I’ve come a long way since the Bill Clinton era gov’t shutdowns. If memory serves (and it may not), there were two, one very short, the other protracted. I did not do well during those. I was (by choice) not gainfully employed during that period. The GG was a federal employee. A non-essential one, as they say. And no, he did not keep airplanes from crashing into each other but those people are apparently non-essential also. go figger.

We were low on cash at that point. Not because we’d been living high on the hog, nope. I mean, we were probably spending more money than we needed to but in a poor man’s kind of way. What we were really doing was doggedly working on paying off our mortgage early. At 13 years. It was a 30-year adjustable rate mortgage and we had won that gamble just about every year we had that mortgage so I was able to make much larger payments than required.

I won’t detail that fugly period in our lives (actually, I think I have blocked the details of my then moodiness). When it finally ended, beaucoup bucks in back pay arrived and within a few months the Landfill mortgage was paid off as well as the POC, a beautiful but problematical vee-hickle. That was the last car we paid for with a traditional car loan.

By the next time a gov’t shutdown directly affected us, I mean in terms of our livelihood, I was working for Corporate America. My salary was plenty enough to keep us afloat, we had absolutely no debt, and the GG took the Lyme Lounge off somewhere. Of course I was ecstatic about our situation (compared to the last shut-down) but I always feel empathy for federal workers who are furloughed with no pay. Or in some cases WORKING with no pay. This is not how people should be treated.

This time around, he is retired and I am still employed (for now). If a social security check arrives late (and I always feel like I’m double dipping somehow although I know I am not), we’ll be fine. I’m not sure what else could affect us except maybe national parks/forests closing to the public.

I’ll rant (or not) another day (again) about how Trump runs over “little people’s” (like me) lives in his attempts to do, hmmm, what? Destabilize our country by creating chaos? Big Ugly Bill indeed. That’s why we are in this shutdown.

Disclaimers: 1) That is not my photo. A daughter sent it to me from her township fair last weekend. 2) I normally blur (or “rabbit peep”) out license plate alphanumeric characters when I post them but this is attached to an amphibious car and I bet this car is not normally on the road a whole lot. Throughout my life, I have on multiple occasions encountered amphibious cars at the mouth of the Tahquamenon River. Not sure if this one has ever been there or not.

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