Author Archives: Heather

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About Heather

I adore my family, writing, books, cats, lazy mornings in bed, and chocolate. I'll never say no to breakfast for dinner, long talks with friends and lazy summer days at the pool with family. My life is often crazy, always awesome and one I'm so happy to be living! My side hustle is editing and proofing work. Find out more at https://heathercaryn.com/
Feb9

Great First Impressions

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So you know what’s fun? When you go to a job interview for a position that you’re very, very interested in and you talk at length at how much you love to write and how you wrote a professional blog for the Big Company and how you have your own personal blog as well.  And then the people interviewing you ask to see your blogs. So you say sure because, after all, both blogs are public and you haven’t written anything that you’re embarrassed about on either one. Except for that on your personal blog, the last entry is about how you saw a psychic and tried to communicate with your dead childhood friend. While you’re not really embarrassed about this, it’s still just a little odd to reveal that at your interview with the company you’re hoping to work for, no?

And that’s my life.

*Hoping to have 2 full-time job offers this week. Say a little prayer for me, will you?

Feb2

Paul: Part 2

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3 years ago today, I wrote about my friend Paul on his birthday.

Paul was a sweet kid I went to school with. He was short with dark hair and amazing eyes not unlike my Scorch. He was a wise-ass and a charmer and he always, always had a big grin for everyone. He was honestly one of the nicest people I ever have met.

Paul died the summer I turned 16.

The day is etched into my brain. I spent the afternoon driving around country hills with my boyfriend- with no particular destination in mind, we just enjoyed the day. When I got home my parents were literally standing in the window watching for me. Paul was in a car crash- he was driving on a windy road and crashed head on into a dump truck. He was killed instantly.

At almost-16, I had never lost anyone close to me before who wasn’t elderly. My friends and I had lived a charmed life up until that point. Paul’s death shook us to the core.  The days after his death are still so clear to me. The crying, the huddling together, the wake, the funeral, spending time at Paul’s mom’s house trying to prop each other up.

About 10 days after Paul died, I spent the evening with two friends. As it often did, our conversation turned to Paul and how we wished we knew that he was at peace.  On the walk back to my house, we sat down on the side of the road and asked Paul to give us a sign that he was OK.  We sat there in silence- waiting, watching for that sign. After a few minutes we realized how silly that was- because anything from the owl hooting to the car honking could have been a sign. So we got specific.  We told Paul if he was OK to please please cancel swim lessons the following day. The three of us taught swim lessons for 4 hours a day and wanted a break.

That next day while I was driving to swim lessons, I saw one of my friends and her mom driving away from the pool. When I got to the pool, the director was sitting outside. She told us that lessons were canceled that day- the pool pump broke in the middle of the night.

I still get chills when I think about that.

Happy birthday, Paul- I’m glad you’re OK.

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A few weeks ago, I had the chance to talk to a psychic. I realize there are a lot of fakes out there, but I also know that some people  have a talent that I’ll never understand.  It was towards the end of my 25 minute conversation with this woman and I wasn’t entirely convinced I was speaking to the real deal. She got some things completely right, but other things seemed to be entirely off base. She asked if I had a last question so I asked about Paul. Here is what I asked word for word: “When I was 16, I lost a friend of mine. We asked for a sign to see if he was OK and we got what we thought was one. Was it?”

There was a pause and the woman I was speaking to started to laugh:

Your sign had to do with water. And yes, don’t worry, your friend is wonderful!

Happy birthday, Paul- thanks for the confirmation!

Jan29

It’s Different the Second Time Around

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When we were younger, my sister and I used to complain/joke that my brother got treated differently than we did. He was the baby (almost 7 years younger then me and 5 years younger then my sister) and the only boy so sometimes the rules just didn’t seem to apply to him the same way they did to us girls. Whether that’s true or not, that’s how it felt and even though Red and I were too old to care that much, we still make sure to point out any injustices to my parents immediately.

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When the kids are in Pre-K through Kindergarten, they have a Leader Day each month.  And on their Leader Day, the kids are required to bring in a snack for the whole class. Snack is typically in the morning around 10ish and nothing- nothing- got me more fired up when Scorch was little than unhealthy snacks. Who in their right mind would send in Oreos to a classroom full of itty bitty kids to eat at 10 am?! Seriously- how hard is it to go out and get some fruit or muffins or crackers and cheese to at least give the impression that you are striving towards healthy food??

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I have a cold. The Bean has a cold.  We were both up for over an hour in the middle of the night as she tried to get back to sleep so we’re both exhausted right now. Between work, school, running errands and getting Scorch to lacrosse practice, we had all of 5 minutes to dart into the grocery store to pick out a snack for her Leader Day tomorrow.

Which is why my kid is bringing in Rice Krispie Treats for the class tomorrow.

Blame it on my cold. Blame it on the fact that the Bean is my 2nd kid and I’m tired. But just don’t interrupt me as I enjoy a pre-packaged sugar bomb that I’m blessing a class of 25 kids with tomorrow!

Jan26

I Shall Call Him Toothless

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After an agonizing 3 days, Scorch finally lost his top tooth. This sucker has been hanging on by a thread for days & was disgusting. Now he has a lisp and can’t eat an apple to save his life. It’s oddly adorable.

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And that, my friends, is the most exciting thing going on in our lives right now. And it’s wonderful.  After the craziness that was 2013, it’s so very nice to have nothing exciting happening. Life is just humming along. The kids got amazingly wonderful report cards on Friday, I’m juggling 4 part time jobs that I enjoy and the Hubs is keeping the streets safe.

I did have a job interview last week that went really well. It’s a challenging position for a national company doing something that I love. But it’s also an hour away. So I went into the interview enthusiastically and I spent an amazing 2.5 hours talking to like-minded people about a topic I feel passionately about- I couldn’t have asked for a better experience. And when all was said and done, I met with the HR rep I was working with and explained to him the flexible work arrangement I’d need in order to take the job, knowing full well that what I was asking for may cost me the job. And that was totally OK.

If this job had fallen in my lap right after I lost my old job, I would have taken it and been absolutely thrilled to have it regardless of the commute and the impact on my family’s life. Back in Sept / Oct, I was in such a panic about cutting my family’s income in half that I couldn’t see past the dollar signs.  Yet, here we are 3 months later and you know what? We’re fine. The corners we had to cut back in the fall were really, really painful then and, sometimes, they still are. But they are also part of life now. I’m cooking a lot more- sometimes that’s good and sometimes (like tonight) not so good. We play a lot of Uno (a lot of Uno) and watch movies on Netflix- going out now is a huge event that takes on an all new meaning. I work when I work and all my employers know that if I promise them a set number of hours or deliverables a week, they will get them but my hours may be a tad unorthodox as I now have the luxury to truly work around the kid’s schedules.

I’d love a full time job, but it’s amazingly liberating to know that I can wait until I find the right one.

Jan14

The Bean Life

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Oh this child. I was just going to wax poetically about how awesome she is. Funny and smart and scary quick. About how we can spend  hours playing Uno and laugh until we cry. About how you never, ever have any idea what she’s going to do next- like dress up like a super hero and stop in her travels to love up on the cat as we finally packed away Christmas 2013.

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But then she just fought me like a demon about going to bed (I’m so hungry. I’m thirty. Sit in my bedroom. You’re the Meanest Mom EVER). Life with the Bean is so many things, but it’s never boring.  She makes me stronger and better and quicker- more loving and enthusiastic and patient. And tired- so very tired. And I wouldn’t trade her for anything 99.9% of the time!

Jan10

Favorite Kids Books- January Edition

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We stumbled across some fun, fun kids books lately that I wanted to share before I forgot about them!

CrayonsThe Day the Crayons Quit: This book is a series of letters from all the crayons in Duncan’s box. All Duncan wants to do is color his picture, but his crayons want to lodge their complaints first. We had a blast with this book, giving all the crayons different voices and talking about why each crayon may feel a little slighted.  Loved it!

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The Day Mr. Tiger Goes Wild: An absolutely gorgeously illustrated book about breaking the rules and being true to yourself. The kids were mesmerized with the pictures and the story- I think we read it every night we had it from the library.

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How to Train Your Dragon:  Ever since we put the breaks on reading the Harry Potter series, I’ve struggled to find a series we could love as much. We got these books for Christmas and I wasn’t too enthusiastic about them as we had already seen (and liked) the movie by the same name. Seemed a little repetitive to read the book, but we gave it a shot- and haven’t put them down yet. While the character names are the same, the plot is very different from the movie. These books are hysterical and suspenseful and a little scary and written so well that I’m loving them just as much as Scorch is! Bean listens in, but I think she’s still a tad too young to really enjoy them but I’m so glad we gave this series a chance! Since Christmas we’ve blown through book 1 and are 3/4th of the way done with book 2!

Jan9

The Feral Cat & My Kid

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The kids had a “too cold for school” day on Tuesday. The sun was shining and the skies were a gorgeous blue, but it was 1 degree out and the windchill factor pushed us (like most of the country) way down into the freaking freeze part of the thermometer.  Regardless of the cold, we had to get out of the house in the worst way. Thankfully 95% of the families we hang out with are teachers, so we threw together an impromptu play date with some of our favorite friends in the world at the local high school gym. 8 kids, 7 adults, some wiffle balls, basketballs and games of tag = a fantastic way to work out the stir-crazies.

After playing we decided to go out to lunch with the whole crew. This is a *huge* treat- once I got laid off we simply don’t go out anymore. So we went to our local Friendly’s and put the 8 kids at one table and 7 adults at another and settled in for the ride. The kids were being fantastic, the adults were talking away and everyone was having a great time.

Until Scorch’s anxiety hit him out of no where.

I have no idea what happened, but suddenly I had one very distressed 7 year pacing behind my chair, telling me he didn’t feel good and could I please go in the hallway with him and do some breathing exercises? I was very proud of him for recognizing what was going on and using his coping techniques- so we immediately got up and did our breathing and butterfly pats until he felt settled enough to go back and sit down. I really didn’t get it (and I still don’t)- we were having a wonderful time with some of our best friends, people he feels safe with, and BOOM, anxiety rears it’s ugly head. We had to practice our breathing 3 different times during the meal but eventually Scorch shook it off and we had a great time.

It’s been months- heck, maybe even a year- since we’ve had to deal with an attack like that. And its reared its head a few more times since Tuesday. I’m chalking it up to the crazy past few weeks and our erratic schedule. Just as we were all looking forward to getting back in a routine, Mother Nature hit and we didn’t know if we were coming or going. Scorch is a kid who does best when he knows what’s going on and that just wasn’t possible this past week.  He’s handled all this extraordinarily well and even now his anxiety hasn’t been nearly as ramped up as it used to be- but still, it’s a reality check that just because it goes into hiding, it doesn’t mean that the anxiety has gone away completely.

The day after our lunch at Friendly’s, this article was published on CNN.com. It in, the author talks about her experience with crippling anxiety and likens the illness to a feral cat – saying “anxiety is a feral cat that springs from nowhere, sinks its claws into skin and hisses invective until nothing else exists.” I love this phrase so much because to me, as a Scorch’s mom, it helps me remember that this can’t be helped. I admit to getting inwardly annoyed with Scorch on Tuesday- I had to walk away from the luxury of my hot meal and my friends and his friends 4 times to help him breath. I didn’t share this with Scorch but inside I was was exasperated- why couldn’t he just relax and enjoy our special outing? Why here? Why now? Well, because the feral cat had struck again, of course.

Scorch does an amazing job of shaking that damn cat off, I just wish I didn’t have to hop on at all.

 

Jan7

Feeling Crabby

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Remember how in my last post I said how sad I was to send the kids back to school after such a great break? That was true…until they’ve had snow days 3 out of the past 4 school days. We’ve now officially tipped into the “too much of a good thing” territory and we all desperately need our routine back. When Scorch asked me what we were going to do tomorrow if there wasn’t any school due to the cold, I told him I was going to cry. And I was only partially joking.

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This morning when I was refusing to get out of my warm, comfy bed, Scorch did something he knows he’s not supposed to. He went on Google. *sigh*  Thankfully he was Googling hermit-crab related things and didn’t stumble across anything he shouldn’t have. But he did learn that 1) hermit crabs can fight and hurt each other and 2) they can live 5-15 years (are you kidding me?!).

Scorch is now the proud owner for 3 hermit crabs- Seamus, Davis & George- and he’s spent approximately 75% of the day today freaking out over his crabs fighting. Which they have never done.  The other 25% of the day has been spent trying to figure out how to make their home perfect so they’ll live 40 years- the longest length of time any hermit crab in captivity has lived. His spouse is going to *love* what he brings to a marriage should he succeed.

 

Jan1

Bring It On, 2014!

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New Years

This image was floating around on Facebook yesterday and I love it. I love thinking of the start of a new year as a blank slate and, most importantly, I love that *I* get to choose what I do with this blank slate.  That has never felt as true as it does for me right now. Professionally, I’m starting over. I’ve got my hands into so many projects and places that I’m excited about that I can’t wait to see where my career goes next. Instead of going in the direction the Big Company wants me to go, I can decide which path works for me. While that’s scary, it’s also liberating as hell!

Personally, we are rocking! We had a fantastic school break with the kids- I’m sad to send the little buggers back to school tomorrow. They are old enough now that they’re just plain fun- everything is exciting and their imaginations are boundless, which means they did a great job keeping themselves busy this break. I say this every year, but right now 7 and 5 are my favorite ages. The Hubs and I are in a good, good place. Losing my job forced us to have a lot of conversations about stuff we hadn’t addressed in a while- money, goals, timelines and hopes. We were floating through life and that was going well, but this has forced us into the hard conversations. It’s nice to know that after almost 16 years together, we’re still after the same things in life!

2013, when I look at you in bits and pieces, you royally sucked. But when I look at the big picture, I realize that all your bad moments were buffeted by so much good. Thank you for keeping my family healthy and happy and safe. Thank you for blessing me with love and support and friendship and amazing experiences. But please don’t let the door hit you on the way out because I can’t wait to see what 2014 brings!

 

Dec23

Holiday Blessings

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2013 kicked our butts. The first half wasn’t too bad, but the 2nd was rough. Illnesses, acts of God and unemployment all hit our family within an 8 week period. All these things sucked- and some of them will continue right into 2014. But despite all the bad, we were bound and determined that the good would shine through this holiday season. And it really has!

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The Christmas Pageant

The only time the Christmas songs aren’t on in our house is if we’re asleep. The kids are more enthralled with Buddy, our Elf on the Shelf, then any year before. Tales of Santa and Buddy and the reindeer are all that we talk about about and videos from Santa yesterday cemented how closely he keeps track of us- especially when the Bean found out she hasn’t been good enough for the Nice List yet.

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Best of all, when we talk about this past year, my kids don’t talk about the stressful stuff. They remember our trip to FL last Feb, learning how to play Uno, reading Harry Potter and going to the Outer Banks and learning how to play laser tag with their cousins. They remember how fun it was to go camping in the rain- not that the Hubs was sick the whole time with mono & the flu. When they think about our shed being destroyed, they don’t think about the headache of dealing with insurance, they think about how awesome the tree was that fell and how now there is a tree fort in its spot.  Yup, I did lose my job and the budget cuts we made stink- but if you ask my kids about it, they’ll talk to you more about how I pick them up from school every day on time then they do the fact that we don’t go out to eat anymore. If that’s not a life full of blessings, I don’t know what is.

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To all those who celebrate, we wish you all a very Merry Christmas! We hope you all have a wonderful holiday season full of family, friends and more laughs then you can count!