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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Good grief Heidi. Christmas time is here!

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I’ll be honest, Christmas stresses me out. Consequently, I end up blogging less around this time because my head is crowded with the things that distract from the true meaning of the holidays. You all know what these things are so I’ll refrain from ranting. (OK, one rant: The cavemen from Duck Dynasty just released a Christmas album – Duck the Halls. You can purchase it for $11.88 at Walmart, where the Duck Dynasty reigns supreme over every department in the store thanks to a MAJOR licensing agreement with America’s favorite bearded buffoons. I can only imagine what the workers in Chinese labor camps must think of us as they pump out Duck apparel, home goods, antibacterial band-aids and now a Christmas album. Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-lame. Rant over.)

As a child I loved Christmas. (Duh, right?) I was neither spoiled nor religious, which meant at Christmas time I fell somewhere between the girl in a department store dress who went skiing and got the Barbie Power Wheels Jeep and the girl in a homemade jumper who read about Jesus and served soup to homeless people. I loved Christmas for all the twinkly reasons that many of you love Christmas.

I loved decorating my bedroom with strings of white lights. I loved curling up with my dog under the Christmas tree. I loved how the house looked from under the glittering pine branches, all speckled with ruby lights and homemade Christmas ornaments; my family coming and going in sweaters and scarves.

I loved watching the snow fill our yard. I loved being the first one to walk in it. I loved stomping a path to the grape fields. Always an alpha female, I loved knowing my sisters would have to (literally) follow in my footsteps. I loved listening to Christmas music. In the days before CDs, I’d record tunes right off the radio. Each Christmas I’d create a mixed tape of holiday songs, many of which were half-songs since I was repeatedly late to pressing the record button on my purple radio. I loved helping my mother address Christmas cards. I loved baking cookies. I loved advent calendars, mostly because behind each window was a piece of chocolate. (Who wouldn’t love that?)

I loved watching Charlie Brown make a statement with a sad, droopy tree.

I loved that my aunts, uncles and cousins would gather every Christmas Eve at my Nana and Papa’s house. I loved that even though we didn’t see each other all the time, we were guaranteed to see each other at Christmas time. I loved seeing us all shuffle around in big socks, my aunts huddled over serving trays, my cousins telling crude jokes, my uncles wondering how anyone will get home in the snow.

I loved Christmas because it stirred up a dreamy kind of feeling. Not because I knew I’d be showered with gifts or visited by Santa – though I’m sure these trappings played a small role in my excitement – but because everything seemed a little less ordinary in December.

As an adult this wonder starts to wane. Why? Because Christmas is a lot of work for adults. There’s the cooking, the baking, the shopping, the Christmas card distributing, the house decorating, the house cleaning, the present wrapping and a steady stream of exhausting social obligations. Traffic gets ugly. People get irritable. Money disappears quickly. Kids get greedy. Retailers trick you into thinking you need to buy reindeer antlers for your car and the next thing you know the inflatable snowman in your neighbor’s front yard is flipping you the middle finger.

Unless you’re Charlie Brown this stuff doesn’t bother you until you get old and crusty, but if you’re anything like me, you’re probably thinking I’m too young to be old and crusty! If during the other 11 months of the year I can be merry and bright, why then can’t I be merry and bright during the merriest and brightest time of year?

This is where the Lance comes into play. In an effort to NOT BE A GRINCH, I plan to count down to December 25 with posts, contests and a few unusual giveaways that evoke the warm and fuzzies, starting with a Q&A tomorrow with children’s singer/songwriter Mifflin Lowe, whose new album Wilton Wilberry and the Magical Christmas Wishing Well is so much more worthy of your attention than Duck the Halls.

Friday in 15 pictures

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We dressed in warm clothes. We went on a picnic. We picked up our Hot Mama’s of St. Pete Co-op basket. We played kickball. We made a sweet organic salad using fixin’s from our basket. We tried to set up a trampoline, but ended up bouncing around the yard instead. We got excited when Joe came home. We played with a strange, creepy baby doll from the 1960s. We fell asleep happy.

Western NY must sip: Winery of Ellicottville

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Over the summer, one of my nearest and dearest childhood friends opened a winery in Ellicottville, N.Y.

Psssst … Joe and I got married in Ellicottville in September 2009. Sam Sheehy and his father-in-law, Dominic Spicola, opened the Winery of Ellicottville on Monroe Street in the village just one year later.

Had it been open for our wedding, you can bet our bridesmaids and groomsmen would have enjoyed wetting their whistles here.

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Peace. Love. And cold.

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I’m cool with the cold.

It can stay for a bit longer.

I know I moved to Florida for a break in the gray. For warmth. For sun. For sundresses. Flip flops. Enormous sunglasses.

But I miss the cold. I miss bundling. I miss warming my face over a hot cup of soup. I miss the crunch of snow. Skiing. Snowmobiling. The utilitarian function of long baths. How when you step outside on a bright white day, the air doesn’t move. Even your breathing is silent, as if your lungs are also wearing a sweater.

I realize how much I miss the cold when the square-jawed weathermen in Florida start shaking in their Izod shirts and advising people to cover their plants and dress their children in snowsuits every time the temperature drops below 50.

The cold is such a novelty in Florida, like juggling monkeys or monogrammed pillows.

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Seeing my breath makes me feel alive.

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It’s 35 degrees out and eerily beautiful in St. Petersburg, Fla. I walked the pug twice today, exhaling hot breaths slowly and deliberately, staring at the way it hung in front of my nose and floated away. A ghostly cloud of carbon dioxide. It was as if I’d never seen my breath before.

I wore long johns today under a pair of running shorts. I wore a scarf all day inside the house and an Oliver Twist hat to the grocery store. Joe’s cheeks were rosy after our afternoon bike ride and my morning coffee burned going down like whiskey or an iodine injection before a CAT scan.

The bay was calm, flat and gray and people buried themselves under layers of sweatshirts and scarves, tossing tennis balls to their dogs in the park, jogging in place to stay warm. My ears turned red and hard when we were pedaling, but when I tried to pull my hood up under my bike helmet, the helmet wouldn’t fit, so I pedaled through the prickliness.

It was gloriously cold out, but if you’d have met me when I was 20, I promise you I would have cursed the weather with a furious fist. Western New Yorkers may be a hardy bunch, but we’re nothing if not expertly dissatisfied with the weather 300 days of the year. The weather, among other things, is what makes us exotic. How creatures can live comfortably in sub-zero climates blows peoples’ minds. What kind of creatures would choose to live this way with such utopian options south of the Mason-Dixon Line?

Of course now I miss the tundra (in small doses anyway) and as I lie here in bed listening to a Florida news station blow a perfectly chilly 40-degree day out of proportion, I can’t help but summon my inner grizzly bear.

“Cover your plants, folks. Remember to bring your pets inside. Farmers are working overnight to save their crops from the cold. Don’t forget to turn the heat on in your car before your morning commute. Some bay area students will have to dress extra warm tomorrow. How one Largo middle school is coping without heat. Next: more tips on how to stay warm in an arctic freeze.”

One Tampa news station posted these actual tips: Wear multiple layers of loose-fitting, warm clothing. Do not use charcoal or other fuel-burning devices indoors, such as grills that produce carbon monoxide. Stay dry and in wind-protected areas.

PUT ON A PAIR OF FUZZY SOCKS AND GET OVER IT. For criminy’s sake, it was so insanely hot in October the only pumpkin I was ever proud of rotted two weeks before Halloween.

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PS. Dragon Mohawk hat by Bella Hats. Visit Bella’s Etsy shop. She’s a violinist from Grand Rapids, Mich. who homeschools her children and makes an adorable product.