It's the weekend.. FINALLY!

Alicia here. It's finally the weekend again, thank Gawd. I am *exhausted*.  I spent all day to day in a strategic planning meeting and ate way too many croissants. Now I'm carb-crashing.

Yesterday a friend of mine called me in the evening in a panic and told me she had done something really, really stupid. "What was it?" I asked. "I left the money in the ATM." She told me. She and I had actually visited the ATM together earlier in the day. Apparently, she removed the card and the receipt, but not the cash. "What am I going to do?" She asked me. "I can't tell my husband. He'll have my head." Poor girl. I couldn't think of how to help her. I live close to the campus. "Do you want me to go to campus and look in the ATM and see if it's still there?" I asked. No no, she declined, it's probably not there. The place is all locked up anyway. "Maybe try calling security?" I suggested. Also a no-go; if the money wasn't there, security would then be an awkward position of potentially not being believed. She sounded close to tears. "How much?" I asked.  300 dirhams. We hung up, me telling her not to worry about it too much. At least it wasn't 3000, right? 

Trouble is, my friend is in a bit of a sticky situation. Her husband recently became unemployed as a result of a convoluted series of events. She's got a lot of responsibility to cover as the sole breadwinner of the moment, including her mother-in-law's medical bills. For her, at the moment, 300 dirhams isn't easy to lose.

So, I called back and told her I had gone and checked the ATM and found the money, which was I think an OK lie to tell. 

Today she said to me, "My mother-in-law is bugging us for a plane ticket back home, and it costs almost 4000."  It seems obvious to me that the mother-in-law needs a dose of reality. "Tell her to get a job." I said. My friend laughed.