My husband lost a job in February, got a new one in July. I went out to work full-time in April, then lost my job in September. Our bills got very behind, our savings dwindled to nothing, our credit cards got maxed out, and our house went into foreclosure. My homeschooled kids started public school in August.
I don't believe our little family still knows what hit us!
For the time being, though, I am home. Though I am still applying for jobs, there appears to be little hope of finding something in my field. Mike has a regular office job and appears to have given up his career as chef, but what he brings home is somewhat less than what we must pay out monthly, even if you don't consider that we're behind on everything and owe everyone.
I have applied for unemployment, but thus far have been denied for lack of 20 weeks of work in the employment period, which is crazy because I have been working since June of 2004! Apparently they couldn't find that work history and so now I am appealing their decision and waiting.
I am trying to find daycare clients, since I did that gig in the early 2000s and liked it a lot. Hopefully daycare clients will be easier to come by than jobs in my field!
I am just today applying for welfare, and for HEAP, and for free lunch for my children. My experience with Ohio Job and Family Services is that it's a nightmare for a neurotypical person, let alone an ADDer. I went back and forth trying to get paperwork together for them this past February so my children could have health insurance, and they kept doing things like losing my application and making me reapply. Then, I would miss a deadline and have to reapply. Rinse, repeat. My children never did get the heath insurance - I became employed in April and the subject became moot. I'll keep you posted on how well I do with them this time around, between the unemployment appeal and the application for welfare.
Here are my challenges:
- Keeping up on the phone calls. I have terrible phone phobia and don't even want to talk on the phone to friends! Which means, I can't keep up with my friends, much less keep up with the calls I need to take, like from potential daycare clients or the many, many people to whom we currently owe money.
- Keeping up on the housework. Luckily, I have
slaveschildren (kidding!). Let me tell you, though, shepherding thebig kidhusband and the little kids (kidding again, honey!) through picking up after themselves, doing their chores timely, and getting along with each other is a full-time job in and of itself. More on that later. - Keeping control of the paperwork monster. I instituted a binder system to corral the monstrous mass of billls and collections, and the even more monstrous mass of papers the children bring home from school. This is a simple, five minute per day process. Unfortunately, if you go a MONTH without doing it, somehow it gets overwhelming and papers take over the universe. Go figure.
- Keeping up with the laundry. You might have seen my earlier blog about my laundry system. I have now refined that system and combined it with a family closet to kill forever the "clothing lying all over the house" epidemic. Unfortunately, it mutated to a "clothing perpetually lying at the bottom of the stairs" disease, which is not quite so bad - at least it's all in one place - but I can't seem to remember to go down there and do laundry every day. More on my wonderoo fanterific laundry system in a later post.
- Keeping sane. When you have to worry about your vehicle being repossessed, when you bounce the rent check, when you owe people money, and when your children wish they could have their old, homeschooled life back, depression really tries to get in there and sabotage all your efforts at keeping it all moving. 5HTP is my friend. And boy, somehow it really helps to pray and read scripture (again, go figure!) but I can't seem to remember to do that as regularly as I'd like.
