On the twenty seventh of June, 2022, I stepped into the property manager’s office. For the past two months my wife and I frequently informed her of our intent to move. When I finally handed her the keys, she only smiled, now claiming she demanded a notice in writing of my intent to move, so therefore she was extending my lease another month, and my permission for her to do was not needed! I protested, but my individual rights meant nothing.
The system inside this aged-out mill town didn’t require this property manager to inform me of my intent on moving out. Her being from and antagonizing demographic didn’t help any arguments in the matter I might have against her. When I refused to hand her two thousand dollars in hard cash, she simply plugged it into a computer program claiming that had not fulfilled the lease obligation. Other property managers would simply assume the claim at face value, and totally disregard my claim that the property manager was unjustly attempting to extort two thousand dollars from me.
So we both loaded up. I rode several hours out to my parent’s place for a week, since I had not visited them for the past two years due to Covid 19, my own exposure, and their sickness in general. Both had C19 and were treated for cancer. They came through with flying colors, thankfully. My time at mothers place was great. I lounged around chatting with them and hanging out. Mother’s cooking was the always the best. The only one who was ever better was great grandmother, but she has been gone since 1986. Now mother sits in the chief cook’s seat.
After my week at mother’s place ended, on Friday I headed back over to uptown Queen Metro where I met up with my wife at the eldest daughter’s apartment. From there we said good bye to the girls, and motored out toward Tampa. In Tampa we both stayed four days with the wife’s great aunt and uncle, then headed on out to the airport when our flight time neared.
Everything went pretty smooth. We made the flight. No flights were delayed. The plane took off and landed smoothly. American airlines didn’t feed us, however. All they had for us to drink was water or soda, not anything else as international flights usually do. Forget being fed real food. We had ginger crackers with Pepsi, and that was it. We also had to pay forty five dollars on our credit card, since they wouldn’t even accept cash at all. We passed through all of the security checkpoints without any hitch, and we were both finally on our way.
The plane finally landed at the rather small airport in Guayaquil, Ecuador. When we exited off the plane and picked up our luggage, we were met at the front entrance by my wife’s niece, who is around 35 years old. She is a general manager for a restaurant chain. She appears to be doing fairly well. Her niece is a lively woman. She cheerfully motored us both over to the home of wife’s adapted sister, Zoilita. Here we spent three days walking around the neighborhood where she lived, buying three dollar plates of fish, rice, and tropical vegetables.
My favorite dish is called a bollo. It’s made of cooked plantain mixed with fish, shrimp, onions, and other vegetables, and rolled into a long round bun sort of deal, wrapped in palm leaves. Boyo makes an outstanding breakfast when it’s served up with coffee, I think. One can buy this dish in a large serving at the time of this writing, for two dollars American.
After our three day stay at Zoilita’s place, I really hated to catch a taxi out. We had to make it out to Sanborodon, where my wife’s and our home is. The house is twelve years old and was rented out for the past eleven years. This will be the first time we have actually lived in it. Mainly all we do is walk around in the general area. I bought three thousand dollars in cash with me. I plan on living on two thousand, and taking the final thousand on the coming cruise to Hawaii with me.
Saturday when we made it to the house, Yonalita, the wife’s niece, picked us up again inside her small economy car, taking us to a really good diner with live music and a beach party type of scene. If one doesn’t like to party, then they certainly do not need to spend time in Ecuador, that’s for sure. The food and the music was really good, and topped off with droughts of beer and sangria wine.
Last night, Sunday night, we went to a pool party. A movie company was filming clips for a music video. I got to play an active part of this new experience. There was lots of splashing around in the water with adults behaving like spoiled kids, soap bubbles and suds, beer, and servings of huge hot







