Retired ???

I have been pontificating lately about how nicely life has work out. I had way different plans for old age than Ecuador. Retirement was never part of it. Yet here I sit on a Friday night in a half completed guest house in the Andes Mountains with my faithful dog waiting for the morning sun. I may do some work tomorrow or not. The weather will be the same as yesterday and the day before, the same as tomorrow and the day after – pleasant. I don't have a potful of money or some gold lined pension plan but I have enough for Ecuador. I guess I am retired.
There is only one person responsible for this state of affairs, my wife. She is the one with the open mindedness to consider alternatives and do the research, the one to take an early retirement when she wasn't really ready to retire. She stays in Cuenca while I go out to play, still tethered to her computer and the internet, teaching online courses at Missouri State University. At least she doesn't have to go on campus and lecture every day and maybe this will be her last semester. You see she really had no retirement plans either, unless you consider teaching until you can't anymore a plan.
Ecuador has been good for both of us; we could have never retired in the U.S... We would have tried about 5 years from now but I don't think it is possible to survive on a fixed income in an environment of high inflation, rapidly increasing regulation and higher taxes; somebody is going to have to work until the day they die.

Well so much for that - I got back to Cuenca today (Monday) it's a rain day and without a shop I really don't have much to do when it rains. I really do need to get started on a shop space but I really need to get started on a lot of things. I think I will run this by my wife and see if she would like to priorities things for me.