While My Boyfriend Was Sleeping

What I write after Joe and Henry go to bed

LANCE CHAT :: Q&A with singer Mifflin Lowe

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**LOOK FOR A GIVEAWAY AT THE END OF THIS Q&A.

The back story: Mifflin Lowe, the singer/songwriter I blogged about here, just released a kid’s Christmas album – Wilton Wilberry and the Magical Christmas Wishing Well. This 15-track collection of original songs and narration tells the story of a greedy kid, Wilton Wilberry, who every Christmas feels snubbed in the gift department.

Fed up with being under-gifted, he runs away from home and stumbles upon a magical wishing well that’s home to a rock ‘n roll Santa who makes all his wildest wishes come true. Soon he’s showered with more toys and candy than an overindulged celebrity child, which naturally leaves him feeling lousy and selfish. With the help of a Christmas princess, gluttonous Wilton comes to terms with his “gimmes” and finally sees value in the most overlooked gift of all: the love of family and friends.

Inspired by the sounds of Elvis, Roy Orbison, The Beatles and early hip-hop, Wilton Wilberry is a modern-day Dickens tale with a rock ‘n roll twist.

Please note: I’d never promote something on the Lance that I didn’t think was awesome. I have a huge soft spot for artists, especially artists whose visions and sensibilities align with mine. If I’m going to push products in this space, they’re going to have to be clever, meaningful and inherently funny. Miff hits all three with Wilton and his two previous albums, The King Who Forgot His Underpants and Beasts By The Bunches.

I love listening to music with Henry. It’s the feel-good, no-fuss, old-fashioned alternative to watching television. One of my favorite material possessions is the radio in my kitchen. It was a Christmas gift from Joe. I listen to more music in the kitchen than anywhere else, including the car. The kitchen is where I spend most of my rare indoor time with Hank. We dance. We sing. Sometimes I even line his stuffed animals on the bench seat at the table so we have an “audience” to entertain. Sometimes in the middle of these dance-offs I wonder who’s really the kid in our house.

Speaking of big kids, here’s Miff … looking more serious than usual …

christmas backdrops photography uk

HK: What kind of kid is Wilton Wilberry?

ML: Wilton is the archetypal little brother who always feels slighted, neglected, picked on and not so much under-appreciated as utterly unnoticed. This simmering resentment is brought to a quick boil during the holidays when Wilton ABSOLUTELY KNOWS his brother and sister will get the all good stuff like video games, skateboards and electric guitars and he will get nothing but the crummy stuff like socks, undershirts and cuff links. Cufflinks? What kid wants cufflinks? It’s even worse than cologne! When Wilton discovers the magical wishing well and the Rock ‘n Roll Santa, he’s able to turn the tables and get everything he wants. Sometimes he goes to the wishing well with catalogs and wishes for every single thing on every single page – and gets it all. Eventually his gifts fill the house, the front lawn, the street and the whole neighborhood while no one else gets a thing.

HK: It sounds like you have Santa issues.

ML: I suppose Wilton springs from the fact that my sisters were the princesses in our family. They were driven to grade school even though it was only three blocks away, while I was forced to rake leaves, shovel the walk, and refinish furniture.

HK: Why the name Wilton Wilberry?

ML: It arises from its alliteration with wishing well. I’m a sucker for word play and a particular fan of alliteration. Plus I thought the name implied a certain weeny-ness, which is part and parcel of Wilton’s character.

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Party of four on a Friday night

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Today my kid turns one month old.

I still can’t wrap my brain around it.

We have a one-month old.

He easily weighs over 10 pounds, eats like a champ, rocks three-month-old onesies and as of yesterday, drinks from BOTTLES.

A ONE-MONTH OLD.

And guess what?

We’re still cheerful people, enjoying adequate amounts of sleep and comfortable periods of normalcy.

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“My hot dogs are thawing.”

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I’m on my return flight home, although technically I’m not on the flight. I’m sitting at gate A-11 at the Detroit Airport, waiting to board my delayed flight to Tampa.

Oh, airplanes. Nothing seems to fascinate and irritate people more. My Delta flight from Buffalo to Detroit took off 50 minutes later than its scheduled departure time, which means when we landed I had to haul ass across the airport to catch my connecting flight to Tampa.

When I reached gate A-11, I learned that my flight to Tampa was delayed an hour-and-a-half, giving me time to order a sammy from Quiznos and watch the Factory Girl DVD I purchased a couple days ago from a grocery store in Buffalo. (You know how I feel about Sienna Miller.)

Filled with a sort of detached glee, I picked up a family-sized bag of Reese’s Pieces. I figured if I wasn’t going to make it home for Dancing With the Stars, I might as well make it a Blockbuster night airport lounge-style.

The guy who sat across the aisle from me on the flight from Buffalo didn’t share in my amusement.

“Fuck,” he griped as he approached the Delta desk and learned of our delay. “You’ve got to be friggen kidding me.”

I knew he had a suitcase full of thawing Sahlen’s hotdogs – a typical take-home for many native Buffalonians. Hot dog-lovers claim Sahlen’s makes the best hot dog, but it’s all intestines to me.

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Happy birthday sister.

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To Holly (otherwise known as Heelya):

Today we are the same age, which used to annoy me when we were kids. I liked being older and Dad knew it, so he used to aggravate me by reminding me of this fact for two days. Two WHOLE torturous days.

“You know, you and Holly are both 10 now.”

“No we’re not.”

“Oh, yes you are.”

“No. I’m older.”

“Nope. Not today and not tomorrow. Today and tomorrow you are the same age.”

This would infuriate me.

When we got older people called us Irish twins, although we’re neither Irish nor twins. We’re just sisters born within 12 months of each other.

After Joe and I called you at midnight to perform our acoustic (and painfully soulful) happy birthday song, you (as usual) said some unintentionally hysterical things, so hysterical and characteristically unscripted I’m certain the details would amuse many Lance readers. However, when I asked you if I could write about them, you hesitated and replied, “Nah. You’ll embarrass me.” And I was cool with that.

But then you sent me a text message at 12:25 a.m. that read: “Ok, u can blog about me, but only if its a birthday blog and doesnt embarrass me too much.”

So I dug up this old photo of us dancing at our 1999 prom. You were a sophomore and I was a junior. I can’t remember what song we were waltzing to, but I do recall we owned the dance floor that night – even though the evening started off on a sour note.

When we arrived at the prom, a female classmate snarled behind my back that I looked like a fat pig in my dress. You don’t even know it, but you saved my life that night. When I think back on my junior prom, I remember crying for 10 minutes in the bathroom and then spending the rest of the night dancing blissfully with you.

Heelya, I’m so proud of you. You bought your first house this week! Anyone who has ever hunted for and purchased a piece of real estate, shares in your joy and frustration. It’ll all be worth it this summer when you’re sitting on your porch, sipping iced tea and reading smutty magazines. Believe me.

You’re an excellent teacher; the best teacher I never had. I get misty-eyed when I read the letters your students write me. Sure, I’m proud of the kids, whom I know are learning disabled and struggle through every word. But I’m also proud of you.

Growing up we were inseparable and now we live too far apart, but I’m not one for drama, so I’ll just leave it at this:

You’re a good sister. I’m lucky to have you. You’re playful and thoughtful. You’re a good cook and an even better grocery shopper. No other Myrtle Beach resident can pull off a pair of fuzzy winter boots like you can. You have good taste in boys. (Ahem, Brian.) You make me laugh every time we talk and I miss you terribly.  I couldn’t possibly embarrass you on your birthday. That’s what the other 364 days of the year are for.

I love you and I’ll see you in two weeks.

Love,

Heidi

—

PS. Question for Mothership: did you stick baby’s breath in our hair for every prom?

Haute coiffure

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To the left you will see two pictures – one taken three months ago after receiving a $50 haircut at a swank salon in St. Pete, the other taken last week after receiving a $5 haircut at a beauty school in the ghetto.

Can you tell which is which?
I’m posting these pictures for two reasons:
1. I’m no princess about my hair, but I’m very particular about its shortness. The second it grows out, I run to chop it off. Because of this urge I’ve had the same hairstyle for 10 years. 
2. I got an e-mail recently from one of my editors asking where I get my hair cut. I responded with, “funny you should ask …” followed by a brief explanation of how a girl goes from cutting her own hair with the kitchen scissors to forking over $50 for a more professional job. 
From that e-mail:
When Joe and I first met I was cutting my hair with the kitchen scissors. On especially indulgent days, I’d fork over $12 at Super Cuts and call it a day. I remember he URGED me to make an appointment with J.Con (a fancy St. Pete hair salon.) I remember he told me it would, “change my life.” It was as if I had been cutting my hair with a Flowbee. Eventually he bought me a gift certificate for Christmas, and for a year two years thereafter I only got my hair cut at J.Con – and I only made appointments with Cara, the chick who cuts his hair.
 
J.Con is hip, modern and smells like Aveda hair products, which is what I imagine Jennifer Aniston smells like on windy days.
J.Con stylists are hot. Seriously, seriously hot. They dress in only black and white and at first glance resemble Victoria’s Secret model Ana Beatriz Barros. Cara, my old stylist, is no exception. She looks like a brunette Julianne Hough from Dancing with the Stars. 
Usually I bring in a picture of Sienna Miller. Something like this.
And Cara, who by now doesn’t need to see my grubby magazine tear-out, chops at my hair like Edward Scissorhands and I usually walk away feeling like Sienna’s less attractive younger sister, which is great. 
Now, before you get the wrong idea, it should be said that Cara gives absolutely fantastic haircuts. I recommended her to my editor, as well as other J. Con stylists, because frankly they are all stellar.
Problem is: us girls with seemingly short low-maintenance hair need to get it cut every five to six weeks, which wasn’t a big deal until I moved to Florida.
Back home my mom would just cut it, or my sister’s friend Laurie, who on one occasion buzzed my mop off with an electric razor. 
It’s hard enough to make friends in a new state, let alone friends who are willing to cut an asymmetrical bob. The J.Con haircuts were making my Liz Claiborne wallet whimper. The more I thought about dropping fifty bucks on my hair, the more I thought about how else I could spend the money, which was when I discovered J.Con’s massage therapist, Stephanie, who unbeknownst to Cara was the real reason I reallocated my hair fund. 
To cushion the blow, I began dragging out my cuts, making appointments with cheaper J.Con stylists and cutting it myself whenever it grew too shaggy.  Joe even trimmed it once after I ran around the house ranting about how I looked like Joe Dirt. 
And then there was last week’s adventures in low-brow primping after I received a card in the mail advertising for $5 haircuts at Loraines Academy, a beauty school off 9th Avenue in St. Pete.
“Frig these $50 haircuts,” I told Joe one evening, brandishing Loraine’s postcard. “I’m gonna see what five dollars buys me.”
When I called the number on the card, a woman with a smoker’s voice told me it wasn’t necessary to make an appointment, instead she suggested I swing by the salon between 5 and 8 – when the students were “in class.”
“Perfect!” I said, hanging up the phone. “I’ll cook dinner when I get back.” 
Loraines was 20 minutes away, or so it seemed as I drove a dark, seedy stretch of 9th Avenue, past vacant Rent-A-Centers, mobile home parks and dimly-lit convenient stores. When I finally found the salon, in a Big Lots plaza next door to a Chuck E. Cheese, I had to circle the parking lot three times before I found a space. Chuck E. Cheese was oozing with children and as a result, the entire plaza was a zoo.
After 15 minutes of space-stalking, I walked into Loraines, where a man with yellow shellacked hair took my five-dollar bill and scribbled my name on a sheet of paper. 
The salon smelled like 99-cent strawberry shampoo. The waiting room chairs were upholstered in vinyl and felt clammy under the jet stream of A/C blowing down from the ceiling. As I sat and waited for my name to be called, I flipped through the pages of a Redbook magazine and nodded my head to the rap radio station that was drowning out the sound of blow dryers and gossip.
In one corner of Loraines, a guy about 45-ish stood at a station perming the hair on a plastic mannequin head, wrapping fake blond strands around curlers, chatting with the girl next to him, who was also perming mannequin hair. 
“Neidi!” I heard a woman call. “Neidi you’re up.”
Neidi, if you haven’t guessed it, was me. Heidi. The man who took my name at the front desk, wrote it like Neidi, which was how the stylist pronounced it when it was time for my cut. Since I was the only customer in the waiting room, I perked up and said, “that’s me.”
Without exchanging pleasantries, Daymie (the Cuban stylist who knew very little English) sized up my head and asked in less than three words what it was I wanted. Rummaging through my purse for the grubby Sienna Miller tear-out I said, “I want this girl’s hair.”
She considered the picture for a moment, then said, “You have this already.”
“Yeah, I know. I’m just looking for a trim. I hate when my hair grows out into a mullet.”
“Mullet?” She asked.
“You know. Business in the front. Party in the back.”
She narrowed her eyes and shrugged. “Don’t know,” she said.
The guy perming the mannequin head poked up from his client to study my magazine tear-out. 
“Cute,” he said, turning back to his client. For a second it looked as if he was going to ask the mannequin if she too wanted a cut like Sienna’s.
After a quick dousing with strawberry shampoo, Daymie walked me back to her station and flagged a Loraine’s instructor. 
“Help,” she said, handing him the picture.
After a 5-minute lesson in layering, Daymie was given a comb and scissors and told to give it a whirl. Lucky for her, I’ve made a career out of butchering my hair, so I barely winced when she made the first cut with a terrified oh-shit look on her face. What was the worst she could do? Give me Rosie O’Donnell’s lop-sided tribute to Boy George? Bah. 
As she snipped slowly and painfully at each strand, I conversed with the teenage girl sitting next to me, who was getting her hair done for the prom, followed by a $6 Loraines pedicure. 
“Your hair looks cute,” she said. 
“Thanks. So does yours.”
“Thanks.”
“Where’s your prom?”
“Tradewinds Resort on St. Pete Beach.”
“Awesome. I took my fiancé there for his birthday.”
“Is it nice?”
“Really, really nice. I think it’s the perfect place for a prom.”
“Oh good. I was worried a little. This one is supposed to be real fancy. Like we were told to dress up super formal.”
“Are you not into that?” I asked.
“Well, not really,” she said. “The way I see it is, people already know what I look like. It’s like who’m I tryin to impress? I’m still gonna be me in heels and sparkles. What difference does it make if I dress up or dress down? I just wanna be comfortable.”
“Amen,” I said, pinching at a chunk of hair and instructing Daymie to lop it off. “I like it short in the back. No mullet.”
For a hair cut that was laughably close to what I already had, it took poor Daymie 45 minutes to do it. When she was through – after she had dropped her roller brush on my fingertips twice, blow dried the ends under like George Washington’s powdered wig, and squirted my head with a fine mist of Biolage hairspray – I went home to cook dinner for Joe.
“It looks great!” He said as I walked through the door. “It’s rounder or something.”
“She blow dried it under,” I said. 
“It’s not much different than what you had.”
“That’s what Daymie said.”
“It bounces though!”
“And smells like strawberries.”
—
PS. Last night I went out for drinks with my friend Loren, who writes this blog for the newspaper I write for. We got on the subject of hair. After I told her the details of my $5 cut, she blew me away with the details of her $180 haircut. I couldn’t resist the urge. I had to take a picture. Her hair looks amazing, but $180! That’s three massages!
 

Go dupe yourself.

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ABC, you’ve got to be kidding me.

I apologize if I’m late to the game here, but after watching The Insider tonight I learned that Steve-O, the jackass (at left) with a lobster clamped to his tongue, was hauled off Dancing With the Stars by an ambulance last week, after injuring his back rehearsing the tango.

Steve-O, the masochistic clown ABC lovingly refers to as “MTV’s Jackass prankster,” apparently pulled a muscle.

ABC, stop patronizing your viewers.

You expect people to believe that Steve-O, a man who stapled his nuts to his thighs, pierced his ass cheeks together, swallowed a worm through his nose, injected vodka (intravenously) though his legs and pole-vaulted through glass doors, ceiling fans, tables, and trees; Steve-O has a bad back.

ABC, have you no shame?

First you script Bachelor Jason Mesnick’s “change of heart,” then you stick his jilted cheerleader on (surprise, surprise) Dancing With the Stars, and now you’re telling us that Steve-O, a scrawny coke addict who once turned his tattooed body into a human dartboard, has suffered a pinched nerve?

What next? Steve-O signs on for four episodes of Grey’s Anatomy, wherein he undergoes back surgery and falls in love with a cancer-stricken Katherine Heigl?

In other news, it’s me and Joe’s two-year anniversary. I insisted he wear his Area 51 T shirt to celebrate the occasion.

Man, he looks adorable in it.