Horsetooth Reservoir at dawn
Listening to old friends…
Spanish Peaks Living
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.
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.How do we find home?
When the full moon woke me up in the middle of the night this past weekend, I started thinking about all of the places I have lived and visited. Actually it all began with trying to remember exactly which years I lived in Colorado Springs. This may seem strange, but when I started writing down all the places I have lived or stayed at least a week or two, it added up to six U.S. states and ten plus foreign countries. I lived in four different towns before first grade. No wonder at the ripe old age of 60 I was ready to settle down and stay somewhere for a while.
![original_photo_Thailand_1973cropped[1] (2)](https://adventuresofthenewoldfarts.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/original_photo_thailand_1973cropped1-2.jpg)
This didn’t start out as a life plan for me. Things just worked out this way. Wherever I went I would stay a couple of years and slowly the urge would arise to move on. I remember when I got my first professional librarian position at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, the director ask me not to stay forever in my first job. He needn’t have worried. I was out of there in exactly three years.
I used to kid with myself about “Moving on to greater failures…” Of course it helped that I didn’t marry until much later, and never had kids. I simply had no interest in all that. I wanted to see the world, exploring both the world outside my door, and the more interesting one inside my own mind.
I also picked up a few college and graduate degrees along the way. For quite a while I wanted to teach Chinese history at the college level. Then, after learning Chinese and getting an M.A. in Chinese history, I decided I was sick of China and university teaching was too limiting in its depth and scope. Since Naropa University was located right down the hill from University of Colorado in Boulder, I walked down there to find a whole new perspective on life and psychology, transpersonal psychology. This was my spiritual home, and I have been pursuing it ever since. This is something you can study anywhere and everywhere. Human and animal behavior is my thing…
But still in all of that moving from here to there, I never found a place I could truly call home. What does that mean? To me it means a place where you will die knowing that you truly belong. That place where you can see your ashes blowing in the wind, and know you are finally home.
I didn’t know how I would find that place or if it would find me, but it did. At first I did not recognize this Pinon-Juniper woodland looking up at the Sangre de Cristo mountains as my place. I only knew I was home after we built solar here and then got comfortable for a few years.
I know every morning when I go outside and marvel one more time at the perfect silence of the sunrises and sunsets here. I know when I work in my native plants garden, collecting interesting plants from around the region. I know when new birds stop by to feed and drink or when a stray Road Runner peeks in my window.
I know because every time I return home I think, Wow! Do I really live here?
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
The psychology of illness
Since before my counseling internship at a hospital back in the early 1990s, I have been fascinated with how we feel about ourselves when we become very ill. How do we explain illness to ourselves?
The traditional American view was everywhere when I sat with patients back then. Elderly patients always said something like, “What did I do to deserve this?” Christian guilt and shame runs rampant in environments like these:
“I must have done something wrong or I wouldn’t feel so bad.”
It seems we always search for some plausible explanation even though we know we all have to die of something, sometime. I have had a number of health challenges in the past year, many more than my previous 60+ years on this planet, and they are all permanent disabilities, not temporary setbacks. Lately I have acquired a serious bacterial infection that does not normally occur in healthy adults, so of course my mind turns to the “why” questions again.
How did I get this? Why now?
I suppose we think this way because we feel certain that there must be some justice in all of this. That is our problem, trying to find meaning in a world that is certain to kill all of us eventually is an absurdity. If that bacteria doesn’t get you, something else will. But it seems so human to rage against this mentality.
This is what interests me about illness and the ways we humans think about it.
Psychoactive Chemicals and YOU
I, like probably millions of others all over this globe, have an interest in psychoactive chemicals. What can they do to and for us? For humans, examples of psychoactive chemicals include caffeine, alcohol, cocaine, LSD, and cannabis. Can certain of these compounds benefit us, leading to higher levels of consciousness? Can they open our minds to new and different kinds of creativity, or simply make our lives more pleasurable? I was surprised to find new information on this topic on the National Geographic Wild channel yesterday.
The “Happy Hour” episode of the show “World’s Wierdest” explores how psychoactive chemicals have affected animal behavior throughout evolution, sometimes assisting them in being more effective hunters. One fascinating research project looked at how spiders weave very different types of webs on different compounds, for example cocaine versus THC. They also look at primitive tribes who have used these substances in their rituals for centuries.
Here’s a brief summary of this episode:
“Nat Geo WILD explores nature as it gets rolling drunk and spaces out, and delves into the importance, or lack thereof, of intoxication in the animal kingdom. Meet monkeys that binge drink and throw frat parties, elephants that go on drunken rampages through villages and lemurs that get high off millipedes. And when a jaguar’s hunting skills may have been enhanced by chewing on psychedelics, scientists question whether or not there are evolutionary benefits to psychoactive compounds.”
Another piece of human behavior I find fascinating is why some of us are open to learning more on this topic, even experimenting with a few new substances, while others fear even the smallest alteration to their present state of mind. Could it be that old fear of “losing your mind” on some level, or going some place you’ve never been before? My favorite joke on this topic: unemployment is much more of a gateway drug to serious drug use than marijuana, but LOVE is the best drug of all! Trust me, I know.
Best Boomer Bloggers: Fall 2017 Edition
Wow, autumn really crept up on me this year! One day it was summer and then boom, it was fall, and most of the beautiful leaves were almost gone! I’m not sure how that happened. It must be that whole time flies as we get older thing. Is everybody ready for winter, because it is just around the corner. We already had our first hard frost a couple weeks ago here at 7,000 feet in Colorado, and Oktoberfest is long over. It must be time for me to host another edition of the Best of Boomer Blogs!
First I would like to welcome a new member to our group. Rebecca Forstadt Olkowski. Rebecca sees herself as “a purveyor of all things fun and a die-hard foodie. I love to travel and write from anywhere on the planet I happen to land, even if it’s my own backyard in Los Angeles. One of my favorite areas of the world to travel are the historic cities and countrysides of Europe.” For her first presentation here, from her blog BabyBoomster.com she says:
Taking care of our vision over 50 is particularly important even if you don’t wear glasses or contacts. There are hidden diseases that are age-related that can easily be prevented. I include products and services to keep your eyes healthy and bright.
Next up, Meryl is worried that she might be impacting Broadway. I’ll let her explain: A minor problem Meryl Baer of Six Decades and Counting faced this past week, made her think there might be something wrong with her. Could she have bad karma? She’s not sure what that is, but she might have it. Read about her dilemma in Bad Karma?
Carol Cassara, over at Heart Mind Soul, noticed a different kind of stress this week: Sometimes social media can create more stress than we might have ever imagined. Part of that stress is our tendency to want to respond to every comment, every post that rings our chimes. Carol Cassara has a great suggestion for making life more peaceful.
On The Survive and Thrive Boomer Guide, Rita R. Robison, consumer journalist, writes about the importance of getting your medications checked each year. Although Oct. 21, was “Check Your Meds’ Day,” it’s important to take all of your medications – including prescription and over-the-counter medication, plus vitamins and other dietary supplements – to a pharmacist or physician for a “brown-bag” review. That allows them to check for potential harmful drug interactions and possibly eliminate unnecessary drugs.
Fellow blogger Tom Sightings says, sometimes retirement doesn’t play out exactly the way we envisioned when we were younger. Retirement is a destination, but it is also a journey, and with any journey it makes sense to stop and review where we’ve been and where we’re going. So check out Tom’s 5 Questions to Ask Yourself After You Retire. Go see if you’re on track to realize your own retirement dreams.
Now for a word from our sponsor:
I have been struggling lately with various expected and unexpected problems. As it turns out, even when you are happily retired, the problems just keep coming!
Luckily the beautiful sunrises and sunsets keep coming too…
Adventures of the NEW??? Old Farts 