My 4th of July Trip Down Memory Lane

July 6, 2017July 20, 2017 / Laura Lee Carter / 3 Comments

I lived in Fort Collins and Loveland Colorado from 1995 until Mike and I moved south in 2014. I moved to Fort Collins with one husband and left with another. The divorce in 2001 was brutal for me, not because I lost a love, but because I felt like a loser afterwards for a few years. Of course, it did not help that I lost over 75% of my income, but loneliness was my major issue.

I felt certain that I would spend the rest of my life alone.

horsetooth in summer

We went up to Fort Collins this past holiday to visit old friends. I got up early my first day there and visited some of the places where I lived, like Horsetooth Reservoir.

My first husband and I purchased a log home overlooking Horsetooth Reservoir, Lory State Park and the Bellvue Dome in 1995. Early in the morning the air is so cool up there, and the reservoir looks fantastic! I was surprised to see how the hillside leading up to our log home has been transformed into a bevy of large, luxury homes. When we lived there most of the houses were old and rundown.

Everyone says home prices in Fort Collins are through the roof now, and I can see why. It really is beautiful…for a city. It felt a lot like Boulder did decades ago with all the hip, outdoor-types moving in. I enjoyed how green it was with flowers everywhere.

The next day I drove down to Loveland to see a friend, and had a look at our past home on Morning Drive. I’m sure glad we didn’t stay there long! It looked so crowded in, and it’s only a block or so from a major highway leading up to Estes Park and Rocky Mountain National Park.

Overall, I enjoyed visiting my old haunts. I felt somehow stuck in my past for a day or two. Then I returned to our fantastic new home in the foothills of southern Colorado, and knew I was home. The cool, quiet of nature suits me just fine!

My theme song now!

Hello and welcome to my world. I’m new to southern Colorado, and recently compiled a book about the ups and downs of moving from Fort Collins Colorado to west of Walsenburg to build a passive solar retirement home: A Memoir of Retirement: From Suburbia to Solar in Southern Colorado. Please contact me directly to order your own signed copies of any of my other books… Cheers, Laura Lee (email: MidlifeCrisisQueen@gmail.com)

Three Years Later in Rural Colorado…

June 15, 2017June 16, 2017 / Laura Lee Carter / 9 Comments

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.

Welcoming Spring to the Colorado Foothills

March 20, 2017March 20, 2017 / Laura Lee Carter / 1 Comment

Spring can be subtle here at 7,000 feet, especially when we have had so much heat and so little moisture this past winter. Talk about mild, we have had only two decent snowstorms since October and very little measurable precipitation. But there are some much welcomed changes to observe.

imgp5738

First of all the type of birds appearing at our bird feeders are changing. Not that I’m able to identify many, but I do know when a new one flies up.

And we see the Rocky Mountain Bluebird coming by more and more. Such a beauty! Mike built a bird house for these. Sure hope they make use of their new accommodations! And there are a few other newcomers to our feeders. So nice to see…

In spite of the very dry conditions, I am beginning to see little patches of green along the county roads and subtle suggestions of future wildflowers. These lands are used to drought. Mike recently carved an abstract piece of art out of the base of a Pinon tree that we had to cut down to create our new home. The base is only a little over five inches wide and yet Mike was able to count 196 rings! This short tree was almost 200 years old, but most of the rings were impossible to see without extreme magnification.

Oh, and here’s a photo of his new piece. He calls it Rabbit-Hawk…

Arrival: The pros and cons of seeing your future

March 1, 2017December 6, 2018 / Laura Lee Carter / 1 Comment

One consequence of moving to a rural part of Colorado is the delays in seeing the latest movies. This has been a bit difficult for me, because I am a great fan of cinema! I admit my favorite aspect of going out to see a movie is to lose my present self in someone else’s life. I love the “fly on the wall” aspect of experiencing someone else’s reality, but in this case I felt like the canary in the cage. Funny, with my lifelong breathing difficulties, I have often compared myself to the canary in the mine in the numerous polluted situations I have found myself in.

Long story short, we finally had a chance to see Arrival last night, a quite cerebral approach to alien invasion. Number one I LOVED that the scientist, the linguist with all the answers, was played by a woman, and specifically by Amy Adams. I think it’s about time women played the smartest person in the room, and I’m also happy Ms. Adams finally got a demanding and serious role to play.

One of the points of this film seemed to be the greatly undervalued communication tool of emotions. By having a wise woman play the great communicator, I felt that intuitive wisdom as well as intellectual power were brought to center stage. This is a position I have fought for since way back when I hoped to become a college professor in the 1970s. I found universities so limiting in terms of valuing the whole person or professor. This is one of the primary reasons I gave up on that goal.

But the real point of this film is the simple question:

If you could see your future, with all of its phenomenal beauty and raw tragedy, would you still choose it?

This question brings up all sorts of interesting life contradictions. If I had seen my future in the past and tried to change one part, would the other parts have stayed the same? In fact, as I age I see almost every aspect of my life in terms of contradictions. If I choose this, what happens to that?

Choosing to leave behind the lifestyle I had lived for most of my life a few years ago, was a very difficult decision for me. When you choose something life changing you are almost always crossing a bridge you cannot go back across. This filled me with anxiety. But the true contradiction is that you can never know what will come of this difficult choice, unless you choose something different and then see how it goes.

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)

Our sunrise today!

November 21, 2016November 29, 2016 / Laura Lee Carter / 2 Comments

Sometimes I feel like I live in sunrise heaven up here!

It started out with a shy edge of lovely light…

rising into incredible pinks and purples…

and then announced itself fully.

HERE COMES THE SUN!

Another new day in one beautiful place…

Saying goodbye to the Midlife Crisis Queen

October 10, 2016March 4, 2019 / Laura Lee Carter / 12 Comments

It seems a few major changes are all coming together for me right now.

My new book about our move from Fort Collins to here is out! Please considering buying it. It’s a FUN read! Then write a review on Amazon to share your opinion with others. What I do here is for me, but also to inform others of the challenges and rewards of changing lifestyles in retirement. And while you’re changing, passive solar is a great way to reduce your heating bills!

My other major change is the demise of my original blog: Midlife Crisis Queen. To explain what it feels like to remove eight years worth of my writing from the Internet is difficult. Here’s something I wrote back in March of 2015 when I officially switched over to this new blog:

“After over eight years of maintaining this blog, not to mention a number of others, I am tired. In those eight years I have also produced a number of books and e-books to help others survive and thrive through what can be some tough middle years.”

When I started out as a writer I was full of ideas and zeal for so many different projects. It was like I was finally set free to express myself on a larger stage, and express myself I have. I am proud of my many accomplishments. I am also tired.

I have done what I can to encourage those who struggle with midlife change, those who wish to transform their lives into exactly what they have been dreaming of for decades. In that process I have also transformed my own life into exactly what I wanted back in 2004.

Soon I will be 60, living a new dream in our lovely mountain home. I am clearly in midlife no more, and I can feel a change coming over me. I no longer have the energy nor desire to try and save the world. I have lost interest in that pursuit. I can feel a future of quiet meditation and contemplation coming over me

Changing the way we see midlife was obviously a ridiculous goal to begin with, but you have to understand, I am an Aries, and that means stubborn!

I know I have reached hundreds of thousands of you with my blog posts, and thousands with my books. Some have shared with me the value of my efforts.

Thank you for letting me know I have made some difference in your life. It has been my pleasure. Please keep reading my books, following our adventures and, most importantly, keep making your own dreams come true!