While My Boyfriend Was Sleeping

What I write after Joe and Henry go to bed

The Happy Camper

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When the going got tough at home, I escaped for three days into the East County wilderness with my kids.

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Upon famously living life in the woods, Henry David Thoreau declared that he could never have enough of nature. “Heaven,” he wrote, “is under our feet as well as over our heads.” For his thoughts on solitude and his piercing insight on minimalism, Thoreau has always been my guiding star. A native Upstate New Yorker, I spent many cold nights sleeping in a tent in the woods, and I admit I’ve burned books to stay warm. “Walden” was never one of them.

But here’s the thing about Thoreau, the patron saint of daydreamers, loners and tree huggers: he never had kids. He never harangued his five-year-old for kissing the neighbor girl. He never yanked a dirty diaper out of his dog’s mouth, or used tweezers to pull paper out of his toddler’s ear canal. He never burned rice because he was fishing Legos out of the toilet, and he was never roused at 6 a.m. by a light saber blow to the face. Thoreau didn’t need to go to woods to find solace. He already had it. Trust me.

My life – once the bohemian, writerly existence of an adventurous 20-something – is now an endless chain of spilled cereal, pediatrician visits, time-outs, laundry, car vomit and drive-thru chicken. As the harried mother of two boys, ages five and one-and-a-half, I have come to recognize that in between the nuggets, vomit and time-outs, are beautiful, fleeting moments of peace. The pioneer woman in me has always believed that these rapturous flashes happen when I’m outside with my kids. Maybe it’s because I have feral boys. Maybe it’s because I’m feral myself. Maybe it’s because I’m sick of duct taping all the broken stuff in my house and gorging on Advil amid the cacophony. Whatever the impetus, I decided on a whim, during spring break, to take my kids tent camping (alone) in East Manatee County. My husband, after spending one maddening Saturday consoling our older son, Henry, after our younger son, Chip, bit his brother and leveled his pillow fort, gave his enthusiastic blessing. “You know what you’re doing,” he said. “Have fun.”

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We set up camp

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… along the water at Fort De Soto Park. It was beautiful and exhausting. I ate a lot of chocolate donuts. Joe built a fire using scrap wood from our unruly Brazilian Pepper tree. Hank ate a lot of dirt; chased dogs, squirrels, trucks and little girls on the playground. We woke up each morning in time to watch the sun rise over the Gulf of Mexico. Spending two nights in a tent with an 18-month-old and a snoring, farting pug will certainly make you appreciate your uncomfortable queen-sized bed and busted box spring.

Ah. Sunday night. Home again.

Newly minted!

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What have I done with my life since we last spoke …

seven weeks ago?

Well, let’s see.

I left my job, reevaluated my life, my work as a journalist and my work as a mother. I pitched a few stories to magazines. I booked a few freelance photography gigs. I helped my clever neighbor edit her book on grieving. I fretted (briefly) over leaving my job. I got over it. I made a list of all the posts I want to write because I feel lazy in the blogging department. I got a speeding ticket royally screwed for driving 28 mph in a 20 mph zone speed trap on Siesta Key Beach. I bought Henry a retro spring horse for $20 off craigslist. I got bit by an Australian shepherd on my final assignment for the paper. I took Henry swimming at the luxurious public pool near our house. In an attempt to fully appreciate the cool-down and to get the most for our $5 entry fee, we turned all the outings into bike excursions. (PS. Biking with my kid has become my new workout regime.)

What else?

Oh yeah, I stood up in my sister’s gorgeous wedding on the Erie Canal, at which Henry served as ring bearer and handsome flirt. The weekend before Heelya’s nuptials, I camped with my entire family in Middle of Nowhere, Upstate New York, where I exposed my one-year-old to the joys of four-wheeling through the woods, bathing in frigid spring water and sleeping in a cabin. When we returned to Florida, I gave him his first hair mullet cut. He had spent so much time in the New York hinterlands he’d grown a baby Billy Ray.

And then I gutted my office, which had turned into a black hole for all the crap in our house Henry has broken or has yet to break. I painted it mint green, redecorated/refurnished it with an uncharacteristically girly touch and managed to stay under my $200 budget.

Last year, when I posted pictures of Henry’s baby cave I pulled in my highest number of comments EVER. This still floors me. I write and write and write my heart out and it’s pictures of baby decor that generate chatter. A crib and an Ikea dresser-turned-changing-table, that’s what gets your juices flowing.

In the spirit of pretty pictures, I decided to return to the Lance after a long hiatus with a post dedicated to my office makeover. I was especially resourceful when it came to this overhaul. Now that we’re minus an income and living on tuna fish, I can hardly justify a new Aeron chair. This is why I got a wooden one for $30 at an estate sale.

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Pregnancy Confession No. 4

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[I've always loved dogs more than babies.]

I'm an unabashed dog lover.

When I see one, my heart leaps. I get younger. My mind quiets.
My instinct is to nuzzle the dog. To let the dog nuzzle me.
I know not all dogs are people-lovers, as all people are not dog-lovers.
But it doesn't matter. I turn to mush. Dog putty.

I want to curl up in a ball on the floor,
surrounded by fur and paws and dog saliva
and not communicate with people.
I know this sounds disgusting to non-dog lovers, but it's how I feel.

Give me a yellow tennis ball and a chocolate lab
and I'll be out of your hair for hours.

My affection for dogs is pure and addictive.
I'm like a boy at a monster movie,
cupping a supersize Coke, guzzling and burping.

No need to come up for air.
In the presence of dogs, I boil down to my purest self.

Most four-legged animals make me feel this way.

I wish I could say the same for babies.

Babies and I operate on a different level.

My insides don't turn to apple sauce and cherry cobbler
in the company of babies.

It's an honest admission from a pregnant woman.

I'd rather watch a two-hour Discovery Channel documentary
on the mating habits of otters
than tune into some TLC reality show
about 25 screaming kids and their tummy-tucked mother.

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The pitfalls of downhill roller skating

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The summer I turned 14, I went camping with my mother, my sisters, my friends June and Ann and their mother Wilma.

It was a girls-only kind of weekend. The dads stayed home.

We rented a cabin in the Pennsylvania woods, all of us girls, piled into one two-story bungalow.

Within five minutes of driving into camp I had surveyed the outlying trails for roller skating routes. And yes, I mean roller skate not roller blade. For years I skated on a pair of hand-me-down quads with bright blue wheels. For some reason I never crossed over to inline skates.

June, however, had a slick pair of roller blades — the newest hottest ones on the market.

As we puttered through the campground in Wilma’s minivan, the two of us peered out the windows, our noses pressed to the glass. When we spotted our Everest, we gasped.

It was the granddaddy of all downhill trails. Paved with crumbling black top, riddled with potholes and ending in a sharp plummet, it was the most treacherous trail we’d ever laid eyes on. If it had been any steeper, it would have been a cliff.

As Wilma’s van rounded the corner, June and I implicitly settled on our first skating route. We were fearless.

As soon as the last sleeping bag had been dragged from the van and carried up to our loft, June and I strapped on our skates and announced that we were hitting the trails.

“Don’t go down that hill by the front gate,” my mother said.

June and I exchanged eye rolls.

“I’m serious,” she continued. “DO NOT go down that hill.”

“You’ll kill yourself,” Wilma said.

“Don’t worry,” I lied. “We wont.”

And off we went. June in her roller blades, me in my skates.

Unconcerned for our safety, we blatantly defied our mothers’ warnings to steer clear of the Everest trail. We made a beeline for the summit.

I was leading the way in my clumsy quads, stumbling over potholes, flying through the campground like a jacked up roller derby girl. June was on my heels, gliding in her neon blades.

We rolled to the top of the hill and paused only briefly to take in the free-fall, before howling with glee and pushing ourselves down the incline.

We began hurtling downhill faster than we imagined. Within seconds, the rush turned to terror. We were on a suicide mission.

Using the back brakes on her blades, June managed to stop herself with remarkable ease.

I was not so lucky.

I was flying down a hill on roller skates at 30 mph and unlike June’s brakes, mine were located on the front of my skates. The toe stop.

The longer I thought about braking, the more out of control I became. I was picking up speed faster than Picabo Street, except instead of snow-plowing my way to a halt, I fell knee-first into the pavement and slid for 10 feet, my shin skidding across the concrete.

The resulting road rash ran from my knee to my ankle.

June started to cry.

I pulled off my skates. Pulled off my socks. As June tiptoed to my side, bawling over my fall, I asked her to give me her socks.

“Wh-wh-why do you need my s-s-s-socks?” She whimpered. “You’re totally b-b-b-bleeding.”

“To stop the bleeding,” I replied.

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To my readers,

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Hello Lance lovers,

You lovable, quirky lot.

It needs to be said that I write 50 percent for me and 50 percent for you.

If it weren’t for you, I’d be a proper lady, a reserved lady. Actually, I’d be a Luddite, blissfully unaware of social media and the stronghold it has on everyone’s lives. I’d be a true technophobe, which means on top of being inept at operating my remote control, I’d also be inept at Facebook. But a blogger who rejects Facebook is like a sitcom actor who renounces television.

Facebook is how I’ve reached many of you.

Just when I think I should keep my stories to myself, one of you sends me a sweet note that says something like, “I love your blog. I enjoy your stories. Your writing makes me laugh.” Or, “I appreciate your heartfelt sentiments on the subject of cockroaches.” Or, “I once accidentally used my dad’s toothbrush too.” Or, “Where can I find the shoes you wore for your wedding?” Or, “I also love the smell of my dog’s paws.” Or, “I sent my friend a link to your exploding television post. Her husband recently installed a ginormous flat screen in their living room. She’s about ready to blow it up herself.”

Your feedback warms my heart.

Two readers on opposite sides of the globe once wrote me near-identical emails describing near-identical dreams they had about me. Both readers dreamt they had visited me in Florida and I forced them to sleep outside in a tent. Maybe it’s because I love tents. (Last year I posted a series of stories about camping across the country with the pug.) Or maybe it’s because I’m actually a miserable Broom-Hilda who gets off on torturing house guests.

I’m not, but man did I love these coincidentally perverse dreams.

If it weren’t for you, I’d write everything in my journal and lock it away from the rest of the world. I’d keep stories and inane observations to myself — or I’d just bore my husband with them.

A friend recently told me she seeks out Lance when she’s feeling sick or sad. She pulls up posts when she’s curled up in bed with her laptop and a runny nose. Lance is like her pint of Häagen-Dazs.

How flattering is that?

So thank you loyal readers. I savor your compliments (and even your insults).

I do not have a stat counter or any kind of fancy analytics device to track who you are, where you are or when you read. What matters to me is that the stories mean something to someone somewhere. The freedom to write for a nebulous audience invigorates me. Each time I write a post I feel like I’ve rolled up a message, stuffed it in a bottle and tossed it out to sea.

The message washes up much quicker this way. If I were really a Luddite, you’d have to wait years (and live by the ocean) to read something new.

The unbearable lightness of being (with Joe)

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I wrote this the day I returned from my honeymoon and never posted it. It’s for you romantics.

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It was important to Joe that we go on our honeymoon the day after our wedding. One momentous thing followed by another momentous thing. Wedding then honeymoon. No lag time between. He called it “getting shot out of a cannon.” There would be immense build up, followed by drunken well wishes and champagne toasts, culminating in a spark that when lit would launch us into the autumn horizon like a rocket, propelled by a combustible mixture of red wine and roses that no amount of romantic lollygagging through Upstate New York could or would encumber.

So here I am at 3 p.m. on September 25. Back in Florida. Back on my couch with the pug by my side and Joe asleep in the bedroom after insisting he cover most of the 23-hour drive from Buffalo to St. Petersburg himself.

We had built fires in the woods near Montréal, Québec, ferried our car from Plattsburgh, N.Y. to Burlington, V.T., purchased armfuls of produce on the side of the road and then washed it all down with champagne beside a waterfall. When Joe suggested we drive straight through the night, I didn’t protest. What was one more adventure in the month of September? We were in such a bliss bubble on our drive home that even a blown tire in West Virginia seemed cute. Well, to me anyway.

All the clichés about time and how fast it goes are true. I didn’t fully grasp that until now. Sometimes when you step outside of your body and take a second to swallow a moment, you can see the slow-motion passage of time. One fat molecule freeing itself from another fat molecule like liquid taffy. Gelatinous time.

About two months ago, Joe turned to me and asked, “You wont get depressed when the wedding’s over, right?”

“Depressed? No. I’m looking forward to getting my life back.”

I was up to my waist in wedding planning and work. Luggage-sized bags had formed under my eyes and inside these hollow caves I carried a never-ending to-do list of tasks.

“OK,” he said, smiling, knowing full well I was full of shit. “Just checking.”

Three months have passed since that conversation and now I’m doing laundry and unpacking suitcases, giggling to myself as I separate the various memories from the last three weeks into a cardboard box that I will save forever. Wistful already.

Despite getting only two hours of sleep last night, the bags under my eyes are gone and in their place is something new. I can’t really describe it because part of me thinks it’s purely psychological, although Joe, in his usual Joe-way, tried to describe it three nights ago in Cooperstown, N.Y.

“You look wife-like,” he said.

“Wife-like? Oh God. Really?”

“Why are you acting like it’s an insult?”

“I don’t know. Because wife-like sounds so matronly.”

“Well, if matronly is beautiful. You look matronly.”

I think it was then that I blushed, and when I blushed the space under my eyes filled with something warm and dewy. I noticed it this morning when I walked into the bathroom and saw that he had unpacked all the hotel toiletries we collected on our honeymoon and arranged them on the vanity as if we were still on vacation.

The tent diaries 5

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Just before I left Florida, my friend Ricci gave me a dragonfly, with this message written on the wings:

“All that glitters is not gold. All who wander are not lost.”

I’m sleepy now as I write this. Uninspired for the most part, sneezing in an auto repair shop, where I’m getting the oil changed in Joe’s car. It’s 9 a.m. on a Wednesday and I’m drinking Timmy Ho’s out of a plastic travel mug. Mechanic’s coffee is always too black and too dank for my taste buds, so I usually bring my own.

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The tent diaries 4

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Look at the pug’s face! Just look at how awe-struck he is standing at the summit of Pikes Peak in Colorado Springs in mid-June, his paws sinking into snow for the first time in his pug life.

After spending two weeks in the Midwest lavishing in the company of friends, good food and pillow-top mattresses, the pug and I started craving solitude again. Part four of this cross-country gallivant marked our return to brazen adventurousness.

Granted, I did stay with my cousin Erik and his wife Rebecca in Littleton, Colo. long enough to develop their cinnamon toast habit and to take a trip to Fairplay, a tiny town in a central Colorado founded during the Colorado Gold Rush and the setting for Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s scrappy/brilliant Comedy Central cartoon, South Park.
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The tent diaries 3

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Now onto part three of this adventure, in which Missouri and Kansas treat me well.

I regret not writing about Hannibal, Missouri, Mark Twain’s boyhood town. Folks in Hannibal say the town is the setting for Twain’s most famous stories. Tom Sawyer. Huck Finn.  Becky Thatcher. The whole wonderful lot sitting by the Mississippi riverbank in Hannibal.
Did you know the Unsinkable Molly Brown was headed to Hannibal when she boarded the Titanic 97 years ago on my birthday

Speaking of famous Missourians. I camped in Brad Pitt’s hometown of Springfield for three nights. It was one of my favorite (and largest) campsites, in a hayfield managed by KOA proprietors Scott and Diane King, off a stretch of rural highway, along the hot and dusty outskirts of town.

In Springfield, I met up with a friend of a friend for drinks at a Mexican restaurant. She loaned me a book about Albert Einstein and burned me two folks CDs that carried me through to Idaho. It was the first time we’d ever met, and we got along so awesomely I was sad to move on. Every time I opened the Einstein book I thought of how happy I was in Springfield, Missouri, drinking beer with a good conversationalist, talking about books, music and Mexican food.
Come to think of it, I did write about Hannibal but the story only ran in the newspaper.
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