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While My Boyfriend Was Sleeping

What I write after Joe and Henry go to bed

Archives for June 2012

Lettin it all hang out: St. Pete Pride 2012

June 30, 2012 by heidi 2 Comments

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I live in a city that’s home to the largest Pride Parade in Florida. So sweet, right?

80,000 people turned out for today’s parade and street festival. Henry and I were among the masses. It’s the one place where I don’t have to worry about him making a scene.

We ate frozen yogurt that tasted like vanilla cake batter and Italian ice that tasted like mangoes. Joe ran a carnival booth for Creative Loafing Tampa. I tried (and failed) to win Clown Hole. Henry went home with a string of green beads, a lollipop and something so naughty my mother suggested I not mention it online.

I find it difficult to schlep my Nikon when I’m schlepping Henry, so I took pictures with Joe’s iPhone instead. I’m still too stubborn lazy to do the Instagram thing, so for those of you who only like your pics retro-filtered and super hip, I apologize.

  St. Pete Pride is best left unfiltered anyway.

If you like magic wands, go see Magic Mike

June 29, 2012 by heidi 8 Comments

I’ve been waiting a long time to see a sweaty summer blockbuster objectifying men.

Thank you Magic Mike, for giving female moviegoers some well-deserved P and A. At a time of year when Hollywood devotes its cineplexes to long shots of Megan Fox’s dirty cleav, women are finally reaping the benefits of an R rating.

Hello, is that a penis pump? Being USED?

First, I want to thank my husband for taking me to see this movie. It’s been too long since my last trip to a male strip club, an experience that is seared into my memory as it involves a stout 40-something with a MacGyver haircut balancing on his hands … on a folding chair.

As most women will tell you, male strippers are funny — and not on purpose. When we ladies put on our pearls and pumps and head out for a night of oily grinding and banana hammock swinging, it’s 10 percent out of sexual yearning and 90 percent for comic relief.

Maybe I just have poor taste in strip clubs. I grew up near Canada, which meant my banana hammock experiences were less hammock and more banana. In Niagara Falls, at the nasty clubs I sought out with my girlfriends, the strippers were allowed to go Full Monty on stage. Though hotly anticipated, the grand finale was always more hysterical than arousing.

After five minutes of prancing around in hammer pants and dropping into lunges, Rico Suave loses his trousers, flexes his butt muscles and with a cheesy come-slither look on his face, wiggles out of his purple thong. We women hoot and holler, but really, we’re just being polite.

[Read more…]

Crazy is in the eye of the beholder

June 23, 2012 by heidi 6 Comments

When I was in sixth grade, my teacher pulled me aside to “have a talk” in the hallway.

This happened in the middle of the day, in front of all my classmates. I was embarrassed and nervous. I had no idea what I had done wrong to prompt this private discussion.

I remember it better than I should.

My desk was pushed into a square with six other students’ desks. I know now that this was to encourage teamwork. For me, it mostly encouraged talking. I’m chatty. And goofy. A storyteller. I like to make people laugh. This was true even as a child. I figured a hallway scolding meant I’d done something disruptive in the talking department. It wasn’t the first time I’d been reprimanded for not shutting up.

Oh, but I had been on a roll of good behavior!

We had been writing that week, a lot of open-ended stuff. I had turned in a few wild short stories; stories I was proud of, though for the life of me I can’t remember what they were about.

Man, I wish I could.

[Read more…]

fine & dandy

June 17, 2012 by heidi 3 Comments

I’ve decided I’m just gonna write.

I wanted to write about Father’s Day, but my concentration is shot.

So instead I’m going to write about whatever comes to mind when I open my head and let it rain thoughts.

Or drizzle thoughts, for that matter.

Lately, in the space where I dream in color, there’s been fleeting gray-scale distractions, the stuff of life. The stuff we all have to do that doesn’t count, but adds up. Teetering piles of laundry. Baby food diced into pieces. Work. Words. Interviews. Gas to get. Coupons to cut. Dishes to pass and dishes to scrub. The sound of Henry waking up. The sound of Henry falling asleep. Shallow breathing. Deep sighs. Sips of air. Millions of baby alveoli wiggling like underwater coral.

Henry sleeping. It’s peaceful of course, like how the house used to sound before he was born. Except it’s not the same. Everything hangs in a delicate balance contingent upon naps. When he’s breathing deep, I’m breathing deep too.

I used to stare at his chest and wait for it to rise and fall, a neurosis that has all but disappeared now that he’s gotten older and less helpless. I used to picture his respiratory tree surrounded by a forest of pink tissue.

That’s the actual medical term for it, respiratory tree.

(Even science is poetry, the ultimate poetry, which is funny because I always considered science to be depressing. Then again, poetry can be depressing too.)

Ooo, but the sound of my son breathing is unlike anything I’ve heard before.

It fills me with a red, warm emotion so primal it can’t be communicated in words. His breathing puts into perspective the things that tug at my sanity and self-esteem.

In the company of his tiny, rhythmic exhales, everything else is a cloud of big white nothing, a dandelion head after it’s flowered, a silver ball that scatters its seeds with as little as one puff of air, until all that remains is a stem so strong you can tie it into knots and wear it as a crown.

 

And then Henry turned one.

June 5, 2012 by heidi 3 Comments

Happy birthday darling.

Your mom has so much to say about you.

But she’s tongue-tied and love struck,

with just one thing on her mind.

I love you. I love you.

And love you so much.

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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