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While My Boyfriend Was Sleeping

What I write after Joe and Henry go to bed

Archives for August 2013

Finding Joy in the Dog Days (Or Not)

August 23, 2013 by heidi 12 Comments

Editors note: If you’re able to get through this entire post, you deserve a gold star and a Book It! pin.

To my husband, my mother, my sisters, my friends, my neighbors and anyone else I may have barked at, scowled at, sulked away from or cried to during the last … oh, let’s call it a month:

I’ve been a surly bitch.

Unappreciative and crabby.

No scratch that. I’ve been downright beastly. My outward appreciation for life’s little gifts has been snuffed out lately by sadness, strife, underarm sweat, sleeplessness and the care and keeping of a tantrum-prone Henry.

It’s 800 degrees every day in Florida. In the morning, it’s 600 degrees. At night, it’s 700 degrees. During the day? It’s 800 motherf**king degrees.

More than once I’ve exclaimed out loud to anyone within ear shot, that August can suck it. The bugs are at their biggest. (Thank god the 902-page September issue of Vogue arrived so I can annihilate cockroaches three at a time.) The ozone is at its thinnest. The grass is at its brownest. Homeless alcoholics are at their rankest and the general public is at its meanest. (Last week a woman at Target stormed out of my line because I had 11 items on the 10-items-or-less belt. “So much for the EXPRESS LANE!” she snarled. “Lady, you’re shopping at Target not diffusing bombs. Chill the eff out,” I snapped IN MY HEAD. In real life I glared at her while Henry reached for the candy display and tore open a package of peanut M&Ms. “HENRY WANT CANDY MAMA!”)

[Read more…]

Pug worries, or what to do when your dog starts having seizures

August 6, 2013 by heidi 36 Comments

When Cubbie was a younger pug, I took him everywhere I went. He was my constant companion, a rotund, game-for-anything, kindhearted creature with an infectious grunt.

I took him to bars. I took him to restaurants. I took him to stores that were cool with dogs. I took him to ice cream shops that were cool with pugs. Each week for four years, I took him to the bank to make a deposit and get a bone. At the mere mention of the word bank, he’d pounce off the couch, run for the door and hop into the passenger seat of my car. It was our Monday morning ritual.

I took him to our wedding. I dressed him in a tuxedo and a top hat. I tied a little white pillow to his back and asked him to carry our rings. He obliged, as he obliges to most things most of the time.

I took him to the top of a mountain in Colorado and to the bottom of a valley in Idaho. I took him to Graceland. I took him to Chicago. I took him to the Oregon Coast and let him run without a leash into the Pacific Ocean, the memory of which is so fresh in my mind I can still smell the salt on his fur as I smuggled him past the front desk in a no-dogs-allowed hotel.

I can still see the wild look in his eyes when, after spending three weeks on the road, sleeping in a tent with me, I let him crash on a pillow in a queen-sized bed. King Cub.

[Read more…]

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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