When the holy smokestack finally coughed up a new Pope on Tuesday ("Holy Smoke! There's new Pope!" is what I chanted out loud, repeatedly, for the rest of that day... much to the boy's annoyance), it gave me hope.

No, I'm not Catholic, so it didn't give me that "we have a new leader" sort of hope. My motives, as per usual, were and are far more selfish and secular. But no, not because I wagered a bet on who the new Pope was going to be, and proceeded to win that bet. Even if I had placed a bet, my money would not have been on Ratzinger anyway. I would've backed the guy from Nigeria. You know, African loyalty and all that.

That said, my newfound hope DOES stem from Ratzinger's election. You see, as soon as I heard that he managed to get himself a new and very important gig two weeks after his 77th birthday, my own hopes dared to soar a bit. So much so, that I promptly went outside to pull my ambition and my dreams from the gutter, where it's been buried under piles of leaves and mud since my thirtieth birthday last year.

As all (three) of you know, I've been searching for gainful (is there any other kind? If so, please let me know immediately!) employment since... well, since before I began writing on this blog last year. My quest for employment (or destiny, as I prefer to call it, because "work" sounds very unappealing and tedious) has not been successful.

Perhaps I've been too forthcoming about my lack of marketable skills (or my lack of a Pink Card, but that's another story), or my laziness, or my procrastination, or the fact that my ability to communicate in English (or my version thereof) vanishes between 8 in the morning and noon. (Yes, Natalie, I really am NOT a morning person!)

(Or is it my fondness of parentheses?)

Or perhaps nobody in the greater Washington, D.C. - Baltimore metropolitan area really is hiring right now, and isn't planning to hire anyone in the next few years either.

Whatever the reasons, I still don't have a job, and so I've been losing hope, thinking that maybe thirty really IS too old to still want to be an ingenue and a wunderkind.

But not anymore! If the Catholics can be as indiscriminate (except when it comes to gays, abortion, ordaining women, birth control, etc... but hey, at least there's no age discrimination!) as to hire someone who is 77 to be their equivalent of a corporate CEO, complete with perks like the Papal apartment (it has a BALCONY, with a stunning view), a fully stocked wardrobe (with all those hats!) the Swiss bodyguards, the various Pope mobiles and drivers, and world travel without a passport, then really, someone will surely find it in his/her generous wallet... I mean, HEART!... to put 30-year old me on their pay-roll. ('Cause really, even though it says 1974 on my birth certicate, I assure you that my maturity level can easily compete with that of any two-year old!)

So, danke, Your Holiness Benedict XVI, for making me feel positively wet behind the ears again! Good luck with your new destiny, and thanks for giving me hope that I'll have one of my own some day.