Finances, Friends and Friday School

This is a picture that I really like of my Mom & Julia. I took it a couple of days ago at moms. It makes me smile! My parents are so good to my kids!!!

Today was a pretty good day overall. Woke up not feeling all that great because I'm struggling with some money issues. This is something that has been going on for over two weeks and we still haven't figured it out. I just hope it does get figured out soon. Rod's been getting paid from the money that he's put in to unemployment while he was working at Verizon. Or so that's how it was basically explained to me.

Well we knew that that money would run out sometime in December. It actually didn't run out until January. During December Rod called and called trying to get ahold of someone at unemployment to ask how the transition from unemployment income to workforce income happens.

Over two weeks, he couldn't get ahold of anyone. Offices were closed b'c of weather etc. He finally got ahold of someone the first week of January, who told him that before he's eligible for the workforce money (which he's been told has been approved) he has to apply for the emergency unemployment money. Somehow that wasn't ever explained to us. So he mailed that form in - and has emailed someone who verified that, yes, he form has been recieved.

He's supposed to continue filing for unemployment, until this emergency benefit kicks in. I guess everyone that has been on unemployment since they put a law through last summer, is eligible to apply for these extra weeks of unemployment benefits. We just had no clue. So - we are waiting to see if he's been accepted for this particular set of benefits. After those run out, he goes on to workforce benefits until school is finished.

I guess we should have known that it couldn't have been so easy as to get it set up once. Turns out we will end up doing this three times (first, unemployment; second, emergency unemployment; third, workforce) I seriously hope I can just hold out until things kick in again. We have bills to pay and at the beginning of the month, we have rent to pay. It takes a couple of his checks to pay for rent, so we need at least two to come through before the 5th. Anyway, all of this is on my mind and I just didn't sleep well!

On a lighter note, the kids had friends night at Avon tonight. We took the kids over to Janet's this afternoon (Julia has been begging to see Elaina) so that they could go to friends night while we go to our Friday School Board meeting tonight.

After we dropped them off, Rod took me over to Jessie's so that we could catch up. It's been since before it snowed that I've seen her. We chatted on the phone and then I asked if I could come spend some time with her while Rod studied. I thought that since the kids were at Janet's it might be nice for him to have some quiet time at home to do some homework. We had a great time chatting, of course. Jessie is such a good friend.

I feel like I've been cooped up in my house so much lately that I haven't seen any my friends. It was good for me to see a couple of the girls today. I'm hoping that I can make a real effort to do more of that - because all of us need it!

Josiah had been at mom and dad's cutting wood this afternoon. Mom took Josiah over to Janet's so that he could go to friends night too. That was really nice of her!

Rod picked me up from Jessies and we went to our meeting, which went smoothly. We talked about things like Friday School Registration and dates for the coming term. My head is in such a fog! I am SO not ready to deal with all of the details of Friday school, yet I have to anyway! That was quite a shift in thought tonight... trying to get myself on track. Looks like we have things set up to run pretty smoothly for this coming term, which is good!