Bummed...

Friday afternoon as Jon is in the Jeep about to leave his work for the day, his supervisor comes up and knocks on his window handing him an envelope.... Never really good news... Soo, like we were afraid of (because of the economy and rumors we had heard) Jon was one of the 5 that day to be laid-off. So here we are, thankful to have each other and a little bit of savings put away. We are one week away from him leaving for his summer AT(Annual Training with the National Guard) so it's a good and bad time for this... bad because we now have a week of no pay right before another stretch of weeks before another check, but good because we have our ultrasound this week (yay.. crossing our fingers the baby won't be so 'shy'..) and Zoey has a dentist appointment, and it can give us a little down time before AT. So, temporarily he is working out at the armory during the day and they will be able to pay him like he is making up a drill weekend or something, but it will be something at least. We have car payment, insurance due while he's gone and then rent due shortly after he returns (15th-29th he's gone) then although his AT check is the biggest one he gets from the Guard all year, it takes over a week for them to processs and get them actually to us... Soo.. we are utterly greatful for having an ever so small savings.
Just one thing we've been thinking about though, that doesn't seem quite fair... If an employee wants to quit a job they are required or requested to put in a 2 week notice so the employer can look for a replacement, etc.. Well..... if a company decides they are going to lay-off and employee no notice is required. Like us.. it was a normal Friday afternoon, heading home from a long day's work and they knock on our vehicle window... Here we are, not living the best within our means but working on it, two young children in diapers, and expecting our third.... Even a few days notice that this was going to happen would have been nice so he could have at least been putting applications in and getting something else set up for work. There aren't many decent places to work that you can just walk-on. There is a process that takes a while to get started working. So all this time that his employer knew they were going to be laying people off they couldn't have notified us of it? Now we have this lapse in paycheck and I am in a panic feeling of what we are going to do with nothing lined up we are praying to find a decent job, nothing we've seen so far will pay what he was making so we will be taking quite a paycut as well as the lapse in checks because of the time it is going to take to find a job... So we are going from 15 an hour with 40 hour weeks, to the Unemployment office telling us we can get 198 a week.... Sigh... Anywho... I knew the times were suppose to be getting harder, it's been in our counsel forever to 'Be Prepared', well Get Prepared People!! I don't anticipate it getting any easier on us... :(

I pray that my friends are well and doing better that we are at the moment. I have two hymns that have been circling thru my head lately, "Be thou Humble" and "Did you think to Pray". I wonder if the spirit was trying to tell me something...

"When life gets too hard to stand, Kneel.."