Money Hungry

I admit it.

I want money.

And in my quest for money, I'm asking myself why, of all the careers out there, I had to choose the poorest one. The one that, right now, is having a huge upheaval and is unstable. Talk about the blind leading the blind...one financially unstable industry trying to help a (currently) financially unstable individual.

While I don't ask for much in the way of money, I do ask for enough to pay my bills. Right now, I don't have that.

So I'm asking/telling myself: this isn't necessarily just a job to me. It's a calling. And a calling means that it's God-ordained. So at this point in my life when people are yelling at me to give them money and I don't have it, I need to appeal to the One who is taking care of me.

That's the long and the short of it.

God sees my bank account.

Baby Thief

For those of you who don't know, I want a baby. Or more perhaps, put less frighteningly, I want to be a mom. Someday, somewhere, somehow.

For those of you who did know, no surprise. I understand.

Tonight my dream almost came dream. Or, I almost made it come true.

I got to my school board meeting a little early tonight and sat in the parking lot playing Brickbreaker on my Blackberry. Let's just say...addicting. Anyway, a beater pulls up next to me and grandma gets out along with two boys aged maybe 8 or 9, white-trash momma (WTM) gets out with a car seat. Immediately, WTM starts yelling at Matthew and TJ for running their hands along a landscape wall and seeing how far they could touch. Grandma goes to the corner of the building and starts smoking.

"Mom! You can't smoke!" yelled WTM.

"Yes, I can," she yelled back.

"Smoking on school property is a FELONY," WTM screeched.

All of this is transpiring in front of my car and I'm trying not to look.
(And whether or not smoking on school property is actually a felony, I don't know. Don't really care.)

Even though I was early, I decided to go on in so I could people-watch the family.
(I never denied being nosy.)

I walked into a room full of parents yelling at children. I sat in the front row with WTM behind me with Grandma, Baby and two little boys.

During the whole elementary school presentation, I had to listen to WTM tell her approximately 8-week-old baby girl that "Mommy feeds you, Mommy takes care of you, now be quiet."

Grandma joined in by saying things like, "You just need to be quiet. We're in a meeting."

And so it went. For about 25 minutes. By the time they left, I really debated giving WTM my business card and saying, "If you don't want your kid, I'll take her." But then I thought what mother (even WTM) would just GIVE their baby away.

So then I decided that if I wanted the baby, I'd probably have to steal her.

Perhaps I should be ashamed to admit that I actually, for a moment (or two), considered my options...and way of escape.

But, instead of stealing Baby Girl, I shared my paper and pen with the two-year-old next to me and we traded back and forth, back and forth until the elementary school presentations were over and I was left with the dryness of school board politics.

Then I left.

Babyless.