Once again I am here to testify that there is a Lord & He is good.
I screwed up on my finances. I spent more than I earned. I had no idea how to pay 900$ of my bills. No idea. Then a check from a credit card company came. It was a sort of solution...I would pay a lower interest than keeping the debt on the card. But you see I usually don't pay any interest. I wrote the check & was going to mail it tomorrow.
In the mail I got today, I got another credit card check from the same company that sent the first check, but this check is for 0% interest for 18 months. Plus since I have rewards card on that account, I could pay off what is already on the credit card offering the 0%... without the rewards I would be short the amount needed. With that current balance paid off, when the new check for 0% gets to them, I won't have a balance earning interest while they apply my payments to the 0%.
Ok, so I screwed up. Yes, I had to sweat it out as a consequence. But God brought me a solution.
There is a God. Makes me wish I had some money to tithe with this morning. The church & I disagree by the way on tithing. They think the tithe should go to them in cash. I think that when I give a meal to a student or a bag of goodies to a homeless man on the corner, then I am paying towards my tithe.
Now I know some atheist somewhere is saying that these credit card companies send these stupid annoying checks all of the time. This is true, but they are usually charging some kind of interest, albeit lower than the standard. This is for 0% for 18 months. A very important 18 months for me. You see, my being a department chair, and a class sponsor & a debate coach don't show up on monthly checks. Half of the year's payment for chair & sponsor show up in February & the other half in July or August. The February payment helps me pay for Christmas & the floating of real estate taxes that are due in December & May, but I do creative financing to get through. Remember I have not owed nor paid interest, but I have paid some 3% transaction fees along the way. Any way the debate coach pay, which I don't know when it will be paid, should make me debt free, except for my mortgage. This does of course assume I don't screw up again & that I continue to pay down my debts at my current rate.
The Lord is good. He knows my needs before I do.
In a way I see this financial help I keep getting at just the right time as a continuation of his confirming that the divorce was ok with him. Ok, now the right wingers are ticked off cuz God hates divorce...to you I say: read older posts & catch up on why I know it was OK.
____________
I have put off telling you about other issues that God has shown his hand in. Now seems like a good time.
There is a woman at work who berated me & told me I could not call her by her first name, though I had greeted her as such for about 6 months. This confrontation happened in July. At the time she called me a racist liar & a sleeping clueless teacher. Her office is now near Flirty's. I have spent time in their shared waiting room space supervising kids during my lunch. One day only the senior student who always visits Flirty at lunch was there with me. Flirty was no where to be seen at that time. We were looking at college brochures & talking about them. This woman had a problem with us being in that space. I ended up telling her that as a paid instructor on the staff I could spend my lunch and planning period any where I wanted & that I was supervising the student in this cooler place since my room had no air conditioning. Flirty suggested that I inform administration of the two confrontations. I put it off for a few days, but did so.
So, the student & I are at Flirty's for lunch one day 1 week after I e-mailed administration about the confrontations. He gets a call that a parent is coming in to talk, so the student & I move to the waiting area to give them privacy. The woman comes in & starts into her confrontational mode again. She goes & gets security. Security sees that another teacher is involved. He takes us to the Vice Principal that I sent the e-mail to. She sees who is coming in & shoos her current problem children far away. Then the VP goes into the Principal's office for about 5 minutes. He comes in and lets the confrontational woman talk first. She tells him that this student thinks he is special & should get to stay out of the cafeteria when the rule is that all students must go to the cafeteria. She does a lot of telling the Principal what I think & assume.
When she paused, I informed her that she should not assume that she knows what I think or why I do what I do. I will speak for myself. (When I tell friends of my saying this, they applaud me.)
When it was my turn, I told the principal that students all over the building do not go to lunch due to social, monetary & food reasons. We teachers adopt them & feed them & mentor them. This student was adopted by Flirty & I the previous year, and he had been one of the inspirations for the chess tournament since we had taught kids chess last year at lunchtime. I explained how the kid had been homeless & ready to drop out, but was now trying to be enough of a student to go to college.
Here comes the God part.
The principal agreed that this student is special. He does get to break the rule & doesn't have to go to the cafeteria, as long as he is with Flirty or me. The principal even said he wanted to help this student get clothes that fit. The senior is a LARGE boy/man & his current clothes are old & don't fit well. The kid had been noticed by the the principal & the principal had been trying to figure out how to help the kid. Now he knew two conduits to the kid... Flirty & me.
Another God part, which I may have shared before. The day before us teachers had to report for work in August, I asked my church to pray for me & the woman. I wanted to know how to interact with her appropriately. Her office used to be beside my classroom, & I had the students with whom she primarily worked. When I got to school on that Monday, I discovered that her office was not near mine, AND I now worked with Flirty's students & not hers. God knew my needs before I prayed & had a solution ready the day I needed it. There was only one glitch. I was to move into her old room & she hadn't surrendered the key, yet. She had to do that in front of administration. Her whole body language was a cuss word, that was easily read by them. I on the other hand was very very civilized. She has tenure, so it will take a lot to fire her. Meanwhile I pray that God finds a way to let her know that her job needs more compassion than she shows to our students and staff.
__________________
New topic:
The FBE (first boyfriend ever) e-mailed me this past week that he is going to get the divorce. He assures me that it is not because of me, but a long time building up & he's just had it. He called yesterday. I knew the moment the phone rang it was him because I had just answered his e-mail. When we were done talking an hour later my face hurt from all the smiling & laughing. I really should run & run hard in the opposite direction, but I don't want to. I am curious about him. I do want to get to know him better again. I wish he were already divorced so I would feel guilt free about it & so I wouldn't feel like he was rebounding. Heck, after this Flirty thing this past week, I would like to make certain I'm not rebounding too. If you get curious about some one before you feel almost heartbroken over a different relationship, is it a rebound? I don't think so. It is really amazing timing though.
And by the way, the computer matching only created 3 almost close encounters the first week, and not even a nibble since. Almost 2 months of the 6 I paid for used up. I've exchanged more e-mails with a very steamy guy in New York, with whom I've almost nothing in common, than I have with any one I have things in common with. Somehow the NewYorker clicked on my name & saw my profile. So I clicked on his. I really like his pictures, so I have looked more than once. The program shows us who has looked at our pictures. Most of the men remain in the exact same order, but New York's keeps floating back to the front of the list. So I asked him why. He scans through the profiles in such away that he doesn't know whose picture will come up next, & then there I am on his screen, so he moves to the recent lookers on my screen. Then I think he's gorgeous, but probably a real snob, and gaze at him some more.
Got to haul the son to his dad's. So I'll stop.
May God be with you when you need him & when you don't know you do.
Take care,
Pete
I screwed up on my finances. I spent more than I earned. I had no idea how to pay 900$ of my bills. No idea. Then a check from a credit card company came. It was a sort of solution...I would pay a lower interest than keeping the debt on the card. But you see I usually don't pay any interest. I wrote the check & was going to mail it tomorrow.
In the mail I got today, I got another credit card check from the same company that sent the first check, but this check is for 0% interest for 18 months. Plus since I have rewards card on that account, I could pay off what is already on the credit card offering the 0%... without the rewards I would be short the amount needed. With that current balance paid off, when the new check for 0% gets to them, I won't have a balance earning interest while they apply my payments to the 0%.
Ok, so I screwed up. Yes, I had to sweat it out as a consequence. But God brought me a solution.
There is a God. Makes me wish I had some money to tithe with this morning. The church & I disagree by the way on tithing. They think the tithe should go to them in cash. I think that when I give a meal to a student or a bag of goodies to a homeless man on the corner, then I am paying towards my tithe.
Now I know some atheist somewhere is saying that these credit card companies send these stupid annoying checks all of the time. This is true, but they are usually charging some kind of interest, albeit lower than the standard. This is for 0% for 18 months. A very important 18 months for me. You see, my being a department chair, and a class sponsor & a debate coach don't show up on monthly checks. Half of the year's payment for chair & sponsor show up in February & the other half in July or August. The February payment helps me pay for Christmas & the floating of real estate taxes that are due in December & May, but I do creative financing to get through. Remember I have not owed nor paid interest, but I have paid some 3% transaction fees along the way. Any way the debate coach pay, which I don't know when it will be paid, should make me debt free, except for my mortgage. This does of course assume I don't screw up again & that I continue to pay down my debts at my current rate.
The Lord is good. He knows my needs before I do.
In a way I see this financial help I keep getting at just the right time as a continuation of his confirming that the divorce was ok with him. Ok, now the right wingers are ticked off cuz God hates divorce...to you I say: read older posts & catch up on why I know it was OK.
____________
I have put off telling you about other issues that God has shown his hand in. Now seems like a good time.
There is a woman at work who berated me & told me I could not call her by her first name, though I had greeted her as such for about 6 months. This confrontation happened in July. At the time she called me a racist liar & a sleeping clueless teacher. Her office is now near Flirty's. I have spent time in their shared waiting room space supervising kids during my lunch. One day only the senior student who always visits Flirty at lunch was there with me. Flirty was no where to be seen at that time. We were looking at college brochures & talking about them. This woman had a problem with us being in that space. I ended up telling her that as a paid instructor on the staff I could spend my lunch and planning period any where I wanted & that I was supervising the student in this cooler place since my room had no air conditioning. Flirty suggested that I inform administration of the two confrontations. I put it off for a few days, but did so.
So, the student & I are at Flirty's for lunch one day 1 week after I e-mailed administration about the confrontations. He gets a call that a parent is coming in to talk, so the student & I move to the waiting area to give them privacy. The woman comes in & starts into her confrontational mode again. She goes & gets security. Security sees that another teacher is involved. He takes us to the Vice Principal that I sent the e-mail to. She sees who is coming in & shoos her current problem children far away. Then the VP goes into the Principal's office for about 5 minutes. He comes in and lets the confrontational woman talk first. She tells him that this student thinks he is special & should get to stay out of the cafeteria when the rule is that all students must go to the cafeteria. She does a lot of telling the Principal what I think & assume.
When she paused, I informed her that she should not assume that she knows what I think or why I do what I do. I will speak for myself. (When I tell friends of my saying this, they applaud me.)
When it was my turn, I told the principal that students all over the building do not go to lunch due to social, monetary & food reasons. We teachers adopt them & feed them & mentor them. This student was adopted by Flirty & I the previous year, and he had been one of the inspirations for the chess tournament since we had taught kids chess last year at lunchtime. I explained how the kid had been homeless & ready to drop out, but was now trying to be enough of a student to go to college.
Here comes the God part.
The principal agreed that this student is special. He does get to break the rule & doesn't have to go to the cafeteria, as long as he is with Flirty or me. The principal even said he wanted to help this student get clothes that fit. The senior is a LARGE boy/man & his current clothes are old & don't fit well. The kid had been noticed by the the principal & the principal had been trying to figure out how to help the kid. Now he knew two conduits to the kid... Flirty & me.
Another God part, which I may have shared before. The day before us teachers had to report for work in August, I asked my church to pray for me & the woman. I wanted to know how to interact with her appropriately. Her office used to be beside my classroom, & I had the students with whom she primarily worked. When I got to school on that Monday, I discovered that her office was not near mine, AND I now worked with Flirty's students & not hers. God knew my needs before I prayed & had a solution ready the day I needed it. There was only one glitch. I was to move into her old room & she hadn't surrendered the key, yet. She had to do that in front of administration. Her whole body language was a cuss word, that was easily read by them. I on the other hand was very very civilized. She has tenure, so it will take a lot to fire her. Meanwhile I pray that God finds a way to let her know that her job needs more compassion than she shows to our students and staff.
__________________
New topic:
The FBE (first boyfriend ever) e-mailed me this past week that he is going to get the divorce. He assures me that it is not because of me, but a long time building up & he's just had it. He called yesterday. I knew the moment the phone rang it was him because I had just answered his e-mail. When we were done talking an hour later my face hurt from all the smiling & laughing. I really should run & run hard in the opposite direction, but I don't want to. I am curious about him. I do want to get to know him better again. I wish he were already divorced so I would feel guilt free about it & so I wouldn't feel like he was rebounding. Heck, after this Flirty thing this past week, I would like to make certain I'm not rebounding too. If you get curious about some one before you feel almost heartbroken over a different relationship, is it a rebound? I don't think so. It is really amazing timing though.
And by the way, the computer matching only created 3 almost close encounters the first week, and not even a nibble since. Almost 2 months of the 6 I paid for used up. I've exchanged more e-mails with a very steamy guy in New York, with whom I've almost nothing in common, than I have with any one I have things in common with. Somehow the NewYorker clicked on my name & saw my profile. So I clicked on his. I really like his pictures, so I have looked more than once. The program shows us who has looked at our pictures. Most of the men remain in the exact same order, but New York's keeps floating back to the front of the list. So I asked him why. He scans through the profiles in such away that he doesn't know whose picture will come up next, & then there I am on his screen, so he moves to the recent lookers on my screen. Then I think he's gorgeous, but probably a real snob, and gaze at him some more.
Got to haul the son to his dad's. So I'll stop.
May God be with you when you need him & when you don't know you do.
Take care,
Pete
posted by Pete | 1:42 PM
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