First Days of Unemployment and Instant Karma

Well, we are on day two of Keith's forced vacation and I haven't strangled him yet. I'm cutting him a lot of slack before I start nagging him to get things done, and have been letting him do whatever he feels like these first few days. He has run a few errands with me and taken a few naps so far.

We tried to apply for unemployment but were stopped at one of the first questions on the online application, which asks if you got any forms from your employer, which he hadn't, but I told him to call his now ex-boss and ask him about it since usually you are given some kind of paperwork packet when they give you all your severance stuff. Yes, a packet is on its way in the mail from corporate and needs to be filled out and sent in to unemployment if you want to qualify for any federal benefits extensions. So, we will wait for those forms.

Earlier this week we saw a story on our local news about the homeless shelter downtown and how they are running out of food in their food bank, food that they give out to people who are not necessarily homeless but don't have money to buy food. The state has cut funding to food banks so they are relying on local donations for the most part. Well, since we are lucky enough to have a severance check that we took to the bank and unemployment coverage that will start coming in later this month (hopefully) we thought that it would be a good thing to buy some extra non-perishables and drive down to the homeless shelter and drop them off.

Which we did this morning. I went over to Winco and spent $25.00 on cans and boxes of cheap and not really healthy food, but when you have no food and are hungry who cares if it's just mac and cheese and not the best or most nutritious food in the world. Hungry people just want some dinner.

I had never been to the homeless shelter and while it's in a very run down industrial part of town and it smelled really badly like poop when I got out of the car, what I could see of the shelter looked like they really make an effort to provide a decent place for homeless people to stay. There was a nice fenced off play area for the little kids and other than the poop smell things looked fairly clean.

I decided then and there that while we can, we will buy a few extra items when shopping and put them aside for the next trip across town to drop them off. If we put a little good deed doing in the karma bank maybe it will come back to us in the form of a good job for Keith.