Should I say Happy May Day? Isn’t that a communist holiday? I wonder if they celebrate that in Venezuela?

Yes, I am well aware I have bad jokes. Dry as the desert. Corny as Choclo.

I did a fast run to Cuenca today. My day started off a bit slow, as I had no water. It seems once a week they shut off my water on Monday mornings for a few hours, so I had to wait to shower. I sat reviewing my last video… again. I had to see it once more to confirm it was as bad as I thought. It was not only bad, but it’s embarrassing. I wasn’t myself. Maybe I was trying to hard to inject some energy. But as much as I hate myself in videos, it was even worse watching someone that wasn’t me. I have to face it, I am just dry and boring. I will just concentrate on the topic and stop worrying about being so watchable. I did a video on transportation. A pretty important topic really and I think it was a mistake to try to cover it in one video. Perhaps broken into parts, and do 3 or 4 might make more sense.

Today the neighbors have installed a new electrical service. I really missed a cool shot for video. The guy went up the power pole with this weird steel chains and rods on his feet. It looked totally unsafe, but a great visual. By the time I got to the camera, it was over. Dammit!

My Spanish is slowly getting better. I actually had a bit of a conversation with the taxi driver today for about 10 minutes. I can imagine how bad it was, but I was quite happy that all these words in my head are finally spilling out as I need them. I feel like I gave birth today. Nothing dramatic, but we talked about all the rain in Cuenca, where I am from and what it’s like there, why I am living in Giron, how much better the weather is in Giron, etc. Yes once again it was overcast and raining in Cuenca and as we made the turn around my favorite mountain and descended into Giron, the sky turned blue and the sun came out. It was a very nice day in Giron again.

Delta is really restless. When we lost Beta, she acted as nothing happened. But now, weeks later, she is constantly sniffing around where Beta used to lay down, and she starts crying. I think it has hit her that she is just lonely without another dog. I don’t know if I can do that. I am planning to do some traveling at the end of this year. I may give up my house and all my “stuff” to move into a place in Cuenca I can come and go with no problems. I know a very nice little apartment overhead of a restaurant owned by a friend. It would always be under key, and looked out after. My current plans are to go to Colombia again for a few weeks, return, then go to Uruguay for a month, come back, and go to Chile for a while. A lot can happen between now and this fall, but that is my hope. As I put more distance between me being sick and feeling really good now, I find myself getting restless. But if I go forward with that plan, I can’t really get another dog.

Oh, did I mention I fixed the railing on my staircase? Yes, I know… mundane. But that is how life can be here sometimes. Guess what? Yes, just like anywhere! Remember that!

OH! I saw another Condor today! That is 3 since I have been in Giron. It flew close before I got my phone out… its wingspan was HUGE! I swear it was at least 10 feet wide. It looked like a giant vulture.

Yesterday I spent time with the people that came to Giron to do the “spay and neuter clinic”. I noticed I felt a bit antsy as I have around crowds for a few years. I went to lunch with a newly arrived in Ecuador person, Marilyn, and had a yummy Trucha Frita. We had a nice chat, and I was much more comfortable one on one like that. That caused me to go back home and give it a lot of thought. I haven’t put much thought into why I am choosing to live alone, avoid events, and spend my time as I am. I came to a realization and did a video on it. Isn’t it odd that we (or at least me) spend so little time thinking about our real motivations?

I am asked over and over, “do I drive”, “why don’t I drive”, “will I drive”. No, No and No.

Yes, I live outside Cuenca. But I’m not living on a farm or an isolated place. I have a short 5-minute walk down to the bus stops. I am a phone call away for a taxi, with several that know me and come right away if needed. I have a few friends with cars, and I have several locals that will drive for hire. In the US I probably spent at least a $100 a week to drive. Car, insurance, repairs, etc. Here, I spend that in a month. And that’s only due to my choice to buy groceries in Cuenca and take a taxi to bring them home. I could take the bus, and that would drop my costs to closer to $20 a month. That leaves plenty of room to hire a driver now and then to make specialized trips.

Owning a car here is a bit of a hassle. Now everywhere you have to register, inspect, etc. But here, you are dealing with a bureaucracy that is frustrating, to say the least. Imagine the DMV in 1970. Arrogant, power-mad, and delight in sending you to the back of the line to get another form. People here that work for the government are on a power trip. Yes, of course, I am generalizing and yes, of course, some are very helpful. Of course. But many are jerks that get off on saying no and chasing you after things you wouldn’t need on another day or another office. So owning a car means I have that many more little Hitler’s in my life. No thanks.

Then you need to get your license. That means learning all the questions… in Spanish. It means for me, sending to get high school and college records, getting them certified and apostilled. That equals nearly $1000.Yes, I also know I might get them for closer to $300-$400, but I have learned here that by the time you are done you might as well add on another 200%. No one really tells you when you come you will need those records, so few people bring them (when it would have cost maybe $30). When you get your national ID, called a Cedula, there is a tiny little “status” comment on it. Mine says “Inicio”. When I got it, my friend laughed out loud. It essentially means you are a child, at least based on your education level. She made jokes the rest of the day about it, and a few days after that. Well to drive, you are required to be educated and that line should indicate your level. Mine is basically Kindergarten.

But let’s say you get past all that, and get your license, and then buy the car with all the overpricing that comes with the purchase. Now you are happily driving around the country. Stopping at endless road stops, handing out $10 bribes along the way. Let’s say you are going down a hill, and end up doing perhaps 10 kph over the limit. That is three days in jail, thank you! Mandatory… WITH a nearly $300 fine.

Sure, many people drive. They tolerate the hassles, Hitler’s, and the fees. They pay twice the value of the car. They do endless trips to various offices. They get their medical test, and psychiatry test (didn’t I mention that?). No, I will stick to calling my driver (s) and just pay them an extremely low amount to be my chauffeur. It works for me, and I don’t see it changing as long as I’m living here.

I woke up at 4:30 am today. The wind is blowing hard. It will probably damage my plants, but it also might dry things out a bit. i uploaded my last video and checked the news, and now this blog. It’s 8:30 and time to make some coffee with chocolate. I am to meet a YouTube subscriber and contributor to my channel for lunch. They are here in Giron today to do a spay/neuter clinic. Can you imagine a better thing in Ecuador? It’s about time! I love dogs, but things get so bad in some places you want them rounded up and put down for everyone’s sake, including theirs. Giron isn’t bad at all, and I am happy they are taking steps to solve it before it happens.

I really like this little town.

I hope everyone had a pleasant Easter Sunday. It was a  nice day. I stayed home and edited some videos, made a big Thank You video, and lounged around. I was feeling a bit out of it. No chocolate bunny. No jelly beans, and no peeps to make fun of. Peeps. I kept thinking about them today. It started when I overheard something in the background today. Something that didn’t register at the time, but floated around in my head. I don’t even know where I heard it. Perhaps when I had the TV on in the background, or maybe when Alexa was keeping me company in the kitchen.

Hours later, it hit me. Someone had been talking about stuffing peeps in their mouth. They had set some record and today wanted to better it. I started to think about peeps. Various colors, but had to be yellow. Do I like peeps? No, not really. Bitter in the mouth at first and the grainy outside melts always to the slimy, slippery inside. They really are an odd concoction of chemicals and marshmallows. I found myself imagining that you could likely stuff a ton of peeps in your mouth. Then my thoughts turned to not wanting to eat them, so I had to try to get the nasty goo out of my mouth.

Quite the odd, random thought you say? Welcome to my odd, random mind.

So I don’t like Peeps. Yet I had an urge to eat one. Not two, or three, but one. Just to taste that bitterness and slippery marshmallow. Just so I could complain about how toxic and unhealthy they are. Just so I could renew my contempt for them and make fun of them yet another year.

But who would I complain to? Who would join in as I savaged the very existence of peeps?

“Peeps… it’s what’s for Easter” I look forward to mocking them next year.

Perhaps tomorrow I will look for a Ho-Ho.

For about ten years in the USA, I had some issues. It seemed that every few weeks I would get sick. It was like the flu. It came with a fever. I hate fevers. I would rather have physical pain than a fever. I returned to the doctor many times about it. I saw other doctors. It didn’t matter, no relief. It is downright depressing to have something like the flu almost constantly. Allergies? Yes, but they went away. So I lived and worked feeling terrible half the time. It was baffling. And then, for no apparent reason it cleared up and I began having the flu like normal people, maybe four times a year.

I have only had moments of illness in my life. I had hepatitis when I was around ten. Nearly died from it, woke up from a  coma after about two weeks. I then went through that flu thing. about twenty years ago I got pneumonia. Again, I was on death’s door because I ignored it (habit from those flu days) and ended up locked into bed unable to work for 6 weeks.

The last time was a few years ago when I was confined to bed for a very long time. I would get dizzy when I stood and just collapse. I couldn’t drive or go shopping. Oh, I tried, but when I found myself looking up from the floor at a circle of people in a supermarket, I decided to listen to the doctor. Turned out to be some sort of middle ear issue related to cancer. Just prior to this I was getting spontaneous nosebleeds. I would fall over at work. It was crazy. Eventually, it was all figured out and cured. Three days after they operated, I headed to Ecuador.

When I arrived here, I was extremely weak (zero walking or exercise for a few years), worn out from the operation, and couldn’t breathe from the altitude. I was a bit of a mess. I had also gained over 120 lbs during that time so I had a lot of extra weight to drag around. My first few weeks here I could barely walk more than a block or two without having to stop and rest. It was as horrible as you are imagining.

I started to feel a bit better, and in a few months, I was feeling pretty decent. While still massively overweight, I was losing each week and could walk further and further. A big moment came when I was in Azogues for yet another round for Visa, and I decided to walk. I walked up and down the hilly streets and across town for around 2 hours. Inside I was extremely happy. It had been a number of years since I could do that.

So from then on, I kept inching my way back to normalcy. I have continued to lose weight. Somewhere around 45 lbs in total. It is strange to feel like I’m a human jello bowl when I am walking but I don’t really concern myself with that. As long as I can walk at all. I know there will be people in my life that will be unaware of all of this. When I got sick, I isolated myself from others and didn’t really tell people much if anything at all. To those that read this, what can I say? I can’t really explain what I don’t understand myself.

I will now tell you the upside to all of this, and why I have set the stage. Since I have been here, I have not caught the flu or even a cold. Nearly 2 years and nothing. Now I will say that every now and then I feel like a cold is coming on, and for a day or a bit more I may feel feverish or tired, but the next day it clears up and I am fine. I do not know if I have ever gone this long without some cold or flu. Is it some Cuenca miracle? I don’t think so since the few friends I have made here have been sick. It seems colds and flues here aren’t much different. I think the difference is first, I pretty much keep to myself. Second, I do not have kids around me bringing back a cesspool of crap from school and sneezing it on me. Third, I do not have to go around shaking hands or just being exposed to a ton of people like I always had to do in my work.

Contrary to what some think, I don’t see Cuenca Ecuador as being some miracle healthy area. But for me, this drastic change in my life, it feels like it. What brings this up now? I just went through 2 whole days sneezing, feeling weak and tired, and having a fever. I woke this morning and, of course, it was gone. Every time this happens now I feel like I have cheated. But I am not complaining. I feel very fortunate.

For someone that is supposedly “retired” I sure seem to run out of time daily.  It has been a hectic last few days. I will just hit some highlights.

I was to meet someone from Colombia. Her name is Erika, and she contacted me because she has been in Cuenca for 30  days, and is hating it. She got sick from the cold and rain (Cali is a warm climate) for a few weeks. She attempted to find work but has run into a lot of prejudice. She must be either a prostitute or a drug-dealing criminal. Or at least that’s what they tell her. We had a very nice lunch together. She speaks not one word of English so it was great for me. I finally am forced to use those words rattling around in my head. I introduced her to the owner of the restaurant (Orlando) and he may be able to help some. She is trying to decide to hang around a bit longer or just go back home. It wasn’t what she hoped or expected. Fortunately, she is able to stay rent-free with a girlfriend that is also from Colombia and has a place. In meeting with her (a rescheduled appointment… remember when I locked myself in my underwear on the patio? That’s who I was to go meet) I totally forgot another viewer that ask to meet.

They (a very nice married couple) had just arrived and wanted to discuss a few things. So Erika came with me to find them. I took a taxi from the restaurant, and somehow he just dropped us off nowhere near where we were going. I would have looked at my phone, but the battery decided to die. And then it begins to rain. Wow. Seriously? Here she is in a thin flowing sundress perfectly suited for the 100-degree coast, and it happens to be about 60 and rainy. So I gave her my jacket. For me, it is T-shirt weather anyway. And we walked. Got some insanely bad directions, walked some more. I felt I knew the direction so away we went. As I pointed out a nice looking place, I realized it was the one we were looking for. So in I go, and we wait. And wait. They were told that no one is on time, so don’t worry about it. We were 2 minutes early, so we waited for about half an hour. I was about to leave and they came in.

So his wife made some tea for Erika (shivering away) and we talked. For about an hour and a half. I realized I had co-opted Erika and really should “release” her. So we said our goodbyes (he snapped a pic of us) and I put her in a cab. It was too late for my shopping so I headed home. The next day I needed to be home, so today, being out of everything from bread to eggs to… well everything, I headed to the big city of Cuenca. I did my shopping and grabbed a taxi to come home. As I came out of the store, these huge raindrops slashed. I mean like shot glass size. They were well spaced out so easy to avoid, but you didn’t want to look up! I flagged a taxi, made sure of the price, and away we go. Then it starts to pour. I mean deluge style. He couldn’t see where he was going, and wipers didn’t help. Luckily that didn’t slow him down. After 5 minutes of that, it starts to HAIL! Crazy! Dark clouds, pounding hail, cars confused. But he kept going. As we got closer to Giron the clouds lightened, then cleared. The sun was spread out warming the air. We had to get through some fog/low lying clouds, but the weather was nice as we descended down into my town.

Tomorrow I head back to Cuenca to meet someone at the Mall that wants to possibly buy one of my cameras. The one I no longer use.

We shall see what another day in Ecuador brings.

I never made my meeting on Friday at the Cathedral where they sell the candles. I sure wish I had.

I woke up early, looking forward to the day as I always do now. In the past, with all the stress and responsibility life brought, I would wake up sometimes looking forward to the day, but often dreading it. It was fairly common to wake up knowing about a series of issues from the day before that needed to be solved. Personnel that had to be calmed. Vendors appeased, and client problems resolved. But that was the “old” days. Before I had a few years to be sick and think about all of that, and before I decided to try to find peace and calm in my life that perhaps I never had. It is an internal struggle sometimes because I LOVE to work. Life finds purpose in work. I loved solving those problems, particularly solving business internal issues. I lived for finding better, more efficient ways. I worshiped at the feet of Edward Deming. He was my hero. These days I wake up every day relaxed, calm, and free of stress.

Until Friday. I woke early. I was optimistic and happy. I decided to go out on my large upstairs patio and try out my new drone. Nothing extravagant, but I had already waited a day, doing various firmware and software upgrades, and charging assorted batteries. Everything was charged, up to date and ready. I had HOURS before I had to leave so hey, why not? This thing was a serious investment for my you-tube work, so let’s check it out! So I drag everything up there. I try out a little Chinese tablet, but unless it is midnight with no moon, you can’t see the screen. So I proceeded to hook up my Samsung Note 5. I check a few things out, put on the props, and away we go. I have to admit is was really awesome. Feelings of Christmas day came rushing back. In particular one very special Christmas. You see, I grew up extremely poor. I mean no running water, no heat (cut that wood!) no indoor plumbing (brrrrr at 2am going to the outhouse in the dead of winter). I wore hand me down clothes that rarely fit, and always looked out of place with all the “rich” kids. I later learned they were hardly rich, but from my ragtag outfits, it seemed like it!

But along came this Christmas, I was maybe 9 years old. The first thing I noticed was a book. Well, it looked like a book. It was, in fact, a book-looking box filled with rolls of lifesavers! I almost never had any kind of candy, and here is this really cool book filled with an amazing assortment of flavors! If Christmas stopped there I would have been happy! But it didn’t stop there. There was this really large package. With MY name on it! I tore into that package, and inside I found… well, I had never even known they existed. It was a very large T-Rex. But it was not just a T-Rex. It was one that had a target on the tail, and you shot it with a dart gun! If you hit that tail, it turned and roared and lurched towards you! It fired ping pong balls at you!! It was AWESOME!

I could barely believe it since I had long forgotten that Christmas and all the feelings that came with it. But somehow, they came rushing back as I ran that drone up and down and around the area. It was just too cool!

Unfortunately, what life gives, it quickly snatches away. After about 10 minutes, I decided I better get going. “If you are on time, you are late”. So I disconnected my phone, set things on the chair, and proceeded to leave the patio. Or so I thought.

The door was locked.

Did I lock it? I never lock it! I remembered then the cleaning lady loved to lock doors. She is security crazy and felt if she left a door unlocked in my place, it would be unforgivable. Her heart was in the right place.  Although… you would have to parachute into that patio. It is pretty much inaccessible. Which is why I also could not escape! So after a series of texts, I made arraignments for a lady in town to come get me out. With my horrible Spanish and her zero English, we managed to get her through the gate to set me free. Unfortunately, I stood there in my underwear. She took it all in stride.. amidst her laughter. Not one of my proudest moments, but grateful to be free.

By the time she left, I looked at the clock and all my extra time was eaten up. In fact, if I had left right then (remember I hadn’t even showered yet) I would have been an hour late.

Luckily it turns out she was sick and couldn’t meet me anyway. We rescheduled for Monday at 1PM. Let’s hope I don’t imprison myself again.