Oh Lou of Little Faith

Well, the grade 5 teacher showed up in my room today with a jar full of change for my Africa fund. $30.
I didn't even ask. ha. Go figure.
A money fish?

Africa fund grand total to date: $50
(The other $20 showed up on the sidewalk when Diane went for a walk and prayed for me.)

It's no $10000, but it's a start.

Be sure of what you hope for...

case in point

Starbucks has had a promotion going on all month.
Free coffee for teachers every Monday morning. How sweet. At least someone values us.
How many Mondays in September? 5.
How many Mondays have I been in Starbucks? 4.
Number of free coffees? 0.
Today I only went because it was free and I've decided I can't blow cash on coffee!
How am I going to ask people for money when I can't even ask for a free coffee?
I need a stunt man.

Fundraising sucks.

I need approximately ten thousand dollars.
$10000.
1000000 cents.
That's a lot of cash. For me. As a teacher.
And so, the thing is, for me to actually be boarding a plane in 3 months means that I will need to procure this money by then.
The following are my only foreseeable options.
1. Get lots of credit cards and then fake my own death so I don't have to pay them back. (Because I won't have an income before next August and I'm terrified of interest.)
2. Start doing a lot of illegal things like selling other people's kidneys or children.
3. Sell my own kidneys and children. (Though three months is not really long enough to make a child, especially at the rate that I date, forget procreate.)
4. Find someone to sponsor me.
5. Get adopted by a millionaire.
6. Rob a bank.
7. Dognap Paris Hilton's mutt.
8. Have a bake sale every day for the next 90 days and hope that I can average around $100 a day which would be approximately 8 pies, 5 cakes, 7 chocolate zucchini loaves and 13 dozen cookies.
9. Busk. Which, I think if I played my cards right, might result in people paying me to stop playing.
10. Ask for help. This idea sucks because I guess I just don't know why other people should help me. I'm not really sure how to ask.

Maybe I'll have a moment like Jesus and Caesar and the fish when his disciple just pulled enough money out of a random fish to pay his taxes. That sounds like a good idea. I'll pray for money fish.

Take back the night, they say.

I passed a massive group of protesters marching down 20th on my way home tonight.
"20th is for women walking!" someone yelled and tears sprung immediately to my eyes.
I've thought this before. I've yelled this before. Can we really "take back the nights?"
I want to believe it!
Unfortunately, the very women this protest was for were still there, 5 blocks further west, unaware that liberation had come. And when it did? Well, the strip moves a block further north while the cars and attention and cop cars pass.
They are adaptable, these women of the night. Survival of the fittest.
2oth is indeed for women walking, and men stalking, and the rest of us quickly passing by before we are implicated with the whole sordid affair.
We're so disconnected from each other. We're so blind to the real factors that enslave these girls; the hungry mouths and the drug addictions to feed; the hopelessness and helplessness that inevitably follows a lifetime of being told you're worthless; the despair and isolation that comes with poverty.
Right now they walk for all of us. They parade around the fact that none of us cares enough to really stop it. So we march or chant or make a poster to ease the guilt or buff the pride, but in the end we do not love enough to offer hope. The kind of hope that actually ends oppression.
And so, 20th is indeed for women walking. And when the protesters go home, they'll keep on walking. It's what they do. They walk because for now, they've been offered no other choice.

I should probably be at work

Today, I woke up around 10ish. I opened my eyes groggily and looked around for my cold. But he was nowhere to be found. I lifted the covers off my sleepy limbs and couldn't see him lurking. I stepped tentatively out of bed, on the off chance he'd just slipped to the washroom. But I didn't hear him. I could still smell him in the chilled air, see the imprint he'd left in the pillow beside my plugged up head. But, it would seem, he disappeared sometime during my beautiful, unburdened slumber.
Since the sub was already into second period by the time I realized he'd cleared off, it seemed I couldn't renege on my first ever "sick day". So I've decided to call it "health and wellness day" and not indulge the twinge of guilt gathering around my brain. Health day has included some of my favorite things: hot tea in bed, baking cakes and various other concoctions with our wide array of rapidly ripening produce, chatting with my best friend in my pj's.
Now, I'm about to send off my Hands at Work application. I think this is a much needed day. Perhaps I'll even have a nap.
Is it wrong to stay home once you discover you're actually not that sick anymore?
Thanks to all of you who pay your property taxes and make this day possible for me. Trust me, I am enjoying every moment. Call me if you'd like a piece of the fruit of your labour. I have cakes flying everywhere...

We had to turn on the furnace today.
The leaves are tap dancing outside my bedroom window, through which air swirls in, cool enough to freeze the end of my nose. Colds are running through playgrounds faster than the snotty noses of their victims. We're caught off guard already - on the second day of fall.
I still can't really believe that people lament this. People mourn!
As I watch the trees explode into a fireworks display of red and gold and yellow, I'm just overcome with this sense of urgency to open my eyes.
It doesn't last!
So - with wide eyes - my list of reasons to be thankful:
1. The creator of the universe believes in colour coordinating her seasons which make them aesthetically pleasing.
2. I still talk to my kids from Hepburn because love is bigger than I thought.
3. A plan is materialising for a trip across the ocean to learn about faith and poverty and hope.
4. My job is easier than I would ever have though possible - it doesn't come home with me. It doesn't keep me up at night. It just, is a job!
5. I took my first ever sick day which means tomorrow, my cold and I are going to curl up with a good book and not leave our bed until we feel like it.
6. Walks in the fall smell like potporri.
7. Purging oneself of unnecessary clutter leaves room for possibility.
8. I have the most amazing people in my life who pray and hope and trust and encourage and love. They inspire me to be the me I was destined to become; they call her out of me.
9. I have a credit card which makes these last few weeks before pay day pretty possible. (Despite it now being 3 months to the day since my last cheque)
10. I don't have a poetic tenth thing, I just like round numbers.
11. Forget it, prime numbers are fun too. I'm thankful for prime numbers and factor trees and my grade 6 kids who like them too.

root canal

Inspire by this week's root canal, I've decided to use the same reckless abandon for rotten roots in the rest of my life. Today, my closet. I think I cleared out half of what I own today and I feel amazing.
This Africa preparation is a weird thing, but I feel lighter. I think I need to learn to be more mobile. No more stuff weighing me down for the sake of stuff.

Preparing for a funeral

Life is a lot like fall, right now.
It's exhillerating to watch leaves turning brilliant shades of red and orange; so bright and thrilling you barely notice it is a signal for a coming death.
But it's coming.
Death is on the crisp morning wind; it bites my cheeks when I'm busy smiling to myself. It swirls up under my skirt hem and reminds me that this is ending.
I feel a need to acknowledge this girl whom I vaguely recognize as myself. She needs to know she's served a purpose and for some reason, that's all about to change.
Carissa leaves this morning, my fellow traveller along the lonely road of insanity. Her leaving is foreshadowing for my own and it's exciting - bright colours flashing through the sky. But with it, something dies.
I'm eager to meet the girl I'll find on the other side of the mirror when life grows again sometime in the spring. I wonder what she'll know. I wonder if her heart will still be in tact.
In the meantime, I'll need to practice the art of self-counsel. Adios Carissa.
"Good luck storming the castle."

I wish I was the girl who could just said what was on her mind, who didn't hide behind ulterior motive. But here I am, conniving and manipulative as possible, wondering when I'll know "truth". (whatever that even means)

Moving on

It's a funny thing when you realize the very thing you've been praying for is actually the end of your own role in the story. It's surreal to be wiping weepy eyes when discovering God has provided. I realized this evening that my stint at kids' club could potentially be ending, and at the very least will undergo an extended hiatus during which time, life will go on. It will be 5 years!
I remember my first monday.
I'd been begrudgingly peeling carrots when I discovered a little group of dirty kids colouring in an obscure back room. To think I'd been held hostage amid the humming freezers when a whole group of kids were enjoying cookies and germs in the next room while I was slaving seemed rather unjust! Within three months the two girls who started the fledgling kids' club disappeared, leaving me the unsuspecting and unenthusiastic "kids' club leader". ha ha
And that's when I started that prayer - it's been a desperate cry, a frustrated demand, a mournful request and now, answered. Help! Please, just help me. And now, in fact, it's been answered six times over!
The part of Louise that is wholly evil and self important is mourning the fact that I will leave in January and I won't be missed. But there is a tiny place in my heart where I recognize and acknowledge the God who loves those kids far more than I do, providing. There's even a shred or two of thankfulness for the way he's raised up these people to love them.
And so there's hope.
Carissa and Fred assured me yesterday, in a moment of pitch black, that there's hope. And it broke through like the first hint of dawn already today. Tatiyana asked me how my day at school was, and that, is the first time. So, I'll take my little assorted and mismatched array of treasures, those things the world would never recognize, and tonight, it will be enough.