My father recently started riding a motorized bicycle to work.

I’m pretty sure he’s the only fella in town with one of these things, so if you live in North Collins, N.Y. and a man buzzes past you at 20 mph with a lunchbox strapped to the back of his seat, it’s my dad.

He bought the bike last fall while visiting me in Florida. He got it second hand for $150. It originally cost $800, or so he says.

It took him five hours to properly disassemble it so it could be bubble wrapped, packaged and shipped via FedEx to New York.

It arrived broken.

My father, crestfallen, immediately began searching for replacement parts. Because he’s a veteran at fixing broken shit, he had his bike up and running within a few days. The only problem was it was winter and there was snow on the ground.

“I’ll just have to wait until spring,” he chirped enthusiastically.

Well guess what folks? Spring is here and my tool-and-die-maker father has been leaving his house at 5 a.m. and pedaling motoring through rural back roads like a blue collar Pee-wee Herman in steel-toed work boots and a reflective vest.

He says the bicycle has completely changed the way he views his eight-mile commute, which for the record, he’s made for 30 years.

Over the phone a few weeks ago, he shared with me this story:

“Been pedalin my bike to work.”

“Yeah I know. Mom told me.”

“Been seein things I never saw before on Larkin Road.”

“The view from a bike is always better than from a car.”

“I see things I can’t even see from my motorcycle.”

“Because you’re moving slower…”

“I can’t just cruise on that thing ya know. I gotta pedal up those hills. The electric motor isn’t so powerful outside of Florida. Hey, did your mother tell you what I saw on my way to work the other day?”

“No.”

“I was coming down the hill on Larkin. You know … in the valley before the bend … and I hear this splashin from the pond and I think it’s a duck, so I roll up on my bicycle to get a better look and I see these two turtles splashing and rolling around.”

“Playing?”

“Hell no! They were making love.”

“Dad. Turtles don’t make love. They mate.”

“Well these turtles were making love. I never seen anything like it. Their shells were locked and they were splashing and frolicking … I couldn’t look away. I just stood there on my bike for 10 minutes watchin ‘em.”

[I can hear my mother cackling in the background.]

“Your mother thinks I’m into turtle porn.”

“It kind of sounds like you are.”

“I’m not kidding around here. It was something to behold.”

“Yeah … locking shells.”

“Think about it. I bet less than one percent of the population has ever seen such a sight.”

“You’re probably right.”

“I never would have seen that from my truck.”

–

]]> http://www.whilemyboyfriendwassleeping.com/2012/05/06/the-electric-bicycle-diaries-turtle-porn/feed/ 2 http://www.whilemyboyfriendwassleeping.com/2012/04/22/encounters-of-the-turd-kind/ http://www.whilemyboyfriendwassleeping.com/2012/04/22/encounters-of-the-turd-kind/#comments Sun, 22 Apr 2012 14:04:16 +0000 heidi http://www.whilemyboyfriendwassleeping.com/?p=5463

The night before I had Henry, we hit up a nice seafood restaurant with my family. (Screw eggplant. Apparently salmon induces labor.)

My sister, PK, had to use the restroom, so she asked the waiter where it was located and he motioned toward the back of the restaurant.

When she arrived at the women’s room, the door was closed and locked. Apparently there was only one stall.

PK waited. And waited. And waited.

After five minutes, she softly knocked twice to indicate she meant business.

A woman answered in an angry bellow.

“There’s a bathroom on the first floor,” she snarled.

PK was stunned. The wildebeest behind the door was clearly annoyed. Had she done something wrong? Wasn’t knocking common etiquette among people waiting to use the john? She hadn’t banged on the door. Oddly, she felt like she should apologize. But for what?

The woman bellowed again.

“I’d use the bathroom on the first floor if I were you,” she grunted. “I’m gonna be here a while.”

I wanted to write something relevant about turning 30, but I kept coming up short

So I turned to Facebook instead. (Oh c’mon. Mark Twain would have done the same thing.)

I spent the day before my birthday feeling old and sullen, so I asked my typically responsive FB friends what words came to mind when they thought of turning 30.

I was so pleased with what I got I decided to create a video using their words and my photography.

I learned two things while making this project:

1. Age is a state of mind. (Duh.)

2. I’ve got way too many photos of amazing people clogging up my computer. Most of these pics were taken for the newspaper over the course of the last three years. The shelf life of a newspaper photo is short. Unless a story is about you, and thus you’ve stuck it to your fridge (or your ex-wife has pinned it to her dart board) it usually gets lost in the ether of JPEG files on some photographer’s hard drive.

I was happy to give these photos some love before they get deleted or forgotten about.

Regarding getting older — it’s a fact of life. You can either meet it with lightness and a positive attitude, or get tangled up in negativity. Lately, I’ve been falling into the second category for reasons I’m sure I’ll write about some day.

Having said that, I’m not a fan of internalizing shit. When something sucks, I admit it. On a whole, however, I strive to spend my 30s as I spent my 20s: upbeat, inspired and looking  for the next adventure.

Wish me luck. I know it’s not going to be a picnic. (Or maybe it will be. See. I’m actually a cynic.)

Oh, and in four days I’ll have written this blog for four years. I never thought I’d stick it out. Maybe it’s my cynicism that drives me. Now that’s a positive attitude.

Henry turned 10 months old yesterday.

HOW DID THAT HAPPEN SO FAST?

We shot these pics in downtown St. Pete after bopping around the Farmer’s Market. I harbor unfair disdain for iPhones, except when it comes to photography. Them gizmos take nice pictures.

We’re standing in the kitchen, heating up leftovers. I make a plate of steamed veggies, then hand Joe a plate of cold pasta.

Me: “Stick this in the microwave for 30 seconds.”

[Joe abides. Timer beeps. He pulls out plate.]

Me: “Is it hot enough?”

Joe: “I don’t know. Come here and tell me.”

Me: “You just tell me.”

Joe: “I’m not touching your food.”

Me: “What? Why? I don’t give a shit.”

Joe: “Because it’s wrong. And gross.”

Me: “But we’re married. What’s mine is yours.”

Joe: “Not in this case.”

Me: “I’m sure most people would agree with me.”

Joe: “I think you’re wrong. I think most people would say marriage does not mean you’re granted permission to touch your spouse’s food.”

Me: “What if your spouse grants you permission?”

In case you’ve wondered why your comments suddenly have to be approved before they show up on The Lance, here’s why: idiotic spam comments now flood my inbox and it’s way worse than ever before. Have other WordPress bloggers noticed this?

I decided to share my favorite one with you, because on top of making no sense (typical of spam), it’s friggen hilarious. I think “Britany Mclauren” deserves a guest column, don’t you?

A new comment on the post “On waiting and wish sticks” is waiting for your approval
http://www.whilemyboyfriendwassleeping.com/2011/06/01/on-waiting-and-wish-sticks/

Author : Britany Mclauren

Comment: Besides Halloween night accessories, it is rarely a good thing when you have lions in your home. Yet many people don’t understand such a true problem these scary crawlies are really. A lot of them, for example the brownish recluse, one such search engine spider in location, will surely have fatal consequences.The issues spiders and other pests are usually a problem throughout the slide a few months happens because this is when the climate along with temperatures varies as the weather conditions calme. This makes just about all pesky insects restless, plus more planning to walk, such as roaming straight into locations like attics, publication shelving, cabinets, cabinets, storage sheds, and garages. They are especially fond of darker places. Almost all lions carry venom, that is utilized in order to relax his or her feed.

–

PS. Lion illustration by the talented Kevin Waldron.

I’ve never been a big fan of fate.

It’s a lazy ideology and an easy way to make sense of the fortunes and misfortunes that steer the course of our lives.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m a wistful dreamer with an overactive imagination; raised without a religion, save for the convictions I borrowed from a dog-eared copy of “The Little Prince.”

I’m not saying fate doesn’t exist. I’m just saying I’m better equipped at tempting it than I am at waiting for it to happen, because often it’s the choices we make (or don’t make) that decide our destiny.

I found proof of this a couple months ago buried under a stack of clothes in my bedroom closet.

A love letter in a Rubbermaid tote.

I came across it the way we often come across faded notes and old photographs: by accident, by chance, by fate or whatever you’d like to call it.

I was looking for a magazine, specifically, the premiere issue of Jane magazine, a publication dating back to 1997 –– a year that, if I were of the baby boomer generation, would be my 1969.

Bill Clinton was still in office, still denying his relations with That Woman. I was still traipsing around in black combat boots, still listening to cassette tapes, still thinking coffee tasted like motor oil and that 30 was old.

In the process of unearthing the magazine; I found a love letter dating back to 2004 –– the year I left my home in Western New York with its one traffic light, cow patch roads and tractor pulls.

Oddly, it was a letter I had written to the high school sweetheart I thought I couldn’t breathe without.

It was tossed among the dusty crap we shove into shoe boxes, the flicker of old flames and past friendships we record in battered journals, the vestiges of youth we keep for no reason other than to stumble upon it years later by accident, by chance, by fate, or whatever you’d like to call it.

The letter was in an envelope; stamped and addressed to a person with whom I spent most of my youth.

As verification that it had traveled from Florida to New York, it had been inked by the US Postal Service. Funny that it was in my possession and not his.

Shortly after breaking up, I pulled it from a box of his belongings. I wanted it for my own sad stash of nostalgia.

I opened the letter. Inside was a sappy overpriced card with a watercolor illustration on the front.

In it, I begged him to move with me to Florida. At the time, he was undecided and frustrated with my dogged pursuit of a job outside of Buffalo. He wasn’t ready to leave our friends and family.

A cautious homebody, he was a computer nerd with an unhealthy addiction to Pizza Hut and video games. All he knew of Florida was what he saw in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and even the game’s computerized hookers couldn’t convince him to relocate.

In fact, he was so unsure of the move, he wouldn’t accompany me on the flight to Tampa. He said he needed time to sort things out in his head.

So instead I flew with my mother, crying the whole way, watching my seven-year relationship hang like a dark, low-lying cloud outside my airplane window.

I had gotten a job at a newspaper in Sarasota. Although I told him I was moving whether he followed me or not, I was petrified to leave him. Petrified to leave behind everything that was comfortable and familiar in my world. Petrified of failing. Petrified of what I already knew: that we had grown apart.

Underneath the sentimental mush, I was pleading with him to change, in denial that somewhere between the ages of 15 and 22, it was me, not him, who had changed.

I found the card in a gift shop at the Buffalo Airport. I cried at the register.

To make circumstances more pathetic, my beloved cocker spaniel, Hershey, had died the day before. He was 12 and unbeknownst to my family, he was loaded with cancer. The timing of this dog’s death was abominable.

So there I sat, in a window seat, crying and scribbling in a card, a locket fastened around my neck, inside of which I had stuffed a tuft of Hershey’s fur.

It was a weird scene, but not nearly as weird as the one that went down next when I spotted, of all people in the universe, Sinbad, sitting in first class.

Yes, “A Different World,” “Jingle All The Way” Sinbad.

Even at my lowest, most pitiful state I was certain it was him. I’m an expert at recognizing anyone, especially celebrities, so I elbowed my mother and whispered between snot-sucking sobs, “I think that’s Sinbad sitting in first class.”

“Sinbad?” She asked. “Who the hell is Sinbad?”

“You know,” I said. “The comedian.”

“Black guy?” She asked.

“Yeah, Sinbad.”

Suddenly, I was laughing at the absurdity of the moment. Suddenly I wanted Sinbad’s autograph. I wanted it on the card I had written to my boyfriend. I guess I thought it would lighten the mood.

“You don’t even know if that’s him,” my mother muttered.

I knew it was him. I signaled for a flight attendant.

“Hey, that guy up in first class. That’s Sinbad, right?” I asked.

She was hesitant to answer. I was a wreck; mascara running down my cheeks, tissues piled on my tray table.

“Oh, I know it’s him,” I continued.  “Can you just ask him to sign this for me?”

I handed her the card and my pen. She turned it over, opened it, closed it and narrowed her eyes. She was not amused.

“I’m not supposed to do this,” she said under her breath, walking away with the card.

Twenty minutes later, she returned, sliding it over to my mother like she was handing off contraband.

Still not amused, she said nothing.

I opened it. At the bottom beside where I’d written, “I love you. Love, Heidi,” Sinbad had written, “I love you too man. Sinbad.”

For a moment I was giddy. Things were beginning to turn around. By the time we reached our layover in Detroit, my weeping had subsided into a quiet whimper.

As I got off the plane, I spotted Sinbad walking with his female companion. I couldn’t resist. I approached him with bleary eyes and a sniffling nose.

“Excuse me, Sinbad?” I blubbered. “Thank … you … for signing my card.”

He turned around, surveyed my dopey, tear-streaked face and smiled. It was obvious he had read it. All of it. My lovesick ramblings. My pleading. The P.S. about my dead dog. I can’t imagine what I looked like to him standing there in that moment.

Scared shitless comes to mind.

“Cheer up, sweetheart,” he said. “Things will get better.”

Then he locked hands with his girl and walked away.

My mother was hanging back in the distance looking mildly horrified by her brazen and bizarre daughter.

“Soooo,” she groaned. “What’d he say?”

“He told me to cheer up and that things would get better.”

She rolled her eyes. She’d been telling me the same thing for hours.

“Can we go find our gate now?” She asked.

“Sure,” I said, tucking the card into my purse.

A few days later, after I had dropped the letter in the mail and clocked my first 30 hours at the paper, I hit up a video store in Sarasota.

They were selling VHS tapes in a bin for 25 cents.

Just as I had refused to retire my cassette collection, I was still, in 2004, watching movies on VHS.

I sorted through the bin, found a few gems from the mid-90s and as fate, or chance, or whatever you like to call it, would have it; I came across a copy of “First Kid,” starring Sinbad.

I added it to my stack and headed to the checkout counter.

The surly clerk made a face when he rang it up like I had just purchased rotten fruit, like he wasn’t sure if “First Kid” had gotten mixed up in the pile.

Without an ounce of irony, I assured him I was purchasing it on purpose. Then I went next door to Hungry Howies and ordered pizza.

I was spending the night in.

Although he had yet to physically move, my boyfriend had finally decided to join me in Florida. We had made plans to drive down together the following month.

I still needed my car and my stuff.

Ten months later, we would break up. He would return to Buffalo and I would stay in Sarasota. A pug puppy would fill the void my cocker spaniel had left and Sinbad would find himself at No. 78 on “Comedy Central Presents: 100 Greatest Stand-Ups of All Time.”

None of these things would alter your world. Well, except for the world of one guy we know.

Oh, I’d never watch “First Kid” again.

And in all honesty, I can’t tell you I gleaned anything from the movie. I’m not even sure I remember it. I do remember Hungry Howie’s pizza never tasted so good and being away from home never felt so liberating.

I can tell you I remember thinking if Sinbad can get on Comedy Central’s list of 100 Greatest Comics, I can hack it as a writer in Florida.

And if not, I was leaving it up to fate, or chance or whatever you’d like to call it.

—

PS. The photo is of the only love letter that counts: my wedding vows to Joe.

Now’s your chance to see Lance live.

For those of you in St. Pete/Tampa/Sarasota, I’ll be stepping out from behind the comforts of bloggyland to spin one of my yarns into a microphone (gulp), in front of a crowd (gulp) Friday night at Creative Loafing’s Story Time, Volume 2: Fate and Fortune at the CL Space in Ybor City.

I’ll be telling a new story about an old flame. And no, it doesn’t involve guardian bum angels. It does, however, involve Sinbad.

Yes, the comedian.

ST. PETERSBURG – Cubbie’s hairy black balls died Wednesday following a standard neutering procedure at a Florida veterinary clinic. They were seven years old.

Unusually large for pug testicles, they saw very little action during their brief but well documented time on earth.

Though they rarely did a productive thing and were loath to get off the couch, they were a frequent topic of conversation. Those that knew Cubbie’s balls say they were the kind of nuts that lit up a room.

“They never got testy,” remarked Squirrel Baby, the balls’ on-again-off-again lover. “Even at their lowest and darkest, they could still roll with it.”

Though Cubbie’s balls never served active duty, they enlisted the day they left the litter and routinely descended on friend or foe whenever the moment was ripe.

“I could tell they really wanted to go out and test their might,” said Squirrel Baby. “But they just couldn’t sack up, ya know?”

Instead Cubbie’s balls lived a leisurely life, spent hanging out and tea bagging humans.

Despite their impressive size, they were a modest set of balls. When one overpriced veterinarian suggested replacing their likeness with prosthetic dog nuts called Neuticles, Cubbie’s balls refused the offer.

“We’ve lived a nice well-rounded life,” the pair said. “Save your imposter nuts for cockier dogs. We’re ready to bounce.”

Cubbie’s balls were survived by Cubbie’s father’s balls.