Unemployment......the saga.

One week of unemployment and life has been .....irritating. I call these nickel and dime days because nothing has been life threatening just.....irritating.
Last weekend at the Mart was Hell. Friday night, I worked from 6pm-11pm non stop. After returning home at 11:30, I had a very hard time falling asleep and didn't drift off to dreamland until way past 1am. Four hours later, the alarm went off. I dragged my butt out of bed at 5am so I could be at work at 7 and it was of course, really busy all morning. I could not WAIT until lunch. After my hour lunch flew by, I reluctantly walked back to the front. One of my co-workers met me and "suggested" I head back to the break room and take cover. A fire in a transformer knocked out all the power. The store was on backup generator and only 3 registers in the entire store were functional. Hundreds of customers with carts full of everything from flowers to frozen foods were read to hang us in effigy. It was my job to collect all the abandoned carts, sort them and refer all the screaming customers to management so the customers could scream at them and management could tell them that there was nothing they could do about the power outage. Wal-mart is huge and powerful but we do not own our own electrical grid. We were down for almost 4 hours. The doors were locked and no lie, people were pressing their noses to the glass, screaming at management in anger as if we were not one of 5 Wal-Marts in a 10 mile radius but that's OK. Obviously for them, it was cathartic. Sunday was equally as hellish without the power outage. After lifting at least 200 48 packs of bottled water, 20lb bags of dog food and kitty litter, I was pooped when I left the store on Sunday and once home, I hit the couch and didn't move. Monday, it rained. It rained out our BBQ. Fine. Whatever. It was a great workout for the new stove. On Tuesday, I had a 504 meeting planned for Emily at her school at 3pm. I received a call from the U of C that I had an appointment scheduled with the Dr. at 1:30. OOOO! Not good! With the traffic, there was no way I was going to be able to make it to her school by 3. Called early to see if I could have the blood work done another time. "What if we got you out by 1:30" said the nurse. UGH! OK. I made the trek in. I sat in construction and horrible traffic and it took 90 minutes to get downtown. Of course there was a delay in the blood lab. I didn't get out by 1:30. I got stuck in the elevator and the valet took 30 minutes to get my car. At 2:20, I was finally on my way and sitting in traffic....a LOT of traffic. Traffic that translated to 2 hours to get from the downtown to Arlington Heights. I missed my meeting. I was annoyed. We rescheduled it for Wednesday at noon. Emily's kindergarten graduation was at 5. I made it home from the hospital at 4:20 and we had to be at school by 4:30. I raced in. Kristopher was not home. I was annoyed. We left without him. At 4:45, he called from somewhere. "You have until 5 to get to the school" I told him. After the graduation, I raced Emily to tee ball. While there, Cassie called to ask me to bring home hot dog buns. As it was 7:45 now and I had not been home since 11:45, I stopped off at the little Mexican tienda on the corner. They had 2 shelves full of hamburger buns but not a single hot dog bun. I went to dollar general next door. Nada. 7/11 had them for 3.50 but I didn't care about price anymore. I just wanted to go home. Wednesday, I woke up early and sat down at my laptop. It wouldn't boot up. GREAT!!! It was making a grinding noise before it stopped working all together. That makes one stove, one washing machine, one dishwasher and now one laptop on the fritz. Fortunately, the laptop is on warranty. After shuffling through piles and piles and piles of papers, I found the warranty info and of course, there was no 800 number. I called Tiger Direct, now COMP USA and was met by two confused employees. After being "disconnected" twice, I was given 800-comp-usa to contact. Whoever answered the phone was not the nicest and told me they had nothing to do with warranties and try whoever gave me the warranty in the first place which was Bankers with no 800 number. He did find me the 800 number and I called only to find myself in a huge VRU loop. The option that applied kept disconnecting me and when I tried other options, it referred me to option that kept disconnecting me. In absolute irritation, I kept pounding 0 which connected me to a person...finally and the technical equivalent to Nurse Ratchett answered the phone. I told her i believed that my laptop had a bad fan. It's not the first bad fan I had ever had so I recognized the symptoms. "Well, let's do some troubleshooting anyway" she said. "OK," I said, "but it's the fan." She wanted me to remove the battery. Try as I might, I couldn't get the battery out of the back of the laptop. "Maam, you're going to have to call me back. I have people waiting." LIKE HELL I AM!! This person was going to WAIT until I wrestled that DAMN battery out of the back of the laptop and if she so much as thought of disconnecting me after the problems I had getting to her in the first place, she had another thing coming. As she tapped her pencil, she said once more to get a neighbor to help me and call back. With a final pull, that battery finally came out. OK, she said. Power it down, remove the power cord, hold the power button for 40 secs and then plug it back in and boot up. Done, I said. "What does the screen say?" She asked. "Fan error!" HA! ....I'll get my laptop back in 3 weeks. In the meantime, I'm on the slow as molasses backup computer. I was annoyed. Yesterday, in the mail, I received a letter from the State of IL that they are not granting my unemployment benefits until I have a face to face meeting with them regarding my school schedule. The meeting is in 2 weeks. WONDERFUL!!! As it will take 8 weeks for AT&T to give me my severance, what in the world will I have to live on for 2 weeks? Annoyed again. Apparently, full time school schedules are not allowed on Unemployment. As I put down that I am taking one class this summer and one class in the Fall, I think it's pretty clear that I'm not going to school full time. But if they want to waste time with a meeting, so be it. My employers have been paying my unemployment insurance for 20 years and my little Chem class is now an issue. I don't see how a phone call could not have set things straight but this is the government.
Wondering why it smelled like crap and dirty socks in Kris's room, I investigated. I found my answer and EWWWWWW!!! is all I'm going to say about that. I cleaned two rooms from top to bottom. I have done oodles and oodles and oodles of laundry and am one sweaty tired out mess by the end of the night and the house still looks yucky because I have disassembled in order to reassemble if that makes sense.
I hope I find a job soon. This "nothing to do" is exhausting.

As a PPS: I went to the pharmacy yesterday to pick up Emily's meds. Her first day out of Kindergarten was hard for me and for her as her routine was disrupted. She was absolutely horrible all day. When they said it would cost 200 dollars, I was stunned. The pharmacist told me to call the company and find out what happened. I was practically in tears when I walked away. No unemployment, no paycheck, no 200 for prescriptions. AT&T canceled the benefit but had not put the COBRA through. This means that the Dr. appointment I had on Tuesday was not covered either which means another headache. All shall be cleared by Wednesday but will we survive an unmedicated Emily? We'll find out.