Moving, Life Changes, and Halloween Vultures

This morning I went to Michaels and spent no less than one hour stalking around the potpourri scented craft store. I left with a $63 dollar bill and a feathered vulture figurine. I was so excited about my random, odd, and holiday-creepy find that I even gushed about it to the cashier. She was less than impressed and answered a ringing phone that was attached to her hip. Talk about pooping on my parade.

Speaking of pooping…I’m Heather…and I’m a stay at home mom to a 4 year old. While H is fully potty trained, we are working on him learning to wipe himself. All I can say is thank God for Shout stain remover.

We moved to the Burlington area last November. Almost a year ago. Hard to believe. Prior to that my husband (Karl), Henry, and I lived in Chicago. We moved to Chicago from NYC so that my husband could attend business school at the University of Chicago. I was heartbroken when we moved to Chicago after living in NYC for six years. It was the 2nd city to me.  In fact, so much so, that when we would go out for a night on the town and I would find myself overly intoxicated (which, of course rarely happened), I would enter in to a drunk-rant about how Chicago sucked and I just wanted a late-night greasy slice of pizza from the vinyl-tiled joint on the corner.  Nevertheless, I fell in love with Chicago. I did. And we stayed for almost 6 years. I found a really interesting job at the University of Chicago, worked over 40 hours a week, traveled often, and met a kick-butt group of friends. I also happened to have a baby. Oh yeah…that little detail. I don’t know how we did it, but we both worked, Henry went to daycare, we had an amazing social life, and we were right with the world. Of course something was missing…being back in the country and being closer to family.

After Karl got a job here in Burlington, we knew immediately we were ready to move back east. I cried myself to sleep the night before we left Chicago. And I’m not talking about quiet demure weeping. I’m talking about heaving, out of breath, cry-face sobbing. A car packed to the brim with boxes, fruit gummies, my mother, and my 3.5 year old, we drove two days to VT. If you’re wondering where Karl was, he drove the largest moving truck I’ve ever seen. I feared for his life…and the life of all of our belongings in the back of that badboy.  In the end we made it. Moved in to a small rental condo, and began our new life.

You see, it really shouldn’t have been a huge deal…this move. We’ve moved before. Many times. But for me…it was the biggest change of my life. I didn’t have a job. Or rather, I didn’t have a paying job. When we decided to move to Burlington for Karl’s new job, I didn’t feel pressure to look for something new. I decided it would be a good time to get H transitioned in to this new life and for us to spend time together. There is so much more to the previous sentence and I want to tell you all about it, but then this blog post will probably turn in to an autobiography…so let’s just leave it for now. Plus, it’s a shameless plug for me and my future blog posts about our new life in VT. Stay tuned and keep an eye out for more.

Ok, fine…just a little more…. We have been living in Vermont for almost a year, my husband works full time, my son goes to pre-k in the mornings, and i’m almost 39 weeks pregnant. I wish that I could say that I do more than that right now, but at 9 months pregnant, strolling around Michaels and sipping raspberry leaf tea is about all that my stay-at-home self can handle at this point. Hopefully by the time you read this, the little lady will be out and I’ll be staring longingly at my pre-pregnancy skinny jeans.