Thanks, all for hugs and expressions of support (not to mention perverted comments which are also good for the soul).
Just a clarification about "retirement home." That's just the house where we're going to live, my wife soon, me a little later. The term suggests one of those gross "assisted living complexes" where people have wheelchair races, solitare marathons, and banana-eating contests when they're not watching QVC or Fox News. We're hoping to have a retirement a little more active than that.
One area we in fact decided to avoid was "The Parke" where a lot of the chores are done for residents by "The Association": lawns mowed, snow shoveled, gutters cleaned of the pine needles that are falling all the time. Problem is that these places come with lots of restrictions too: no gardening, no boats parked in the driveway, no patio furniture on the lawn, no J-pop on the boom box, etc. We'll probably get a house that's not patrolled by The Association where we can hang some clothes outside to dry once in a while. (For some reason Associations in various parts of the country go
bananas when people make to do this.)
Hopefully, everything will work out alright. Good luck with the retirement home search, too. 
