Building in southern Colorado
The Wahatoyas or Spanish Peaks were lit up like only nature can achieve, and we knew we had moved to the right place…What High School Reunions Can Bring Up
I just received a reminder that my 45th high school reunion is coming up soon. My first response is I simply cannot believe that I graduated from high school 45 years ago. How did that happen? So I turned to my yearbooks to try and remember something about high school.
I hated everything about high school. I hated my home life and how I felt at school. The best way to describe me looking back from my 45-years-later perspective is flat affect. I just kept wondering if my life would ever get better. I remember at high school graduation singing that German song from Cabaret: “Tomorrow belongs to me…” over and over in my head.
These days I am so glad I hung in there! Everything got better in college. I went to Colorado College, the one where my father taught. As soon as I got there I felt like I fit in much better. For the first time I was constantly around fellow eggheads, and finally completely academically challenged. Slowly through the past four decades I have become more at home in my own body and freer to become my true self.
The hardest battle you will face in life is to be no one but yourself, in a world which is trying its hardest to make you like everybody else!
Now I see this maturation process as peeling the onion of my soul. At first I only felt safe taking off the most outer layers, exposing my true self very slowly and carefully, so afraid of what others might think or say. When I finally got some counseling in my early thirties, my therapist noted how often I said, “People think this…” She would challenge me with, “Who are these people?” It was not easy, but I have finally found my true self in the midst of too much feedback from others, and far too many rules in my own mind.
I have never attended a high school reunion, but I am seriously considering it this time. We live only a couple hours southwest of Colorado Springs now, and I am quite curious. Perhaps I should go find out who I went to high school with, because I suspect none of us are anything like we were in high school.
For a REALLY FUNNY take on high school reunions, go here!
I am a professional photographer, writer and psychotherapist whose midlife crisis included a divorce and soon after the loss of my job and career as an academic librarian at age 49. However, I found all of these misfortunes supremely fortuitous eventually! Everything wonderful in my life flowed from losing my past life and changing up everything possible. I started my own dating service, which led to meeting a new and much improved life partner, and then in ten years we followed our dreams to build our own passive solar home in rural southern Colorado…
No surprise that I now see midlife difficulties as once-in-a-lifetime opportunities for personal liberation! I have written & produced a few books about midlife change. Don’t miss my latest about leaving the city life far behind!
Listening to old friends…
Horsetooth Reservoir at dawn
Since my parents were celebrating their 66th (!) wedding anniversary in Denver, we decided to make a weekend trip of it, and spend a couple days up in Fort Collins and Loveland.
Sunday was heaven for me. I spent the entire day talking to people I love that I hardly ever see. I found such reassurance that those friendships are still strong and we still can have a great time together! One friend Mike has known for decades said a few thought provoking things Sunday night.
Her husband left her twenty years ago with four kids to raise, so she was talking about how much her blood pressure fell after her husband was finally out of her life. That was quite striking, and reminded me of how my own super tight jaw (TMJ) vaporized after my divorce. Then all of a sudden she said, “You know, I haven’t been angry or in an argument in weeks now.” I thought, wow, that is so true, with the tiny exception of the horrendous traffic in Denver!
We got to talking about how we cope with difficult times in our life, crappy times like divorce. She said she only started drinking too much during and after her divorce. I’m just not fond of alcohol or other addictive substances, so when she asked me, “How do you cope with tough times?” I said, counseling, walking, journaling, reading good books and quiet times where I delve into what went wrong, in hopes of making my future much better than my past. I have made a million big mistakes in my life, but I have also always been an analyzer. (Can you tell?) I want to understand everything around me. As far as relationships go, I knew that if I improved my own relationship with myself, I would be so much easier for others to enjoy.
The break up of any major relationship is the perfect time to process how I am relating with others. The last time I launched myself into such deep analysis was when I got divorced and then lost my job/career in 2004. I knew this was a great time to readjust life priorities. I decided I didn’t much care about anything but love, because if I didn’t ever find an amazing solid love relationship, I wasn’t sure I wanted to live that much longer anyway.
So I did everything I could think of to understand 40+ love. I even started my own local dating service, and it’s a good thing I did. A few months later Mike walked into my life. Everything got better with Mike, or as my Dad said a few months later, “Mike saved your ass.” I finally found unconditional love and compassion in a world where it is so very rare. Then I wrote: “How To Believe In Love Again: Opening to Forgiveness, Trust and Your Own Inner Wisdom.” I wanted to save lives. When you feel all hope is lost, please consider taking a look at this book.
Send me an e-mail & I’ll hook you up with a copy! — The Midlife Crisis Queen! MidlifeCrisisQueen@gmail.com
Buying a Home in Rural Southern Colorado
I have always found real estate interesting. I suppose it’s a part of my natural nosiness. I like to see how others live and what they choose. Mike knows the construction trade inside and out. That’s why we went with a friend to look at a small property yesterday. She wanted to get our opinion on a darling little ranchette not too far away from us.
This property is relatively new, well-built, nicely detailed inside and landscaped, with great views of Greenhorn Mountain and the distant Sangre de Cristos.
Buying in rural markets is so different than cities. Be sure and check what the property’s access is to water, electricity, phone service, and what kind of heating and septic system it has. This cute little ranch on a few acres has a giant garage and studio space, fully fenced, but it does not have access to water on the property. Most city people can’t even imagine that! Water will have to be trucked in.
The good news about properties down here? The cost is about one quarter of what they might cost up north, near any metro area. I can see this property being priced at $500,000 to $600,000 if it was anywhere near the Denver/Boulder metro area. Access to jobs is everything in real estate.
The realtor informed us that sellers here usually have to accept contingencies on sales. Their average time on the market is about one year. We see many come down here, buy a house on impulse, and then need to sell a year or two later. Yes it is amazingly beautiful here in the spring, summer and fall, but the winters are so WINDY and can seem very long with most city distractions (restaurants, shopping, etc.) at least an hour away.
The truth is, most have no idea how or if they will adjust to rural life. My advice? Make sure you like spending a lot of time alone or are on the same page completely with your life partner. You need to get along very well in these circumstances. Make sure you enjoy nature, things like bird watching, plants, hiking, biking and lots of silence. If you have little appreciation for clean air, morning silence, amazing sunrises and sunsets and a pristine natural setting, don’t buy a rural home, especially if you crave any sort of human-based distractions.
Our house being built in 2014 -2015
Mike and I left suburbia in 2014, after living in cities for most of our lives. We wanted to try out solar living with spectacular views of Sangre de Cristo mountains. We moved here to live close to nature, to try out passive solar living, and to build the kind of home we chose to live in for the rest of our lives. We came in search of a far more quiet, peaceful, healthy and inexpensive lifestyle than cities could offer us. We have received so much more… Would you like to know how we ended up here? The ups and downs of our year-long building process? My fears in our first year here? Why we love it so much now?
Please send me an e-mail to order your own copy — Laura Lee: MidlifeCrisisQueen@gmail.com
Three Years Later in Rural Colorado…
Today we celebrate three years of living in this magnificent part of Colorado. Granted, this was not all a pleasant experience. In fact the first year and a half, from the time we decided to leave suburbia in Fort Collins until our home was completed here, were grueling. Some synonyms for grueling that describe my experience best: backbreaking, challenging, demanding, formidable, and sometimes hellacious. Building in rural areas is not for the meek, and building in mid-winter has its own challenges, but we lived through it and now we are happy as clams!
(Exactly how happy are clams anyway?)
We moved here for a number of reasons. To live close to nature, to try passive solar living, to build the kind of home we chose to live in for the rest of our lives, and to find a far more peaceful, healthy and less expensive lifestyle than cities can offer us. We received so much more!
The greatest gift for me is a sense of freedom and natural silence that I have never come close to in my previous life. I now live in the present, choosing each hour how I want to spend my day. I awaken to the birds singing with the sun pouring in, and go out to work in my fledgling garden of mostly native plants, most of which will be sunflowers blooming very soon!
Then, if I feel like visiting friends, I drive into La Veta on county roads with wildflowers popping up everywhere. Yes, the dining choices are slim here, just one of the “conveniences” you have to give up to live in the country. Luckily I’m a great cook and prefer to eat at home most of the time.
The hardest part for me was taking the original risk. Letting go of our nice home in suburbia was not easy, especially after seeing the one hundred year old miner’s house we would have to move into in Walsenburg for over a year.
Then there were the challenges of working with the local contractors and our builder here. Just getting them to come to work was often the biggest challenge! Here’s where we were one year into the build. But somehow it all came together and everything works today, so we have no complaints.
I know we will face many more difficulties and much stormy weather up here, but at least we finally know where home is. For now, this is certainly where we belong…
Would you like to read the whole story of how we ended up here enjoying country living? Check it out: A Memoir of Retirement: From Suburbia to Solar in Southern Colorado.
Springtime Gardening near the Sangre de Cristos
The West Peak is stunning in its new coat of snow!
Here’s my small plot to plant and the lovely planting box Mike built for me this spring. I’m trying to grow a few native plants from seeds, plus I have purchased quite a few starters. The deer and rabbits are a concern, so I tried to choose ones they don’t like as much, lavender, penstemons, Blue Mist Spirea. As I took my walks around La Veta last summer, I noticed which plants were surviving the many deer prowling the streets there.
Also, I have a request for any locals reading this: Does anyone have seeds for the New Mexican Locust trees we see everywhere past La Veta on the road to Cuchara? I want to try growing them in our area! Thanks! -LLC
Adventures of the NEW??? Old Farts 