For Me, it's the RE

The correct thing to do in FIRE is to focus on the financially independent part: the freedom you gain from having financial security. If you no longer needed to work for money, what would you do with your one and precious life? Would you travel the world full time? Write that book you've been thinking about for decades? Start a business or non profit?

I feel some shame for not having great answers to many of those questions. Or, maybe I should say that the things I'd choose to do are not all that different from what I'd already been doing while working: playing board games, writing and reading, hanging out with my friends, watching the kids, cooking, tending to the house and the cars, taking some tasty naps. But these are mundane and totally ordinary pleasures. None of them require retirement. The only somewhat impressive thing we'd like to do once financially independent is travel more abroad, and we were kind of doing that already. 

And Then We Were Four

We left for the hospital just before midnight. The on-call OB said that if Mrs. Done by Forty's contractions were five minutes apart and consistent, then it was time to go. We called our friend to come over since Toddler AF was asleep, grabbed the suitcase, and drove off. 

At the hospital though, the nurses weren't so sure Mrs. Done by Forty was in labor. Early labor, sure. Regular, intense contractions, yes. But not "labor labor". After being told "let's wait another hour and see where we're at" the entire night, they finally released Mrs. Done by Forty at 9 am, nine hours after we arrived, and told us to come back when we were really in labor.

"But I feel like I am in labor."