A Memoir of Retirement

Downsizing & the Boomer Generation

/ Laura Lee Carter / 9 Comments

If there is one thing we can all depend on at this late stage of life, it’s downsizing. It started rather timidly. The size of ice cream cartons is what I noticed first. How did that 2 quart carton suddenly become 1.75, and now 1.5 quarts for the SAME PRICE? Did you notice that too? They try to pretend you are paying the same price for the same amount, but NO. You are quietly being ripped off.

Now let’s look at cans of vegetables. They used to all be in 15 or 15.5 oz. cans, right? I just bought a can of green beans that happens to be just 14.5 ounces. It’s the Boomer creep again. Let’s see if we can give them less of a product for the same price. What a great idea! Then check out Rotel diced tomatoes and green chilies with a mere 10 ounces in their cans!

The other day I saw a new take on this crafty rip-off scheme. I was trying to choose between two different versions of “Family Size Wheat Thins.” I wanted to buy the “reduced calorie” box, but then I looked closer. The regular Wheat Thins has a full pound in the box. Perhaps the “reduced calorie” has less calories because it has less crackers in the box! That’s one way to cut calories…

I’m sure you have all seen lots of examples of these quiet little rip-offs. I see more and more as we age. Perhaps they think they can take advantage of us better as our eyesight fails us. But there is one downsizing scheme that none of us can escape, whether we like it or not. I wonder what the year will be when the last Boomer leaves this earth.

A fun Boomer statistical fact. It must be all that package downsizing:

“In 1900, 75 percent of the people in the United States died before they reached age 65. This has almost reversed in our lifetimes! Today 70 percent of people die after age 65. Since 1900, life expectancy has increased by more than 50 percent, from a little less than fifty years to about seventy-five years.“

Help & humor: Facing divorce later in life

/ Laura Lee Carter / 2 Comments

No, this isn’t about me… A close friend of Mike’s is facing this now in his sixties, and that got me thinking. For many boomers, divorce has not been so uncommon. And now, in our 50s and 60s, it is still quite possible. You are NOT alone!

D-I-V-O-R-C-E

Among U.S. adults ages 50 and older, the divorce rate has roughly doubled since the 1990s, according to a Pew Research Center report. Statistically speaking we’re healthier and probably going to live longer — possibly thirty years longer than our parents or grandparents did. The surge in later-in-life or “gray divorce” is possibly an unintended consequence of how long we are living today.

When I think back to my first marriage, which ended in 2001, it was quite clear to me after seven years that this union had no chance of going the distance. One way I knew was that I could not possibly imagine my husband taking good care of me in sickness and old age. The genuine, abiding love and loyalty just wasn’t there. Yikes! It was time to try one more time to find that kind of enduring love before it was too late.

At that time I enjoyed the phrase: “DIVORCE IS EXPENSIVE, FREEDOM PRICELESS!“

I was 46 then and still feeling vibrant enough to be willing to take on the risks and possible rewards of dating again, but only after a few years of contemplation and mourning. In fact, I started my own local dating service in 2004 and it was LOTS OF FUN! I named it “Intriguing Possibilities!” I figured after losing my last job and a divorce, I needed a job and a date! Long story short, that is how I met Mike, and I’m so glad I did.

What a lucky day that was! We lived only ten miles apart, but would not have met without Match.com. We knew very soon that this was no ordinary love connection, and fifteen years later we never speak of divorce. We know that we’re going out feet first & together! And so I now have a very tough time imagining being single in my sixties, although I do know that ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN AT ANY TIME.

But during my own unique version of a midlife crisis in my mid-40s (I lost my husband, my career and almost my home), I found that I had also lost my faith in love, completely! It was time to do some work on myself to change that situation.

For further explanation of what worked for me in my 40s, please check out my second book: How To Believe in Love Again: Opening to Forgiveness, Trust, and Your Own Inner Wisdom

I also know now that the older you are when you choose your next partner, the more likely you will be able to choose wisely. Without the distorted lens of sex appeal or surface stuff, finding an appropriate life partner becomes about how much you enjoy spending “quality” time with your new love. My advice: stay picky and hold out for a deep and abiding love this time. They’re still out there!

Postscript: In my twenties my Mom kept asking me, “What do you have against men with money???”

Accepting the sadness of aging

/ Laura Lee Carter / 5 Comments
MY PARENTS IN BETTER DAYS….

In one week my parents will celebrate their 68th wedding anniversary. I rejoice in the fact that they are still with us and together. I celebrate that fact, and yet the most difficult emotions I experience lately are watching them struggle and slowly fade away from their previous levels of clarity and vitality. This is so hard for them. They are still clear enough to understand what is happening to them. They have both lived long, positive and productive lives. We all must accept our eventual demise, and yet I resist.

I also know that resistance is futile. I know in my mind that acceptance of the realities of life and death are so fundamental, and make it all easier in the long run. But how can my mother die? How can my Dad, who has always been the wise teacher to so many, be at the end of his life? When I speak to him about this he says that as a botanist, he sees himself as an old Oak tree and he knows that old trees must die to make way for new seedlings. So philosophical and yet so sad.

My sister Diane Carter recently received recognition from Long-Term Living Magazine as one of the ten most influential people in the past 40 years in the field of long-term care. She gives her all every day to help my parents negotiate the American medical establishment and protect them from its many shortcomings. She understands what is happening to our parents and explains it to me. I know it is all real and true and yet I still hate it. This is the toughest reality I have ever faced, but face it I must.

Just about every person I know now is dealing with some version of this sadness. Perhaps the best we can do is to be there for each other as we face the end of an amazingly vibrant and caring generation, our parents.

Here’s another way to look at death:

”To fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise, without being wise, for it is to think that we know what we do not know. As far as we can tell, death may be the greatest good that can happen to us, but we fear it as if we knew quite well that it was the greatest of evils. What is this but the shameful ignorance of thinking that we know what we do not know?”   – Socrates

My Own Experience With WildFires and Snow Storms

/ Laura Lee Carter / 5 Comments
Imagine if this were your town…

My heart goes out to those who lost loved ones in the California Paradise Fire last November. I hope you were able to see Frontline last night, Fire in Paradise. I think it is important that the rest of us understand what some Americans have gone through and what they lost. In less than 4 hours a small fire that started 8 miles from Paradise engulfed the entire town from all directions. Many of the 40,000 residents simply did not believe the speed of this fire. Others tried to get out, but the roads were too jammed up to escape. Eighty-five Americans, most over age 65, died in this wildfire.

I felt a strong need to watch this episode of Frontline because we had our own wildfire here last July, and if not for our wonderful and amazing local firefighters, that town could have easily been La Veta, population 8-900.

The Spring Fire on the evening of June 28th 2018

The night that fire started, I sat in my bed and watched the fire jump from mountaintop to mountaintop across a couple valleys behind us. I could also see our local firefighters out there giving their all to contain that fire. The next day the National Guard was called in along with the Hot Shots and firefighters from around our nation. We were evacuated the next day for a week, as the fire jumped Highway 160 and came towards our new home. Our fire burned a total of 108,045 acres, and was the third-largest wildfire in Colorado history.

The residents of Paradise where not so lucky. They basically had no warning. The fire came flying into their town so fast and only half were warned properly by Code Red. But even then their roads were inadequate to evacuate the entire town in less than an hour. Imagine the fear and anguish.

The weather outside may be frightful, but not like a firestorm!

Like most disasters, news reporters flash on a big story for a day or two and then we all forget, but not me. Every report from California and every single day of our latest series of three snowstorms here in southern Colorado remind me of how lucky we are to still be receiving large amounts of moisture. Yep. Fifteen inches of snow is fine with me!

Everyone talks about the weather. Here’s something you can do about it!

/ Laura Lee Carter / 1 Comment
The scene outside my bedroom this morning!

On a day like today, with ten inches of fresh, white snow outside our door in the foothills of southern Colorado, it seems crazy to focus on future drought conditions in the American Southwest. And yet, if you are at all climate aware, you know that droughts can happen at anytime and last for decades. Ask the Anasazi who disappeared from Mesa Verde centuries ago, or those who lived through the Dust Bowl in the 1930s in the American Midwest. Do you think those Oklahoma farmers had any idea what was coming?

I admit it. I have been an avid weather watcher forever, and when I lived near Fort Collins Colorado on July 28th 1997, we experienced a flash flood through the middle of town that killed five residents and scared the hell out of the rest of us! I worked then at Morgan Library on the Colorado State University campus (CSU) when eight feet of water swept through our area from an intense rain storm over the western foothills. In just minutes we lost almost all of our journal collection in compact shelving located in the library basement. There were some kayaking across campus that night! We were not even allowed to go into the library building for over a month.

I saw a TV documentary this week that explained what we know now about future water uncertainty in the American southwest. Cities like Los Angeles, Phoenix and Las Vegas are quite vulnerable to future drought. Water supplies are limited and not adequate if even a short drought should arrive in the next few years. The study of where we receive rain and snow is essential to understanding weather patterns and helping us plan for an uncertain future waterwise.

The rain gauges used to collect precipitation for COCORAHS

In response to the flood in Fort Collins in 1997, the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network (CoCoRaHS) was developed by the Colorado Climate Center at CSU a year after the flood, to improve the acquisition of concise precipitation data nationwide and facilitate quick communication of rain/snow reports during disasters. Each time a rain, hail or snow storm crosses an area, volunteers take measurements of precipitation from as many locations as possible. These precipitation reports are then recorded on their Web site www.cocorahs.org. The data are then displayed and organized for end users like Weather Service meteorologists, hydrologists, emergency managers, city utilities (water supply, water conservation, storm water), insurance adjusters, USDA, engineers, mosquito control, ranchers and farmers, outdoor & recreation interests, teachers, students, and neighbors in the community to analyze and apply to daily situations ranging from water resource analysis and severe storm warnings to neighbors comparing how much rain fell in their backyards.

COCORAHS is now a nation network for volunteers! Please consider joining in this effort to record accurate data and be a part of future water planning efforts. All you need to do is purchase a standard rain gauge, learn how to read it and then send in your data everyday. I have been a volunteer for over 20 years now from a number of locations in Colorado.

I love being a part of such an important volunteer effort! Please consider joining in. We need lots more volunteers in Huerfano county & most rural areas of the USA!

Do Stereotypes About Aging Influence You?

/ Laura Lee Carter / 5 Comments

Now that I’m in my 60s, I find adjusting to how others see me can be pretty tough at times. I still feel like the same 40 or 50-year-old inside, but looking in the mirror is sometimes shocking.

The first time a waiter at a restaurant turned to Mike and I and said, “Would you two like the senior discount?” I thought, “Is he talking to me?”

The way these internalized attitudes about aging affect us physically is a focus within a growing field in social psychology called “mind-body studies.” In the next few months, the World Health Organization will publish the results of a global investigation of ageism — discrimination toward elders, similar to racism and sexism. This report will address how we might fight ageist discrimination and prejudice. The report will also outline the myriad ways that ageist attitudes can and do affect the health and well-being of us and our elders.

I find research in this area fascinating! For example, researchers have found that “words used to describe older people, found in a database of historical American English, have become increasingly negative in the past 200 years, possibly because aging has come to be seen as a medical condition.” Positive words like wise, sage, accomplished, learned, creative, insightful have increasingly been replaced with declining, dependent, senile, dying, decrepit and incompetent.

When these negative age stereotypes are used against an elder population, subjects show a decline in performance in memory tests and other areas. Those exposed to positive age stereotypes showed improvements. On so many different tests, findings suggest a strong correlation between exposure to positive stereotypes and an improved view of Self as we age.

This reminds me of one of my favorite lifelong sayings:

“Language is practical consciousness.” -Karl Marx

Carefully analyze the words we use to describe ourselves and others! The way we honestly see ourselves and others has meaning. How do others refer to you? Does that impact how you see yourself?

As any wordsmith will tell you, WORDS DO MATTER.

As Psychologist Becca Levy put it:

“Stereotypes about aging are so pervasive. They can easily be assimilated from the surrounding culture, become a part of an individual’s self-definition, and ultimately affect how that person’s body operates — a process called “stereotype embodiment.”

Dr. Levy has linked negative aging attitudes to such measures as walking speed in elders, a greater likelihood to develop dementia, and even a reduction in life span. Want to learn more about this important area of research?

http://www.sciencenewsdigital.org/sciencenews/august_3__2019/MobilePagedArticle.action?articleId=1507169#articleId1507169

A LITTLE BUDDHIST HUMOR…