My winter worldview!
Ways to soothe your busy mind
aging
I had one of the busiest minds until a couple brain injuries helped to slow me down. Not to be recommended, but they definitely make you relax because you have to. My injuries also made me crave new ways to soothe my brain.
The Lives of Frontier Women (and me)
I’ve been thinking about a number of things lately. Confrontations with your own mortality can do that to a person. Questions arise like how proud am I of myself and my life thus far, regardless of what anyone else thinks? Yes, I know, I can be a bit cerebral at times.
Then I heard a truly thought-provoking quote that made me laugh out loud the other night. The story was about how so many Americans came out to the western frontier in the late 1800s either because they were “trying to lose themselves,” as in avoiding Civil War conscription, “or to find themselves.” This cracked me up! It hit the nail on the head in terms of why I moved out of the city and chose to retire in rural southern Colorado.
I should probably preface this with my eternal fascination with frontier life. For as far back as I can remember I played “pioneer woman” on the playgrounds of my elementary schools in Kansas. I loved watching TV shows like Wagon Train and Rawhide, or any movie about frontier life. I grew up on the books of Laura Ingalls Wilder, and when I got older I loved reading the journals of women who came out west in covered wagons.
When I started my writing career, I published a few magazine articles about how many came out West simply to escape tuberculosis in the cities back East. Most don’t know that TB was the leading cause of death in the world in the late 1800s and early 1900s, before penicillin was discovered in the late 1920s. Many came in hopes of a change in fortunes too, like discovering silver or gold and getting rich quick.
I realized just this morning I came to rural Colorado to both lose my old Self or identity, and find out all the other people I might be. I know now how influenced we are by others as children and young adults. It’s almost impossible not to be. But the re-birth which often happens later in life is the shedding of old personas, the letting go of all those voices inside that want to tell you who you really are.
This is the process of getting back to that vulnerable child you were when you were young and impressionable. It feels sometimes like getting back to your original soul and appreciating it for the first time, a spiritual downsizing from the burdens of our past…
What a glorious discovery this can be!
I’m a newcomer to 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 retirement home in the foothills:
A Memoir of Retirement: From Suburbia to Solar in Southern Colorado
Please share this information with your friends if they are considering similar life changes. Feel free to contact me directly to discuss any of these challenges, and to order your own signed copies of any of my books! Cheers, Laura Lee (email me: MidlifeCrisisQueen@gmail.com)
Boomers & the Reality of Mortality
OK, for all of you young oldsters out there who have decided you will be living forever, this is fair warning.
I was recently diagnosed with COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease), and no, I never smoked cigarettes! This is probably the result of living in dirty city air for 60+ years, and having what seemed like constant bronchitis since age 25. I also just moved to a home at 7,000 feet elevation. All of these factors caused shortness of breath and a request for a chest x-ray. Possible lung nodules were found leading to a cat scan this past Monday. As a non-smoking 61 year-old, I did not expect any problem. Instead my cat scan found a number of “nodules” in my lungs.
Overall, the likelihood that a lung nodule is cancer is 40 percent, but the risk of a lung nodule being cancerous varies considerably depending on several things like the size of them, whether you smoke, your occupation, shape of nodules and their rate of growth. Lung nodules — small masses of tissue in the lung — are quite common. They appear as round, white shadows on a chest X-ray or computerized tomography (CT) scan, and are often caused by previous infections.
Think it can’t happen to you?
Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide, with 1.8 million new cases diagnosed yearly. In the United States, lung cancer is the most fatal cancer in women, surpassing breast cancer in 1987 as the leading cause of cancer-related deaths. It is also the most fatal cancer in men, killing more men than prostate cancer, pancreatic cancer, and colon cancer combined. Lung cancer in never-smokers is the sixth leading cause of cancer deaths in the United States.
Overall, 27 percent of cancer deaths in the U.S. are due to lung cancer.
Who Gets Lung Cancer?
The average age for lung cancer is 70, and 80 percent of people who develop lung cancer have smoked, but lung cancer occurs in women and lung cancer occurs in non-smokers. While lung cancer in men who have smoked is decreasing, lung cancer in non-smokers is increasing.
It’s estimated that 20 percent of women who develop lung cancer in the U.S. have never smoked, and that number increases to 50 percent worldwide. Lung cancer also occurs in young adults – It’s estimated that 13.4 percent of lung cancers occur in adults under the age of 40. While this number may seem small, when compared to the incidence of lung cancer overall, it is not.
In summary, if you haven’t had a lung x-ray in years, get one. My nodules are small and so we have decided to go with a wait and see plan, with cat scans every few months. It’s only a problem if they start to grow.
Now I live in a rural Colorado county with nice clean air, but all those years of living in cities must be catching up with me… How about you?
Best of Boomer Blogs #480
It’s time to hear from a few of my favorite bloggers of a certain age… What have they been doing or thinking about this week?
Carol Cassara has a very funny one for you today. Here she shares the many misheard song lyrics that Boomers (and others) have been massacring for years, if not decades. And also some pretty things to make your day cheerier. Enjoy the beauty.
Anyone who has even a passing acquaintance with the Sightings Over 60 blog knows that Tom Sightings is thinking a lot about downsizing, primarily because he’s in the middle of the process himself. But rather than offer his own advice about this complex and emotionally trying operation, he turns to a professional in his latest post The Costs and Benefits of Downsizing.
It’s been quite a week for Rita R. Robison, consumer journalist, blogging at The Survive and Thrive Boomer Guide. Two giant corporations pled guilty to criminal charges related to fraudulent schemes, with some of their executives being charged, too. In addition, they’ll pay huge fines, Volkswagen $2.8 billion for cheating on emission tests and Takata $1 billion for falsified test data related to the safety of its air bags.
A new year offers many new opportunities. Did you know each year one company designates a color corporate soothsayers believe not only expresses the nation’s mood, but also becomes a major color for retail merchandise like clothing, accessories, home appliances, decor, and even furniture?
Find out what the latest ‘in’ color is over at Meryl Baer‘s post about the 2017 Color of the Year.
And now for my favorite photo from all of these marvelous boomer blogs! He’s awfully cute! Who doesn’t love a puppy? But perhaps he isn’t quite as cute as my Rasta the day we got him. He was only 3 pounds and unbelievably CUTE!
Unfortunately, I have been hit with a number of bits of bad news about my health lately. This is especially hard to take since I have generally been healthy most of my life. I am having quite a reality check at 61!
When you hear there might be something wrong with your brain and your lungs on the same day, it does make you wonder what’s up. Perhaps that explains my post this week about Cannabinoid (CBD) Oil. It’s a none-THC oil derived from hemp plants. Go learn more here.
My insights into Cannabinoid (CBD) Oil
Cannabinoid (CBD) Oil is new to me. I talked to a few people in the past few months who thought that it helped them immensely with pain from sciatica, sleep issues, etc. It took me a lot of online research and thought to decide to buy some, partially because it is quite expensive and I wondered about issues of purity also.
For those of you new to this product, this oil is made from hemp with no THC in it. It is usually taken by a few drops under your tongue, and has no psychoactive ingredients. That is why it is legal in all states. The FDA has ruled it to be a dietary supplement. I didn’t buy it at a marijuana dispensary, just a natural foods store.
I bought a small bottle of That’s Natural CBD Oil with the ingredients of Hemp Seed Oil, Grape Seed Oil, Peppermint Oil and 250mg Hemp CBD Oil. This stuff is guaranteed not to contain marijuana or to have psychoactive effects.
I started out with just a few drops under my tongue once or twice a day. At first the only real effect it had on me was I didn’t wake up as often at night. I took it for a few weeks and then stopped for a few days to see if I felt any different. I was surprised to learn how much those few drops were helping with both my mood and my ability to sleep more deeply. I can’t say it helped at all with my arthritis pain. Still stuck with Aleve there.
But I can recommend that the rest of you check this out. Here’s a few articles I found interesting:
https://healthyhempoil.com/what-is-cbd-in-weed/
http://herb.co/2016/09/18/menopause-symptoms/
Some history:
“Cannabis plants are exceptionally versatile. Both the seeds and cannabis oil were used for food in China as early as 6,000 BCE. Two thousand years later, in 4,000 BCE, there is evidence of textiles made from hemp in both China and Turkestan. The influence of the plant seems to have been global. In 850, the Vikings transported hemp rope and seeds to Iceland, and by the year 900, Arabs were learning techniques for making paper from hemp. By the year 1000 Italians were using ropes made of hemp on their sailing ships.
In contrast to today’s modern restrictions of growing cannabis, England’s King Henry VIII actually fined farmers if they do not raise hemp for industrial use. Less than one hundred years later, settlers in Jamestown, Virginia began growing hemp plants for hemp’s unusually strong fibers. Once the plant demonstrated its usefulness, it became illegal to NOT grow hemp in Virginia.
By 1850, cannabis was added to The U.S.Pharmacopeia, a respected compendium of Medicines and Dietary Supplements. At that time cannabis was used throughout United States as a medicine, easily purchased in pharmacies and general stores. This lasted until about 1915…
(https://discovercbd.com/blogs/cbd-news/88739206-the-history-of-cbd-10-000-years-and-counting)
I’m a newcomer to 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 retirement home in the foothills:
A Memoir of Retirement: From Suburbia to Solar in Southern Colorado
Please share this information with your friends if they are considering similar life changes. Feel free to contact me directly to discuss any of these challenges, and to order your own signed copies of any of my books! Cheers, Laura Lee (email me: MidlifeCrisisQueen@gmail.com)
More than 
Adventures of the NEW??? Old Farts 