Happy 6th Birthday Dominic!

Yep, today is my son's 6th birthday!

Lesa, I copied the "cake" you had on your blog! : )

It's hard to believe my little boy is 6 already. It went by so fast! It doesn't seem like that long ago that he was this little:

But now he's this big:

He even lost his first tooth last week! One minute he wants to do every thing by himself - getting mad if I try to help him zip his coat, or put on a DVD for him to watch (he's better at operating the DVD player than I am, ha, ha!), and then the next minute he'll run up to me, throw his arms around me, and tell me "I haven't had any hugs today!" or "I haven't had any kisses today!". I'm not looking forward to the age when he'll get embarrassed if I hug or kiss him. Happy birthday to my sweet little boy!

I realize I haven't been updating my blog much lately. I've been so preoccupied with my job situation lately that it's been hard concentrating on anything else. As you probably already surmised, I was laid off from the BOE again. They laid off all of the temps on Christmas Eve, but never bothered to notify anyone. Yep. I didn't work on Christmas Eve because of the weather, and most of the temps left early that day. From what I heard from another temp, one of the supervisors said late in the day (after most everyone had gone home) that Christmas Eve "might" be our last day.

We weren't scheduled to go back to work until the 29th. I came down with a horrific case of the flu two days before that. I hadn't been that sick with the flu in years. I barely made it out of bed to go to work on the 29th, but dragged myself into work anyway (as did most of the temps), only to find that all the temps were indeed laid off on Christmas Eve. No one got a call saying they were laid off, and the supervisors were shocked that so many people showed up to work. What did they expect?! The supervisors were trying to find work for the day for people who showed up, but I felt so sick and apparently looked so bad that the head of the department took one look at me and sent me home.

I had applied for unemployment pay after my first layoff in mid-December, and got the determination on Christmas Eve. I was turned down, because according to the unemployment office, I didn't have at least 20 weeks of "covered" employment or earned at least $206 a week before taxes during my employment. I earned more than $206 a week with the BOE, but was only there about 15 or 16 weeks.Upon looking into the unemployment law though, I realized that they were looking at any employment I had during what they consider my "base period", which is from 7/1/07-6/30/08. I was employed at my pre-BOE job during that time period. That employer was a nonprofit (church), which don't pay into the state unemployment fund, so the unemployment office told me that employment would most likely not count.

However, I found this on the unemployment bureau's website:

What is covered employment? Under Ohio law, most employers are required to pay contributions for unemployment insurance. Work for such an employer is "covered" employment. Work for a nonprofit or government agency is "covered" employment, even though the employer does not pay regular contributions, but instead reimburses the cost of unemployment benefits paid to its former workers. In that case, my employment with the church qualifies as "covered employment" for the purposes of receiving unemployment pay. I filed an appeal that day (stating that I did indeed have at least 20 weeks of covered employment, with all of the necessary information), and just received a new determination today.

So, in that case, my employment with the church IS covered employment! I filed an appeal on Christmas Eve, and was told it would take 21 days for a decision. I recieved the decision today, and well, I was still refused unemployment benefits, for the same reason as before! I'm so angry I could scream! I've been out of work nearly a month with no pay. Prior to that, I hadn't had a full paycheck in over a month, between my first layoff, and the BOE cutting the temps' hours after the November 4th election.

I filed a second appeal today, which will go to the Ohio Unemployment Compensation Review Commission, who will grant me a hearing on my appeal. In the meantime though, I can't afford to wait another three weeks to a month to see what will happen with my second appeal. I feel just sick over this. I've been applying and applying for jobs and haven't had a single interview in months. A friend of mine - a temp from the BOE, who recently found a permanent job, and who has HR experience, revamped my resume for me. Maybe that will help, but I'm not very hopeful, given all the bad luck and disappointments I've had over the past year with job hunting.

In other news, my husband's company just laid off 1,300 people across Ohio and I think Pennsylvania. This is the second round of layoffs they've had in a month. Fortunately they haven't laid off anyone from my husband's department (maintenance) yet, but he's worried that it might still be coming, and with him having the least seniority of anyone in the department, that wouldn't bode well for him. I'm praying they don't lay him off, because we'd be just absolutely screwed financially.

I have finished some crochet projects lately, and I'll post them in the next day or so. I've been working on some things for my Etsy shop. I set one up, but haven't put anything up for sale yet. I need to get a foam mannequin head to display hats, and some kind of banner for my Etsy shop (I don't have the software to make one). Those will have to wait a while too.