God Bless Us, Every One

I believe in Christmas miracles.

I, more than anyone you've probably ever met, have faith in the particular kind of magic that happens every December.

The movie industry seems to agree. Every other movie is Christmas-miracle themed, with the "miracle" usually being in direct correlation to someone's heart growing three sizes and sharing the winter joy. It's love-magic.

And that, perhaps, is why I so thoroughly enjoy Christmas. Whether they do it subconsciously, a habit brought about years of brainwashing people to be kind, or if they really are just more aware of the needy and lonely in the holiday season, people open their hearts(and wallets) to help other people out. I love it.

Every year, I jump directly on to the giving bandwagon. My main variety of giving back is the adopt-a-kid tree. The college puts up a tree, with little tags all over it. You pick one, get a list of things your kid wants, and leave them under the tree by the preferred date.

I've got one every year so far(last year was little Jaquim, who liked Spiderman and really wanted a set of nice clothes). This year, I was worried. Partly because with all the fuss, I didn't know if the tree would make it up, and partly because I am what a rapper might call a "broke ass bitch". In the 11th hour, the tree went up.

My bank account is looking a little shallow, but I have about $140 stashed away in my travel jar. I figured that it should be enough to give a kid a decent Christmas, and being me, I grabbed a tag off of the tree this morning(Her name is Diamond, she's 11 and wants nail polish and lego sets and I love her).

I know the story right now is shaping up to be "girl spends her last cash for a kid for Christmas", but I don't mean it that way. I do try to be a good person, which sometimes does take effort, but there's nothing special to it. The point of the story is that I was willing to give with an open heart, which is really, really important to the moral of the story, so bear with me.

With all the ruckus in the past few weeks, I worked about 46 hours, and about 30 of those were while we were closed. Full time employees are paid whenever the college is closed, and anything they work at that point is over time. Technically, it's double time and a half. By the numbers, $10 per hour for the eight they would've normally been there, and $15 for every hour they work anyway, for a grand total of $25. This is not a courtesy that has ever been extended to me. Snow days? Fuck it, I'm on my own. My boss is pretty good about letting me come in and make up those hours, but it's still a pain.

I got the word this morning that part-timers do qualify for administrative closings, and that all of those hours I worked will be at time and a half. I almost cried tears of joy.

When all is said and done, I'm chalking it up to Christmas magic. Here I am, concerned about how I'm going to get my remaining Christmas shopping done, and along comes this sort of bonus to help me along.

Christmas magic, man. Nothing like it.