Oh, Ye of Little Faith

Mom poked fun at me about Thursday night, and just in case you are a doubter, I must tell you that yes, Thursday night did include some free food. Isn't that just a given these days? :) And here's why...

My gig as cheerleading sponsor is up, but I get to reap the benefits of the pay through the rest of my paychecks, which is nice. With all this free time on my hands, I wasn't sure what to do, but I knew I needed to find a job so that we can gain some momentum with our debt snowball and start a diaper fund. Well, a friend of mine from church is engaged to the assistant director of the Sylvan Learning Center here in Auburn and when they were here playing Settlers of Catan on New Year's Eve, he mentioned that they are looking for people who can do higher math. Hey! That's me! Believe it or not, most teachers don't feel comfortable teaching math past the sixth grade level. So, I put in my application and resume' and followed up. Now, instead of doing basketball two nights a week, I'm working at Sylvan two nights a week. It doesn't pay as much as private tutoring by any means, but it does offer more hours and...

FREE FOOD.

Yes, that's right. They have bottled water and snacks available for the teachers. Every day. I had been thinking that I would have to grab something to eat after school to make it through the evening, so imagine my surprise when they had some for us. Free food is a beautiful thing.

Some other good things? This is a job where I don't have to stand up (as I would have if I were waiting tables). And Sylvan is the next building down the street from our apartment complex. So, it takes four minutes to get door-to-door, including walking time from the car. I will never again miss a 7 o'clock episode of NCIS. Haha.

Also, on the free food front, I have probably already mentioned that I prefer walking my car insurance payment into the office instead of mailing it in because it saves money (it's on the way to and from work) and because they always have cookies. The cookies are the big draw. Well yesterday I walked into the office at 4:56 p.m. and they close at 5. I apologized profusely for being so late, that I just needed to make a payment. They were very gracious. On my way out I looked in the bucket for a cookie, but was not surprised that since it was the end of the day/week, that the cookies were gone. But, Heidi, my agent rep, noticed and asked if I wanted a cookie. I nodded, and it was then that she said, "Oh my gosh! Are you pregnant?" My jacket was zipped up, so it can be hard to tell... She went back to the kitchen and brought back all the rest of the cookies (6) for me to take home. Aah. A charmed life.

And now for something completely different:

Today is the last day of hunting season, so of course, my lil' hunter is out in the woods. I am having people over this afternoon to make cards, as I may have mentioned before. I have more people than I have chairs. I think I erred on the side of too many invitations hoping that someone would show up, and didn't anticipate that everyone would come (except for 2). I had a card party in Tuscaloosa and only one person showed up. This time, I have 6 chairs and, oh, about 14 people. :) Haha. Not sure what I'm going to do. Preacher's wife may be bringing some chairs. And everyone is bringing snacks (free food!) to share since I'm providing the crafty stuff. Okay, so I guess not an entirely different subject. Except that...

After Eli got up this morning to go hunting, baby girl was crazy active. It's still a very weird feeling. Which reminded me of the conversation that Eli and I had over dinner last night. He told me that he never really had an opinion about when life started (because he just didn't know), but knew that abortion was bad. He said he knows now, and that for him, there is no question anymore, that our baby was a new life the minute she had her own DNA. That made me happy to hear. This isn't one of those topics that we've discussed before. I had, however, shared with him my dismay when hearing stories about couples who decided they didn't want children so, in one particular case, had three abortions. Then, years later, they changed their mind and couldn't get pregnant, so were undergoing in vitro. His response was similar to mine. That's all I knew about his opinions (I know--we've been married almost six years).

I told him last night about that anti-abortion pamphlet that used to scare the hooey out of me growing up, and is probably still somewhere in my parents' house, stuck in a book somewhere. I distinctly remember the picture of the person holding a baby by the feet, the baby's feet were as big as their pinky nail, making the thumb and forefinger look huge. I told him that that picture is the one that convinced me where life begins.

Anyway. Time to get my house clean before the mob arrives. Thanks for reading. Happy Saturday!