• 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

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…]

Pregnancy Confession No. 4

March 5, 2011 by heidi 10 Comments

[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.

[Read more…]

The tent diaries 6

June 12, 2009 by heidi 5 Comments

“On such a trip as mine, so much there is to see and to think about that event and thought set down as they occurred would roil and stir like a slow-cooking minestrone.” – John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley

I was wrong about Wednesday’s post being my final tent diaries entry. I remember I wrote this kind of sloppy epilogue after I returned to Sarasota.

People who had followed my journey in the newspaper said I ended things so abruptly with no tidy conclusion or rewarding epiphany. Of course by then it was too late. I had hogged full-page spreads in the newspaper for six weeks. So for myself and my friends I wrote this, a little thank you note.

I was feeling pretty sappy and as usual, verbose.
—
[Read more…]

The tent diaries 5

June 10, 2009 by heidi 8 Comments

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.

[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

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 © 2021 · Magazine Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in