Get to Know Lorrin Saliba!

Hi! I’m Lorrin and I have lived and worked in or near Memphis pretty much my whole life.  There was that 18 month stint in Little Rock that we don’t talk about but other than that, I’m a life-long Memphian. My family is here, we are here, we’ve considered moving if “the right job” came along but this is where we have always called home.

After graduating from college in 2001, I accepted a full time position at the insurance company where I had been interning for 18 months and started my varied career in IT.  Over the next several years, I moved around from company to company.  Either because the local office I worked for got closed or the outsourcing of internal IT services “just happened.”  In 2007, I finally found my dream job with FedEx, or so I thought.  Then life decided to shake things up and along came child #1 and then #2.  Suddenly with two children under two, the travel and demanding work schedule just made me a crazy person.  I was depressed, sad, angry, and unhappy because I was forced to leave them every day.  I vividly remember one Sunday when I was packing for another 2-week trip. Dylan came into the bedroom and saw the suitcase in the floor.  He went over to it and sat inside with his arms crossed and said, “Take me wit you mommy! I’ll be good.”  I wept for hours that day.  There is a little more to it… Let’s just say, when one spouse is unemployed for an extended length of time, it stresses the marriage some.

In the fall of 2012, after struggling with a demanding work schedule and a son not adjusting great to kindergarten, I left FedEx and took a position as the Data Information Administrator for a private K2-12 school.  That next school year, my kids started coming to school with me.  Now our mornings in the car are spent catching up on playground stories, quizzing for spelling tests, and I get to have lunch with them whenever they want.  I have a job that expects me to drive on field trips and closes for school breaks!  I actually found the job that can give me that “work life balance” we’ve all heard so much about.

I have been married to my husband David, for 17 amazing, crazy, and turbulent years.  I am mommy to two of the most precious, aggravating, and sneaky little boys ever born.  Reece (2007) and Dylan (2009).  These two couldn’t be more different but have my heart all the same.  Then, just when I had come to terms with the fact that I would be a “#boymom” forever, along came Emma Grace (2014).  She has turned our house upside down with silliness, pink and bubbles.

Like most other mommies out there, I struggle daily with order, organization, neatness, family schedules, memory loss, sleeplessness, laundry mounds, and the necessity to keep boys in shoes.  Who sells extra wide baby shoes anyway?  My faith is mine and I try to remember why I am here and who, ultimately, I will have to answer to.  I thank God for giving me the opportunities I have had in life and try not to take things for granted.  So add that to my “daily struggles” list above.

Did I mention the in-home sewing business?  Before our first son was born and I was “in-between” jobs, my husband bought me a fancy new sewing machine. It was to replace my 1954 Singer hand-me-down he saw me laboring over day after day.  It had a digital touch screen display, USB connectivity, 85 stitch options and the ability to stitch up to 8” x 10” designs. We’re talking a luxury car compared to this old Dodge Dart. To keep him from thinking I hated it, I started monogramming things and making gifts for teachers.  After a while, I started making my boys appliqued shirts for trips and birthdays. Then it was making gifts for preschool birthday parties. Who needs more Legos anyway?  7 years later, I have a nice little sewing business that I run out of the house. During the wee hours of the morning, if you drive by, you will see the attic light on and me, hovered over a design in the works, trimming threads.

I work, I mommy, I wife, I sew – that’s me!

What very few people know (or care to know):

• Memphis drivers are the worst and have caused me to develop Drivers Touretts’s.  I might need a swear jar in the car.
• I have struggled with self-esteem/confidence issues most of my life.
• I was on the very first daytime Wheel of Fortune – Teen Week in 1984.
• I have to have a list to function.  Weekly organization on a family planner and multiple to-do lists is the only way I stay sane.
• My husband is 16 years older than me and sometimes gets referred to as “Grand-dad”
• I always grab exactly 3 napkins in a restaurant and turn the radio off when I go through the ATM line.
• I am addicted to reality TV and want to be on the Amazing Race one day.
• I just started doing children’s consignment sales this past year and am HOOKED!  I want to have my own one day.
• I love binge watching the Curse of Oak Island and Hunting Hitler on the History Channel.