Things Besides Wedding Planning Have Been Going On

But First...NINE MORE DAYS!!

It's getting really real!

Melissa (Anthony's mom) and I have been burning up the phone and Internet lines between us this week. Everything is coming together. 

I can't wait to get these two hitched!!




Other things...

We've had a lot of other things going on this year that I haven't written about here or on Facebook. Of course, there was Thomas' knee replacement, which I DID write about. But being pain-free and able to walk Eler Beth down the aisle without limping wasn't the only reason Thomas decided to have the surgery when he did. He knew he might get laid off in the Spring.

Thomas has always had this uncanny knack for knowing when something big was going to happen at work. He has been with this company for a total of 21 years and over those years he has dealt with contract negotiations every three or four years and the occasional strike or lay off. He has always seen it coming and never have we had to deal with his being off work for very long. One year I can remember him telling me that he had a feeling there was going to be a strike and that it would probably last for quite a while. He had a job lined up before they even voted on the contract. Sure enough, the vote was to strike and the union and company didn't come to terms for four whole months.  But Thomas had us covered.

So last summer he told me that he was getting vibes throughout "the yard" that something was going on with the company and that since 2018 was a contract year he was expecting it to be a difficult contract -- "If it even comes to that," he said. As the year went on he said he had a feeling that it was more than that and that the company was in financial trouble. By December he was talking to a friend of a friend who had offered him a job in the past, just "keeping my options open."  By the end of December we had sat down, done our finances, figured out what Eler Beth's wedding was going to cost (!!!!!), and made sure that if he was off for several weeks recuperating from knee surgery, that we could manage on his short-term disability. "They're going to be laying off, and it would take a lot for them to reach me, but I have a feeling they're going to actually close the doors before contract time in April," is what he told me.

So he made the appointment for the knee surgery, we were kept apprised of what was happening at work by friends, and about every two weeks a group of salaried and hourly employees got their lay off notices. "It'll hit me about the middle of March," he told me.

Sure enough, as of March 12 he was laid off. By that time he had applied to about a dozen companies and had taken interviews with three of them. The company announced before the end of March that it would be closing down completely by May.  Two weeks ago he had five job offers and just had to decide which was going to work best for us, hour-wise and money-wise. Last week he accepted the best offer, we moved his 401k to a different investment firm, and Monday the 9th he will start with a new company.

His former company may regroup and come back in a year or two with new investors/owners, probably non-union, and perhaps not doing the same type of work as before, or it may never come back. But either way Thomas will never work for them again. He gave them a lot of years of his life, a lot of really hard physical labor, and a lot of skill and experience, for which he has vested pension with them. He'll take the hard work, skill, and experience somewhere else now until time to retire, and the work he'll be doing won't be as physically demanding.

I'm glad he had the foresight to see this coming and make the arrangements he did. And I'm glad I had the foresight two years ago to elect a supplemental critical illness insurance through his company because when he got prostate cancer last year, it paid off well. Not that we're glad he got the cancer, but the insurance payment took care of us while he was home recuperating from the knee surgery, paid for Eler Beth's wedding (!!!!! I can't believe how expensive nice -- not extravagant -- weddings are now !!!!!) and kept us from having to really worry about the possibility of his being laid off for a while before finding the right job.

So, yeah, we've been pretty busy and preoccupied the past nine months or so, and not just from wedding planning. So far things are working out okay, and I hope they continue to do so. But if they don't, we'll deal with it. We're resilient and creative, and so far we've faced everything with the right attitude.  Life can throw some wicked curve balls, and things don't always turn out the way we need them to. Sometimes those silver linings are there, and sometimes they aren't. But we're determined to make the most of them when they are there and just plow on when they aren't.

More later...

~~ Lori