Everything I've hoped, wished, prayed, given up, sacrificed, wanted, and said, "Dear God, please!!!" for the past few years, finally came true today!

In March of 2001 I left Corporate America, or what I affectionately call my soul sucking years, and went back to work in the food biz. I took a $15,000 pay cut, but as far as I was concerned it was worth it because I was getting my soul back and also my personality. I was poor, but happy.
As I was working full-time as a kitchen slave I was also working part-time from home doing medical billing.
After about 18 months or so the writing was very clearly sprawled in the egg batter that the restaurant was going to close and so I high-tailed it out of there before the door could hit me where the good Lord split me and I started working full-time from home. I took another hefty pay cut to do this, but again my soul was pretty well still in tact and I was happy. Very poor, but ultimately happy.
Well, eventually the very poorness caught up with me and I moved home for a few months to pay off all my debt and I went back to school. This was in the fall of 2003. I was taking a few classes and I was still working full-time and at this time started working part-time for my current employer as I was doing so.
Then, two days before Thanksgiving my full-time job was abolished. Nice.
I collected unemployment and asked my part-time employer if they had anything in terms of employment for me. They in turn created my current position.
I went back to school in full-force (taking at least 12 credits every 10 weeks) and working full-time. I will graduate in December from the incredibly expensive private college I attend and plan to start my Master's in the fall at a college yet to be decided.

I made no bones, skulls, eyeballs, teeth, pencils, or note pads to my current boss that I wanted to stay here. Everytime the subject of my life would come up I would end the sentence with, "...and I would really like to stay here. I would like full-time, benefits, good salary..." I would see her drift off into the not so near future with a look of pondering on her face of what she could do for me.

See, I suppose here is where I should say that even though I work a full 40 hour week the only benefit I am afforded is that I love my job and for the most part the people I work around. I have no health insurance, no sick leave, no paid time off. The only benefit I have is that when my alarm goes off in the morning I am able to get up out of bed and come into work with a smile on my face and well, that's the greatest benefit of all. Especially seeing as how I spent my 20's working for the Devil himself and having my soul replaced with a fiery brimstone cavernous hole and absolutely feeling like the cog that turned the wheel and oh, what's that? A chain that goes from my desk to my ankle? How odd.

Today my boss gave me a job offer to start in August. Full-time with benefits, sick time, paid leave, vacation time, retirement plan, and a salary that even on the low end is more than I would allow myself to daydream about.
She has to turn the proposal into her boss who has to approve it. Depending on where it goes from there it can either become mine, or it will have to be posted and then I will have to interview for it. However, as she pointed out I've been doing this job for over two, almost three, years. The job is mine.
The: making less money than I did when I was 18, the coming into work sicker than sick because I couldn't afford to be in bed which is where I should have been, (which would be today) the long days of working all day and then going to night school, the new daily addiction to coffee because at the most I get six hours of sleep a night, the fluctuating 10-15 extra pounds because I'm not home to workout, the trips that had to be postponed, and on and on and on...it's all been worth it. All of it. Today, it all became worth it.