{"id":179,"date":"2009-08-04T18:26:19","date_gmt":"2009-08-05T01:26:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quesejoda.com\/blog\/?p=179"},"modified":"2009-08-07T07:06:56","modified_gmt":"2009-08-07T14:06:56","slug":"107-and-counting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quesejoda.com\/blog\/107-and-counting\/","title":{"rendered":"107 and counting…"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"107
107 and a half<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Yano and I frequently talk about retirement.\u00c2\u00a0 We dream of idillic beaches, room service, and pi~na coladas.\u00c2\u00a0 And rarely are we a day over 40 when we visualize ourselves in the post-work era.\u00c2\u00a0 How is that going to happen when 40 is creeping up on us at such an unprecedented pace?\u00c2\u00a0 No idea.\u00c2\u00a0 But it doesn’t hurt to dream.<\/p>\n

Lately I’ve become far more realistic, the 401k being more like a 201k these days.\u00c2\u00a0 Now our dreams include a 20 minute drive to the beach (on public transport) with a cooler of Ensure.<\/p>\n

I’ve been thinking that when one of us passes away, I can cash in Yano’s life insurance and move to Thailand, where I can at least pay for an assisted living facility with re-runs of Baywatch while I sip my cold Ensure.\u00c2\u00a0 Unfortunately, these thoughts have all but come to standstill.<\/p>\n

Today we went to Camaron to see some more extended family.\u00c2\u00a0 We saw acres and acres of pastures full of cattle and\u00c2\u00a0 speckled with small wooden huts.\u00c2\u00a0 At each relative stop, we ended up with more and more gifts of fruit, until the local buses felt sorry for us and started giving us free rides to our next stops.\u00c2\u00a0 The eye opening thing was to realize that there was not a household without a 90 year old– sometimes two.\u00c2\u00a0 A great uncle was out tending cows at 92, and when we returned home we were greeted by the grandma taking care of another uncle.\u00c2\u00a0 Grandma’s 90.\u00c2\u00a0 The great great great great something rather she’s taking care of is 107.\u00c2\u00a0 In 5 months he’ll be 108.\u00c2\u00a0 His diet of choice?\u00c2\u00a0 Fried plantains, fried corn sticks, and an assortment of other fried things.\u00c2\u00a0 Something’s wrong with this picture.<\/p>\n

Somehow I doubt I’ll be outliving Yano, as all her dead grandparents were over a century old.\u00c2\u00a0 (Oh, except the 95 year old who was mugged for $5).\u00c2\u00a0 Now what are my chances of a single Thai retirement when my wife runs twice a day and eats only healthy food with a miniscule dose of daily cookies?\u00c2\u00a0 Pretty close to zip.\u00c2\u00a0 On the upside, I’m pretty much guaranteed a personal nurse in my later years– a nurse who will probably remarry thrice before dying at 115.<\/p>\n

Oh yeah, I broke my tooth today eating sugar cane.\u00c2\u00a0 Most centurians I’ve met here have a full set of teeth, but they’ve obviously not fallen down face first on a bike.\u00c2\u00a0 Stupid me for trying to peel sugar cane with my teeth.\u00c2\u00a0 More details and pictures of this fiasco later.\u00c2\u00a0 Needless to say, I’m not allowed to smile while meeting new relatives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yano and I frequently talk about retirement.\u00c2\u00a0 We dream of idillic beaches, room service, and pi~na coladas.\u00c2\u00a0 And rarely are we a day over 40 when we visualize ourselves in the post-work era.\u00c2\u00a0 How is that going to happen when 40 is creeping up on us at such an unprecedented pace?\u00c2\u00a0 No idea.\u00c2\u00a0 But it … Continue reading 107 and counting…<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quesejoda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quesejoda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quesejoda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quesejoda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quesejoda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/quesejoda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":195,"href":"https:\/\/quesejoda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179\/revisions\/195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quesejoda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quesejoda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quesejoda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}