Author: Laura Lee Carter
Boomer World: And the Beat Goes on…
I must say, when I started this little website two and a half years ago, to share the slow progress on our passive solar home here in southern Colorado, I never expected for it to grow to 23,000 visitors with over 50,000 views. And I most definitely didn’t expect to see readers from over 80 countries of the world! Hallelujah!
Something else I never expected is that I would still be participating in the same Boomer Blog Carnival that I began in 2008! OK, so the members have changed constantly. I’ve even changed blogs since then. But come rain or shine, we are still bringing together some great blog posts for you to peruse each week!
Speaking of which, today over at Heart Mind Soul, Carol Cassara shares how her husband managed a painful surgical recovery without pain meds. And in another great post she tackles a tough question for most of us: Why is it so hard for us to ask for what we need?
Meryl Baer of Six Decades and Counting says: For so many of us computers are an integral part of our life nowadays. When the device runs smoothly we have a window on the world, using it for work as well as for all kinds of recreational pursuits. But when problems occur, those of us who are “non-nerds” become frustrated. That is what happened to Meryl this week. Her long-time computer companion had issues. Here she recounts her experiences in My Technologically Down Day and Hacked!
According to Rita R. Robison, consumer journalist, Saturday was National Prescription Drug Take-Back Day. If you weren’t able to return your unused or expired drugs, check in your community to see if it has a permanent location. It’s important because medications in the home are a leading cause of accidental poisoning. In addition, if you leave unused prescription drugs in your bathroom cabinet, teens or others may steal them and become addicted to prescription drugs. It happened in Robison’s family; it can happen in yours.
Of course many retirees like to travel. And Tom Sightings says, if you do, more power to you. He admires your sense of adventure. But as for the rest of us, he argues in If You’re Retired Do You Have to Travel? we shouldn’t feel that we’re missing out on something by staying closer to home. Travel is one thing to do in retirement; but it’s not the only thing, and it’s not something we should feel required to “check off” in order to fulfill our retirement dreams.
You tell ’em Tom! Our retirement dream was to move to such a natural, peaceful place that we wouldn’t feel the need to leave much, and I believe we succeeded…
This is our view this morning from our solar perch with the sun pouring in!
I created a journal version of all we went through to end up in our toasty warm solar home in southern Colorado: A Memoir of Retirement: From Suburbia to Solar in Southern Colorado Let’s work around Amazon (the evil empire!) Contact me directly to order your own signed copies of any of my books! Cheers, Laura Lee (email me: MidlifeCrisisQueen@gmail.com)
In Praise of Natural Sounds and Night Skies
“The joy of listening to the quiet symphony of nature and the wonderment of seeing the Milky Way stretching overhead are unique experiences that can still be found in many of our national parks.” — Natural Sounds and Night Skies Division, NPS
I was so pleased to discover this week that our National Park Service maintains a Natural Sounds and Night Skies Division. These are a few of the joys I have discovered and begun to fully appreciate only by moving away from cities. By living rural I can finally hear the great animal orchestra composed by nature, and look up to find some of the last remaining harbors of natural darkness in our country.
Now that I know, I wish to preserve and provide opportunities for everyone to experience this critical resource.
To learn more, go view this CBS video: Recording the Sounds of Nature’s Quietest Places
Invisible Me
Ever since I turned 50, I have read about the idea that as women age they become ever more invisible in our society. I have wondered why I don’t feel this way for years. This week I discovered the reason.
I have always felt invisible. Invisible is normal for me.
I grew up feeling invisible. My parents couldn’t see me. They could barely see themselves. In my house, nobody knew who they were. No one could see beyond their looks and achievement, and no one had anything to give to anybody else. Because my parents grew up not being seen by their parents, they could not see themselves or me.
And it felt somehow safe to be invisible, especially as I got into junior high and high school. I tried being more visible once in ninth grade. I was actually semi-popular for a while and that didn’t feel good, so I escaped into invisibility again. Because I no longer knew who I was, others couldn’t see me either. Years later I spoke to a few people who went to high school with me. Nobody remembered me at all, even after I showed them a picture.
Was I ever really there?
This is how it works. My parents projected onto me their distorted view of themselves, believing that I was just a smaller version of their own woundedness. They judged me harshly, just like they judged themselves. So confusing. They would tell me I was a certain way when I felt completely different inside. They would tell me I was careless and irresponsible, when I felt overly responsible for everything in the world, especially them.
Now that I’m seen and appreciated fully in my life, I realize how lonely and heartbreaking it was to feel so invisible. To fit in, I adopted the world’s view of me and stopped acknowledging my own essence, my own Self. My own wonderfulness!
When I moved to a much smaller town recently, I found this interesting. I again felt invisible. I recognized immediately those who wish to ignore me. I avoid them, because I know what an amazing, interesting, intelligent person I am.
So much fun to see and know!
I’m new here in rural southern Colorado. After two years I decided to compile a short journal about the ups and downs of moving from a good-sized city to rural America to build a passive solar home. It’s fine to ignore me, but please don’t ignore my new book! I wrote this while we were adjusting to rural life after years in Fort Collins and Loveland Colorado:
A Memoir of Retirement: From Suburbia to Solar in Southern Colorado
Please share this information with others, and feel free to contact me directly to discuss anything or to order your own signed copies of any of my books!
Cheers, Laura Lee (email me: MidlifeCrisisQueen@gmail.com)
Watch out what you wish for…
The Internet is all about self-promotion. In fact, our country is all about self-promotion. Ask the millions, or perhaps billions of promoters on Twitter, Instagram, etc. etc. Everyone is trying to figure out a way to become famous enough to make a killing, so they don’t have to go to their regular jobs. Ask kids today. They get it. How many hope to become so famous through the Internet, that they don’t have to ever go get a real job?
Most of us would like to figure out how to become master manipulators of others.
And have you noticed yet? It is these master manipulators (celebrities) that we worship. Look how they convince others to send them their hard-earned dollars. Isn’t that great? Then we act surprised when we get manipulated ourselves!
Case in point, look who we have for president now. Talk about a master manipulator! He decided long ago that being famous was much more important than being useful or intelligent. Americans are just that stupid. So we now have a reality TV star for president. I’ll bet you thought that could never happen…
And further more, I’m afraid he sees his job now as just an extension of his reality TV show. Ratings are all that count! Of course some Americans have figured out exactly how scary this scenario is, note his approval ratings. Oh, Trump says, that’s all just fake news! Anyone for alternative realities?
But our bumbling Mr. Trump also has this problem all figured out. He’s saving up his best attention-getters for when he really needs them. Anyone for a war with North Korea? How about Iran or Syria? Is everybody in?
It’s all a game for Mr. Trump, a ratings game with millions of lives at stake. This is what we get for idealizing master manipulators instead of integrity and intelligence.
My greatest fear is that our own electoral college will cause the end of the world.
The Edge of Seventeen: A Great Teen Film!
“Life is full of misery, loneliness and suffering, and its all over much too soon.” – Woody Allen
It is a mystery to me why I so enjoy a good movie about the teenage years, but I do. And I haven’t enjoyed anything like The Edge of Seventeen (2016) since Juno back in 2007. I happened to pick it up at the La Veta Public Library and was so glad I did. Talk about a great story and amazing writing, not to mention some great acting in the mix! No wonder it was chosen as one of the ten best movies of 2016 by Vanity Fair! If you enjoy a film that takes you into the life of a very smart but confused teenager with a wry sense of humor, you’ll like this. Every scene drew me further into Nadine’s world of boundless insecurity and self-consciousness. The acting between Hailee Steinfeld and Woody Harrelson (her favorite teacher) was spot on, and the cinematography also captured those moments of complete disillusionment so a part of being young and inexperienced in the insanity of life.
On a personal level I so related to Nadine’s teenage angst. Nothing made sense to me at 17. I felt so ugly and awkward all the time. I hated the caste system at my high school in Colorado Springs. I hated how my supposed friends vaporized when they got a boyfriend. I hated how the popular kids could take advantage of the rest of us. The entire scene turned me off, and I knew I just had to survive this insanity and make it to college to finally try and find a better life. As it turned out the kids at college were just as messed up, if not more, and the self-consciousness and insecurity just kept coming for years after that. I will never forget asking a friend’s Mom when I was 24:
Adventures of the NEW??? Old Farts 