New Job...Or Actually, Jobs

My residency program ends a week from today. My initial plan (at the beginning of the summer) was to look for a full-time or substantial part-time chaplain job. Then we found out that Junior was "baking" AND I researched daycare costs at our current center (which I love love love). Do you know how much full-time daycare would be for a two-year-old and an infant? Try almost $1500 a month. And then there's the "I don't wanna leave my babies in the care of others for 8-10 hours a day" issue. So, I decided to stay at home at least through Junior's first birthday and find some other ways to make money/stay engaged in my vocation.

There are three major health systems in this area and one independent hospital. They often hire "PRN Chaplains" to cover night duties and fill in when a regular staff member is sick/on vacation. About a month ago, I saw a posting for one of these positions and applied for it. I had a phone interview about two weeks ago, and an interview about 10 days ago. I felt great about the interview, but expected it to be two weeks before I heard anything. On Monday morning, I found out that I had been offered the position. I accepted it, and have spent this week running around doing pre-employment stuff (forms, health screening, badge photo, etc).

I'm pretty excited about the job. I'll be doing one or two nights a week, taking calls from home via a pager. I get paid a minimal amount just for carrying the pager and then get paid when I'm actually called to the hospital, for the time that I'm there. If a regular staff chaplain is away for any reason, I may be called in to work a regular shift.

The nice thing about this position is that it will allow me to stay home with Susanna and Junior when he arrives while still contributing to the household coffers and keeping my feet wet in the chaplaincy field. For the month of September, I'll also be helping out at Riverside, doing on-call nights for pay. The 2009-10 residency program was initially cut by administration but has recently been "resurrected", so us current residents will be helping to cover evenings and weekends until the new residents have begun.