Fun EI Facts

I've been going through the process of applying for Employment Insurance, as they call it these days.  Had a few questions which I couldn't find answers for on the Service Canada website.  The service representative that I spoke with couldn't answer them either, and had to refer the questions upwards.

• I must report any income I receive while I'm on EI; this counts against my EI payments, fractionally up to some level, then 100% deducted.
• Sale of possessions is not "income"...
• ... Unless I obtain or create them after filing a claim for EI, in which case the sale would be considered a home business and hence "income".

This may affect any hypothetical sales, for example of plush toys.  Presumably if I sold items I currently own, and then created identical items to replace them, that would not be "income".  Unless I then went and sold the replica items as well.

Feh.  I'm intelligent, educated, creative, and in decent health.  I'm supposed to be one of the people keeping things going, for some value of "things".  Instead, I've spent most of the last few days washing all my windows, dusting, cleaning, sorting and tidying — all very much needed, without question, and there's a lot more to do, but it doesn't feel productive.  I'm feeling very drone-like, in several senses.

(Free-sample bottles of shampoo, and hotel shampoos, are usually much too strongly scented for me to use.  But they make effective detergent  for cleaning.  As an economization, it's so trivial as to be pointless, but more important, using up those little bottles is clutter reduction.  I've got way too much crap around here.)