And I survived the 1960s; graduated high school in Seattle in 1967.  I survived the 1970s; graduated from college in 1971. Drove halfway across the country in my mother’s 1962 Chevy II, which broke down in rural Montana.  Graduated with a Masters in Psychology from the University of Minnesota in 1973; got married in July of 1973.  Returned to Seattle in 1974, hubby got a job as a transformer winder, I finally got a job as pricing clerk in the pharmacy at the big public hospital.  I waited in long gas lines in that Chevy II.  Spent 10 years as a hospital pharmacy technician.  We bought our first house in 1977, for $33,000, at about a 13% interest rate.  I survived the 1980s, inflation, Carter, and very high income taxes.  Hubby and I had to file at the higher single rate and have extra withheld from both of our paychecks to satisfy our tax obligation.  We survived.  I quit work, went back to school at community college, got a job in my new field.

Divorced in 1991.  My job lasted all of nine months before the company went belly-up, and I was back on the street with no income and a pittance in unemployment compensation since I had been in school.  For two years, I worked temp jobs to supplement the unemployment.  Finally got another job.  Bought a condo with the proceeds from my half of the house.  Job only lasted five months before the company laid off half their staff.  I now had no job, a newly-minted mortgage, and tiny unemployment.  I could not find any kind of work in a new field, so I renewed my pharmacy tech license and got a job at a local health clinic.  My first winter in the new condo (which had individual space heaters in each room), one of those heaters broke, and I froze until I could find a replacement and persuade a friend to install it.

In 1993, I finally got a full-time job that lasted.  Whew!  Lived on a shoestring, survived the 1990s.  Well, until 1999.  That year:  my mother died, I had knee surgery, and I got a bad case of Coxsackie virus where I could not eat or talk for two weeks.  But I survived the 1990s.

Met Ray at a party in 2000, re-met in 2001 at same party, started dating.  I was working all this time, but had gotten laid off at least twice and found new jobs.  We got married in 2003.  The decade of the 2010s was incredibly prosperous for us both.  Then came 2020.  The aerospace economy tanked, and we were both out of jobs.  But we have both survived.

And you will, too.  The world looks very dark and forbidding right now, with war, food shortages, skyrocketing inflation and gas prices; riots, gun-control, and DemocRats around every corner doing their best to destroy America.

But we will survive.  You do what you have to do to get through, and you get through.

Of course, having your Ricochet Family in your corner helps a great deal, doesn’t it?  Onward!