Only 1 more day till Joey's birthday and 6 more days till Christmas...are we excited yet??? I know Joey is, and Chris just has no clue whats going on - all he knows is that he got presents last week and he's loving the new stuff :) I'm still bugging Joey about his birthday present, but he'll find out soon enough!

I got some crappy news yesterday, news that I was not expecting at all. I got mail from the wonderful people at EI telling me that my claim is done. DONE! I had no idea what they were talking about, and was wondering why the cheque they sent was for way less than what I expected. When I called them, they were so marvelously helpful in reading word for word what their stupid policies are instead of being human and telling me whats going on. You may remember that I was supposed to start back to work last week but because I had surgery the mat leave was extended to January 15. Seems that they don't like to do that - but they don't feel like they should tell people. I sent in all the required paperwork in June. No one there ever thought that it would be a good idea to call and let me know that it wasn't approved. My problem is that the people at my local HR office told me it would be extended... she even looked up on her calendar my return to work date and everything! I'm just so mad and frustrated right now. There is absolutely nothing that I can do - an appeal takes a while and you have to get representation, so I can't do that. Now we have to somehow scramble to get childcare arranged for an earlier date so I can get back to work. It really sucks - if they had just called and explained this back in the summer, I wouldn't have had a problem. Instead they wait till days before Christmas to screw me over. So to you wonderful EI people - thanks for wrecking Christmas - happy holidays to you. To the family that I can't get Christmas presents for now, ask the EI people why.

Enough of my rant. I'll figure it out, I usually do. It just sucks that it worked out this way.