami needs your vote!

October 9, 2011 by heidi 7 Comments

You’ve met Ricci and Mbaye before.

Ricci is one of my nearest and dearest girlfriends. We met six years ago at the newspaper I still write for.

In 2008, she left Florida to work as a freelance multimedia journalist in West Africa, where she met and fell in love with a handsome Senegalese soccer player named Mbaye. Two years ago, I grilled them about their relationship and then last year I introduced you to their baby.

Now I’m asking you to vote for Mbaye in Redbook Magazine’s 2012 Hot Husbands contest.

If you got your hands on the July issue, you may have seen him striking a GQ pose on page 10. He’s now one of 25 finalists in the Hottie Hubby face-off, so please, please cast a vote for him by visiting this link or this link.

Never mind that she’s worked for The New York Times, Ricci desperately wants to claim that she’s married to Redbook’s Hottest Husband of 2012.

Seriously. Is there no greater claim-to-fame? 🙂

—

PS. Photo snapped at the Saturday Morning Market in downtown St. Pete – one of my favorite places to take visiting friends and family. If that knit hat with ears doesn’t scream sex appeal, I don’t know what does.

Portrait of a baby who (used to) sleep at night

October 1, 2011 by heidi 2 Comments

It’s about 2 a.m. I’m sitting here in my dark office, waiting for my sister Holly (otherwise known as Heelya) to get here. She’s on route from Myrtle Beach. We’re running the tri together Sunday.

Henry is asleep, which is a rare and beautiful thing these days.

We’ve had a rough couple weeks. He’s been up through the night every HOUR. To cope, we’ve started to sleep with him. It’s the only way he’ll conk out and STAY conked out.

That’s not to say he doesn’t kick off the night in his crib. It’s just that by midnight he’s usually crying, marking the start of what I call the One-Hour Hell.

But this is a relatively new development. My child used to be an expert sleeper. I hesitate to say “used to,” considering his past only goes back four months.

Before I was schooled in the powerful use of the word PHASE, I made the dumbass mistake of BRAGGING about Henry’s sleep habits.

“My baby goes down at 9 o’clock and sleeps til 6. Aren’t I a lucky mama?”

Now I know why other mothers glared at me when I said this. I couldn’t tell if they wanted to murder me or if they knew something I didn’t know.

I think it was a combination of both.

As one of my friends with a two-year-old told me, “Babies change by the second. Everything is a phase.”

There’s the money word. Phase.

So here I am, waiting for Heelya to arrive, thinking Henry is in a no-sleep phase and it’s 2 a.m. and he’s still out.

Go figure.

—

PS. I’m blaming the wakefulness on teething, although Joe and I fear it’s some kind of sleep regression. Let’s hope we’re wrong.

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

Back in the day

  • December 2017 (1)
  • September 2017 (1)
  • May 2017 (1)
  • June 2015 (2)
  • May 2015 (1)
  • February 2015 (1)
  • September 2014 (1)
  • February 2014 (1)
  • January 2014 (1)
  • December 2013 (6)
  • November 2013 (3)
  • October 2013 (5)
  • September 2013 (7)
  • August 2013 (2)
  • July 2013 (3)
  • June 2013 (2)
  • May 2013 (5)
  • April 2013 (2)
  • March 2013 (6)
  • February 2013 (6)
  • January 2013 (4)
  • December 2012 (1)
  • November 2012 (3)
  • October 2012 (3)
  • September 2012 (3)
  • August 2012 (5)
  • June 2012 (5)
  • May 2012 (1)
  • April 2012 (4)
  • March 2012 (5)
  • February 2012 (6)
  • January 2012 (3)
  • December 2011 (1)
  • November 2011 (2)
  • October 2011 (6)
  • September 2011 (6)
  • August 2011 (5)
  • July 2011 (3)
  • June 2011 (4)
  • May 2011 (7)
  • April 2011 (7)
  • March 2011 (6)
  • February 2011 (6)
  • January 2011 (5)
  • December 2010 (7)
  • November 2010 (4)
  • October 2010 (4)
  • September 2010 (11)
  • August 2010 (6)
  • July 2010 (4)
  • June 2010 (6)
  • May 2010 (7)
  • April 2010 (8)
  • March 2010 (5)
  • February 2010 (6)
  • January 2010 (6)
  • December 2009 (10)
  • November 2009 (6)
  • October 2009 (8)
  • September 2009 (4)
  • August 2009 (4)
  • July 2009 (8)
  • June 2009 (8)
  • May 2009 (11)
  • April 2009 (5)
  • March 2009 (14)
  • February 2009 (7)
  • January 2009 (6)
  • December 2008 (3)
  • November 2008 (3)
  • October 2008 (3)
  • September 2008 (5)
  • August 2008 (11)
  • July 2008 (10)
  • June 2008 (13)
  • May 2008 (9)
  • April 2008 (4)

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

Join the fan club

Subscribe

Copyright © 2018 · Magazine Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in