I have varying feelings ranging from “we’ll be just fine” to the staring into space “oh. my. gosh. What are we going to do?”

Applying for unemployment is a pain in the butt. Apparently you have to do this every week or at least within 2 weeks. We’d first applied almost a year ago when he had to take his first forced week off, right before my water broke. He had his waiting week then, or so we thought (the week you have to wait before you will start getting payments when you apply). We didn’t do anything with it again until this past fall. He’d had a couple of other weeks off in between then, but I think he took vacation pay then. Since it was longer than 28 days and no other claims were made, we were told we had another waiting week. Then we filed for the last week of the year and no payment ever came. Come to find out, the “case” went stale when there was no activity on it yet the site continued to take and verify his information, but nothing would progress. Steve talked to a guy on the phone and sorted it out, at least I think it’s taken care of. But unemployment… that’s going to be an adjustment. I need to sit down and budget it all out. And do my business sales tax. Ugh, I’m behind this year (but not late yet thankfully).

But as far as going back to work… he’s #755 on the books which means there are 754 guys in front of him waiting for a job. They estimate a period of 18 months to two years before a job would get to him. Unemployment lasts, what, a year? And the prices of things keep rising and the brains of the people running our country keep going down the toilet… it’s not going to get better. Two years is probably a best-case scenario.

It ticks me off, all the work and money leaving this country because of the morons we have in office who either can’t see or completely don’t care how this affects the little guy. Bring back the jobs, idiots, and the economy will pick up.

This sucks.

What do 379 miles, 3 days, 23 hours, and $153 all have in common? They were all wasted this weekend.

It was about 379 miles in round trips from home to the fair three times, including picking Elijah up tonight on the way home. He stayed Friday and Saturday night with my parents. This does not include Steve’s two trips. That would be about another 222 miles.

It was 3 days out of my life that I will never get back.

It was 23 hours of working and drive time. 23 hours of pure boredom.

It was about $153 that I wouldn’t have had to spend had I not done this fair. That includes the $90 registration fee for a space that turned out to be way too small and sales that didn’t even make that back.

The most money I made this weekend came from my “booth mates” and includes a custom order. We each had a 9′x5′ space and were back-to-back. I have a feeling that I would not have sold to them had one of the ladies not already purchased some from me last weekend and fallen in love. But we were quite crammed together all weekend – think of it, 10 feet, at least 4 of which is taken up by tables. We had to sit back-to-back in that little space, four, sometimes five people, but at least always three people.

And the people that were to my right are lucky that I’m an honest person. They had their area set up so stupidly that at least 30% of their buyers seriously tried to pay me for their stuff. Now, on the other hand, I must also say that the buyers were thinking stupidly because my booth is obviously not the other booth as well. We had a walkway between the two and they had dark blue backing and I have my pink table cloths, and every time I was not paying attention to these people because they were not at my booth!

Bottom line? I am not doing this fair next year or in the spring. During clean-up, a lady behind me came back and said that the craft people were telling some crafters that if they did not stay open until four that they were not welcome back the next year. I said, let them come over here and I would say that I didn’t care, I am not coming back, and exactly what I think of their fair…