...If You Let Him

On Wednesday I had a training session to go to at 825. That's what everybody calls the main office building for District of Columbia Public Schools. During the lunch break I decided to accompany a Shaw U graduate to the payroll office to check on her 'stuff.' Basically she did some of her paperwork late and wanted to ensure that everything was on the up and up and that she would be getting paid. She gave the man her social and he printed her a check stub that showed what would be deposited in her account on Friday. Since I was there, I decided to try to get a sneak peak at what would be deposited in my account as well.

When I gave the man my social he said that I wasn't in the system. Thinking it was some mistake or that he had typed the number incorrectly I gave him the number again. Same response. Not in the system. I was floored. Here it is Wednesday and I'm expecting a check on Friday and I'm not in the system.

He instructed me to go to my staffing specialist and let her know. This woman has to be the most aloof person I know. She is just so not on it. When I approached her to tell her about the situation she was not very bothered. She acted as if this sort of thing happened all the time and that she'd get to it when she could. I told her her nonchalance about my business was unacceptable and that she absolutely had to take care of my paperwork today. As a matter of fact I told her within the hour. I had to control my emotions because she kept flipping a piece of paper over as we were talking and staring at it. At one point she wasn't saying anything. It's hard to describe the scene on paper but suffice it to say I was annoyed at her inactivity. Once I told her I wasn't in the system she should have IMMEDIATELY sprang into action to get me in the system to get me paid. Finally she remarked at the end that she 'guessed that she should go and work on this now.' Of course I'm thinking hell yeah itchbay, go handle my shiznit not now but right dang now!!!

When I returned to payroll to let the guy, let's call him Mr. Helpful know what had transpired he gave me some more directives. As he was speaking an e-mail came in from my staffing specialist asking what she needed to do. Mr. Helpful decided that this required a face to face visit to make sure that Ms. A Loof understood what she had to do so that I can get paid. Let's interrupt this story to remind you about what else I had been contending with NCA&TSU. Yeah, if you read that already you understand more about why I would be extremely frustrated at this point. She had to regenerate a document that should have been generated a long time ago. She had sent it up to payroll but they returned it because it was incomplete/incorrect. She didn't realize they had sent it back to her and at the moment didn't know where it was. So like I said she had to reproduce the document. Mr. Helpful informed me that it would only take five minutes to do it and that he had spoken with the head of HR to let him know what was going on so that she would be forced to handle my business. As he and I spoke in the hallways for 21 minutes I remarked to him that she should have been able to produce four 4.25 documents in that amount of time. We chuckled about it but I was serious. I need people to have a sense of urgency especially about your money when they have dropped the ball.

Update to the A&T situation: I received a call on Wednesday and another one on Thursday from two different individuals that informed me that the check was cut on Thursday and would be mailed on Friday. We'll see. Is it just me, but if it was cut on Thursday, why wasn't it mailed on Thursday?

Also while I was down at payroll I had Mr. Helpful find out if they had record of a time sheet having been submitted for me. Interestingly enough they had a time sheet. In my twisted logic I would think that if you have people on the time sheet but have no record of them existing that you'd investigate why. Maybe it's just me. I did learn that payroll is short four people so they just don't have time to track down a bunch of stuff like that right now. That's the same reason they sent my paperwork back down to my staffing specialist on August 6. They don't have time to correct people's mistakes and run stuff down because they are so short staffed.

I spoke with the Business Manager at my school (we called them Treasurers in NC and GA). She didn't think it was realistic for me to expect a paycheck on September 12th. I told her that Mr. Helpful who she knows very well and who her office mate (not really her office mate but he's in there all the time) knows very well assured me that I'd get paid on Friday because he was going to personally walk the paperwork through the process. All day Friday it was touch and go. I tried not to think about it so that I could get my work done. I managed to do that until the BM called me down to her office to find out if I had gone to pick up my check because her contact down there told her that she didn't see the check. I told her no. The BM let me know that there were so more checks coming in after 3:00pm. It was at that point that I said I wasn't going to give up hope. I finally went down to her office after school so that she could call and check. Bless goodness my check was there. (That's something my grandma used to say. I gotta find some pics of her that I can post.) Look at God! People don't believe it but He'll do it if you let him. That's on of my favorite churchy sayings.

I forgot to mention that I shared with a friend about the A&T thing and now the DCPS thing and she remarked that I needed to pray about why God was allowing my finances to be attacked. I side eyed her (ala Opinionated Diva) and told her that it wasn't that deep and that people just needed to do their jobs. Don't you hate it when people wanna make stuff deep that really isn't?

No Excuses

We had a pretty good time yesterday, although we left sixteen minutes late. One of the students got off the bus to use the restroom and I didn't know and I instructed the driver to go and so she got left. That says to me that you have to be in place. So many people want to operate outside the covering. If you had to use the restroom, there were some options. One option would be to make use of the facilities on the charter bus. Otherwise it is critical that you inform someone where you are going so that someone would know and could be accountable and awaiting your safe and speedy return.

Not all of the students chose to ride the bus. Some of them drove down on their own and paid the full price admission fee for the park. Again, that's what happens when you operate outside the covering. There's safety in the ark. If you had done what you were asked to do, then you could have saved about thirty dollars. It's not a big deal to me though. If they like it, I love it. I am one who likes to save a dollar whenever possible.

What is disheartening is that so many of these kids have a poverty mentality. They live in substandard housing with under- or uneducated guardians whose idea of a good time is facing a couple of blunts, frying some fish and washing it down with some alcohol.

Don't you just love it when people want to put their mouths on you instead of stepping to you and asking you what you feel about something. If you have a question about something, feel free to ask. I have no problem explaining to someone how I feel about something. That's not to say that I will address all inquiries. Some things are better left unsaid. But, for the most part, I will gladly field any inquiries.

Z didn't get too much darker yesterday at the park. I used SPF 70 with helioplex. I don't even know what helioplex is, (doesn't helio- mean sun?), but I just like to say "...with helioplex." It sounds like it makes all the difference. For those of you who want to get deep, no I do not have a color complex. I simply mean that I did not allow the radiation from the sun to excite the melanin present in my dermis thereby allowing less light to pass through. That is, if you put your color on a prism, the darker it is the less light that will pass through. Now that I've written that a racist could use that and make some really compelling metaphors.

Yeah, so if you've gotten this far you've realized that this is pretty random. No form nor comeliness. I don't know why I've been making so many biblical references lately. Maybe I'm just in one of those phases. That reminds me about this sermon I heard a few weeks ago. Wanna hear about it? Good, cause I was gonna tell ya anyway.

Let me give a little background. This was women's day so the women were ushering, singing in the choir, you know...pretty much doing everything that day. The woman who spoke grew up in this church, but has since moved away and started a life elsewhere complete with a husband and kids and a dog...blah blah blah. She's a minister and an educator and feeds the homeless and rescues stray cats from trees in her spare time.

The sermon title was, "No Excuses." First of all, to me that's more of a secular slogan that an religious theme/idea, but I was willing to listen and see where she was going with this. I'm pretty sure "No Excuses" was a part of an advertising campaign. She used two illustrations from the Bible. The first story was about a woman whose daughter was possessed with a demon and needed to be delivered. The speaker, let's call her Ms. Empty-Air, described how the woman demonstrated her faith when she asked Jesus to heal her child. It didn't appear that Jesus was in the healing mood, if you will, but because of her faith, he did it. Right here is a good time to say Amend. Emphasis on the 'd'. You know everything sounds more holy when you indiscriminately add and subtract letters as (in)appropriate. So basically woman asks for a healing and she receives it. The next story was about Lot's wife. Most people are familiar with this story. This is when Lot and his family were fleeing Sodom and Gomorrah (I wonder which on they actually lived in--or maybe S&G is like Winston-Salem or Raleigh-Durham) and the wife turned back and became a pillar of salt. She and everyone who was in their company fleeing the city had been warned not to look back. Someone should have told her that obedience is better than sacrifice. If I'm preaching you can stand up. Anyway, so she turned into the pillar of salt and everybody else kept going.

If you've forgotten, scroll back up and look at the sermon title in red. Okay, so just like me you're probably wondering what in the world this has to do with anything. What was so egregious is that she just kept peppering the discourse with no excuses like it was so sort of mantra or a theme for which she had laid a solid foundation. As I sat in my pew, I just couldn't make the connection with the illustrations that she chose. All the while she's still walking around hollering No Excuses. Finally she asked the pastor if she could come down on the floor to continue to speak. The pastor obliged. My interested was sparked at this time because I thought she was gonna really make the connection for me and tie up any loose ends in her sermon. so far, I had not gained a single thing. Once she got on the floor she just was talking about women having no excuses. I guess she meant like no excuses about being good wives, good mothers, good Christians, good in the community, faithful in service, etc. If these were her thoughts, she definitely didn't tie it together.

Other people were standing up and encouraging her as she spoke. I was looking around wondering to myself if they were listening to the same oration that I was. She was screaming about no excuses but hadn't said a thing since we had began. Talking loud, but saying nothing. To that I say no excuses. It's almost as if she didn't know she was speaking that morning and didn't have time to prepare. She knew at least a month in advance because I remember hearing it during the church announcements. I get really sensitive about church. I hate it when people speak and don't share anything new with me. Especially with the price of gas! I felt like going up to her and asking for her badge and her keys. I wanted her to turn over her certificate/license to preach because there was no excuse for what she allowed to masquerade as a sermon. I have an explanation for why people were standing up egging her on. Option one: I think that most of the people who were standing were just doing so because she grew up in that church and her mother still attends the church. Maybe they were supporting her and not necessarily supporting what she was saying. Option two: They are absolutely delusional.

Now though I use that phrase as a running joke with some of my friends and associates with whom I've shared this story. At any time one of us might just holler out "no excuses" just for no reason. Pretty much analogous to how she used it. It might have been a little better for her to talk about no excuse for people going to hell because of Jesus' sacrifice. Maybe I'll prepare something and e-mail it to her using that same sermon title. The only difference is what I send her will be coherent (despite the fact that this post isn't) and will be understandable.

Why Am I Blue?

This just in: Don's post on Sunday was heads above the rest. Nothing but the truth! If you haven't read it, get over there and check it out. Now we continue with our regularly scheduled post.
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I'm just a country boy from the south who's him* is a preacher. We went to church on Sunday, Bible Study on Wednesday, service twice on Sundays for special programs, Vacation Bible School, Sunday School, Choir Rehearsal on Tuesdays, Easter practice--suffice it to say church was a big thing growing up. When I was younger I didn't really like going. Somewhere around age 14 or 15 I started liking to go to church. Even now I enjoy going. It's because I was able to develop a personal relationship with Him. It's really not so much about religion; it's more about having a relationship. Don't think that you have to do all that form and fashion stuff that people do at church under the pretense of being religious. If you have a relationship with Him, it'll show in your daily life. (If I'm preaching you can stand up and say Amen.) Have you ever encountered someone and you just felt like there was something different about them? Some sort of presence or an air about them that is hard to describe, but is very much so tangible. They had that it. Even if you can't describe or articulate what 'it' is, you know it's definitely something different. I submit to you that those are the people who truly are trying to walk the walk. Turn with me, to Proverbs the fifth chapter---just playing.

Anyway, church was a big deal. How do you find out more stuff that you can add to your church? You to go the church conference/convention in another state where a bunch of other church people get together and teach each other new buzz words and practices that are popular in their neck of the woods. It's like if no one in your church was speaking in tounges, if you go to the church conference and find out that that's what everybody else is doing, then when you come back to your home church you start doing it first and everyone thinks you've gotten closer to God and then they try to do it to because you're not gonna be closer to God than they are. Church people are like that. I've been around it all my life.

So this particular year we went to a church conference in Delaware. My parents already knew the pastor who was over the conference. I don't remember how they met, but they were already well acquainted. The conference might have lasted three days but we just stayed the rest of the time until Sunday where our church from home came to Delaware to have a joint service with the church in Delaware. Our church provided the music for that particular service.

The pastor and his wife were very hospitable. They introduced us to some of the members in the church who also entertained us during the week that we were there. My siblings and I ended up almost everyday hanging with this one family. Let's call them the Mitchells. The mom was so sweet and thoughtful. You should see her praise. She'd stand on her high heels and go from side to side like she's two stepping and make circular motions in the air with both her hands palms facing inward toward each other. The dad was a humble man, very mild mannered. He would shout like he was doing the funky chicken. There were two daughters in the family. One about 23 and one about 16. I'm around age 16 at the time. So yeah I wanted to get at the 16 year old. Let's call her Jennifer. (That was actually her real name). In order to get a girl to notice you on the 'church circuit' you have to act like you're really into church. Each night after the conference there is a evening service that starts around 6 or 7. What we (the guys) would do is find a girl who you like. When they call for the altar prayer, we'd go down front and get special prayer. That would encourage the girls to come down front and stand with you for moral support. If you got a girl to come down and stand with you, then she was yours. Other tactics included crying during the service. That whole "I'm sensitive" thing worked oh so well on those fast ass wholesome church girls. You only needed to shed a tear though if you were in her direct line of sight. If you couldn't be sure that she could see you, there's no point in crying.

So anyway, the Mitchells would come and get us during the week and we'd go to the beach or out to eat or to their home. One particular afternoon we went to one of the Mitchell's friends house. We were left alone and the adults went to town to shop or something. So at the house was me, my two brothers, and Jennifer. The adults trusted us to just play video games and hang out and whatnot. Where was Beyonce then? *singing* You must not know 'bout me..*end singing* When they left I was like, yes!! Let's paint a picture. I'm 16. She's 16. We're home with no adults. And you want us to just play video games? Uh...okay. If that helps you sleep at night. If all we ended up doing was playing video games, it wouldn't be for lack of trying to engage in other, more gratifying activities.

At first we were all downstairs because that's where the video game setup was. My brothers were 14 at the time and were heavily into video games. I still played but that was not what I had planned to use that time for. I started my plan. I asked Jennifer to show me the rest of the house--mainly the upstairs. She agreed. So we looked in the people's bedroom and at the other rooms upstairs. We went into one of the bedrooms to just chill. I asked her what she wanted to do. She's like I don't know. I'm thinking to myself, well I have an idea. Before I jumped into anything I was trying to figure out how much she had done at this point in her life. So I asked some probing questions. Basically I determined that she was a virgin and was scared to take the leap. I didn't even press that issue. I decided that I should just seek some oral pleasure.

I asked her to do it. She acted like I asked her to slap her mom. She started on this tirade about how she thinks that's nasty and blah blah blah. I was blowed, but more than that I couldn't think straight or clearly because a good bit of the blood that oxygenates my brain had rushed elsewhere. I was hornier than a mug! It was so bad it was about to start hurting. I needed to skeet bad as hell. At this point I'm thinking to myself why the hell would you follow me upstairs if you gonna be acting crazy? This ain't Flip That House. I don't give phuck about what the house looks like. I'm getting desparate at this point. I'm still trying to convince her. I'm bargaining for smaller increments of time like saying just for a few minutes and stuff like that. Still a no go. I needed to be touched so badly that I made a last ditch offer for her to just let me put it on her neck. I don't know where that came from but I just needed to touch something. I was so brick and horny I might've skeeted on her neck as soon as it made contact. She wasn't feeling that either. Needless to say I was deeply disturbed. Good thing we didn't really jump off into anything because it wasn't long after that the adults returned. They questioned us as to why we were upstairs and not downstairs with the boys. We gave some flimsy answer and all was forgiven.

On the ride back home (Ms. Mitchell was driving me and my brothers back to our hotel. About a 40 minute ride) Jennifer asked me if I was mad at her. My reply was simply, "Don't talk to me." I mean, how you gonna play with a sixteen year old boy's horniness like that?

In case you read this, Jennifer, you owe me. You got off the hook that time. Maybe that's why some people end up (finish my thought).

Oh yeah, the thing yesterday, I cussed (cursed) somebody out at work. I have absolutely never cursed someone out. I always say stuff like, "I ought to curse him/her out", but i'm never really serious. First time for everything.