Great News today! We are now certain that the area around our home is safe from fire! Last night we even got a tiny bit of rain here in La Veta. We had our own 4th of July celebration on Cheryle’s back porch in the dark!
This little town now has 1805 firefighting personnel in it, much more than its residents. We still have no sense of when we can return to our home. A new source of anxiety, waiting and wondering, but feeling so much thanks for our amazing federal government and its dedicated employees, who give all everyday to save other peoples’ lives and homes!
Almost no smoke around us this morning in La Veta! Cheryle has been a WONDERFUL HOST, but we are still tiring of this strange version of an emergency slumber party. At least it is much cooler this morning with a good chance of rain tonight. Now we wait to see if we get flash flooding up in the burn areas.
Once again I am reminded of what a wonderful person my husband is. He has been cleaning and fixing everything in sight at Cheryle’s home, just as he does when he’s at home.
How lucky am I? Feeling tremendously fortunate today!
It has certainly been a wild ride for us here in southern Colorado since June 28th! We live north of Highway 160 not too far west of Walsenburg, and were evacuated to a friend’s home in La Veta on June the 30th.
The greatest challenges for us have been worrying too much and finding very little good government information to reassure us. Yesterday I learned that our part of the fire has its own name (North Spring Fire) and finally this morning we got some solid information on structure protection west of our home. It seems they are finally getting the resources they need here to truly do their jobs right. I feel so much better about everything now.
I’m beginning to truly appreciate the level of organization, and the number of men, machines, and planning involved in mounting an operation like this. Multiply that times the number of fires in the West right now and that is the BEST EXAMPLE I CAN THINK OF OUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK.
Next time you think you can go it alone, consider situations like this.
I’ve been locked out of my e-mail accounts for now, but I am posting relevant information on my Facebook page. Thanks so much for your interest and concern.
What we are now calling the June Full Moon Fire (because it started on the Thursday of the full moon) in Huerfano County is basically burning out of control over much of this county now. We were evacuated from Navajo Ranch on Saturday afternoon because the fire crossed north of Highway 160 on Friday night into Mount Mestas and Sheep Mountain territory. We are staying with a wonderful friend in La Veta, waiting to see if this small town gets evacuated today or tomorrow.
We went to the big meeting at the high school yesterday, and were astounded at the size and power of this terrible fire. It’s basically a big circle of fire west of here, growing in all directions at once with bone dry, beetle-kill forests everywhere. It’s seems to be growing at around 10,000 acres a day!
We also went in to get our “reentry” badge from the feds in hopes that we would not be out of our home for too long, but I am hearing from firefighters that this one will be days if not weeks before it is completely contained. Many have already lost homes up in the mountains south of Highway 160. The people I know who have lost everything are in their 70s and cannot bear this kind of devastation!
At the meeting I observed hundreds of older (over 60) locals who moved here to live a quiet, relatively isolated life, all brought together over this terrible event. Shock and disbelief is on everyone’s face. To lose everything so late in life… Most of us are truly speechless in horror. And to think some illegal alien from Denmark started this because he could not wait to burn his trash!!! Ah Bartlebee, ah humanity!
I cannot access either one of my e-mail addresses because they are jerking me around between them for a new password! My Facebook page is the only private account I can access for now: https://www.facebook.com/LauraLeeCarter
As a lifelong student of human behavior, I now find denial to be the most ubiquitous and powerful trait known to us all. The best therapist I ever met told me,
“People can get used to anything, if they can get used to schizophrenia.”
I would only add, we do seem to specialize in getting used to emotional problems instead of doing what we can to change them. It surprises me when I see someone suffering from deep emotional challenges and yet making no effort to do anything about it. To some it must seem natural to live with emotional discomfort, feel self-critical of ourselves and yet never seek out professional help to change. Speaking from experience, this tendency literally ruins lives, because unresolved emotions lead to self criticism, unhappiness in relationships, destructive addictive habits, and reduced productivity.
Most don’t seek help for debilitating denial issues and feelings because we are also in denial that these parts of our emotional makeup can change. Our main concern may be the fear that we aren’t up to the challenge of breaking addictive cycles, ending self-abuse and the habit of choosing toxic relationships, or the simple certainty that these things can never change. So what do we do? We get comfortable with the familiar and yet frustrating habits we were raised with.
For many (including myself) our lives will continue to go gradually downhill until that final crisis that says with absolute certainty: “Things must change NOW!” Confronting that moment with self-honesty and self-responsibility is the end of denial. And once the walls of denial start to tumble, the denials underneath those denials all must go.
Admitting exactly how miserable you are is always the first step. Finding the best solutions unique to your own needs comes next.
Yes, I know how disturbing it can be to see your lovely set of life rules and plans based on absolutely nothing but denial fall to ashes before your eyes. Then you know it’s time to start from scratch, but not really. If this happens in midlife, as it did for me, you will find that you have amazing amounts of resilience, life experience, intuition and deep inner wisdom to fall back on.
Letting go of that old, worn out crap your entire life was based on and hitching your future dreams to the power of the new you, following your heart for perhaps the first time ever, now that is powerful and exhilarating! Don’t miss out on this once in a lifetime opportunity to have it all.
I experienced a unique and piercingly beautiful film yesterday! Based on Peter Turner’s memoir, this film follows the playful and passionate relationship between Turner (played by Jamie Bell) and the eccentric Academy Award-winning actress Gloria Grahame (played by Annette Bening).
I loved the way this film skillfully intertwined their budding romance in the late 1970s, with Ms. Grahame’s death in 1981.
What starts out as a vibrant and totally unexpected love affair between a legendary femme fataleand an unknown fellow actor in Liverpool England, quickly deepens into a passionate and caring relationship. Thus her decision to spend her last days on earth with him and his great family.
This 2017 film so skillfully and seamlessly takes the viewer from their early days of lustful romance, to Turner’s present uncertainty about how to handle Gloria’s obviously serious illness. Seeing her again brings back so many exciting memories for Turner as he watches her slowly fade away.
The skill of director Paul McGuigan in taking us back and forth in these characters’ lives, explains everything about their love for each other, so much so that Miss Grahame pushes Turner away when she realizes she is very ill. She hopes to spare him some degree of pain, but pain cannot be avoided in death, not when love is involved.
We just recently got access to a new channel on DirectTV, MeTV. They show old programs from the 1950s and 60s including classic TV characters from my youth. Watching these old shows reminded me that the only TV character that I ever idealized and wanted to be just like was Miss Kitty on Gunsmoke. It ran for 20 seasons from 1955 to 1975! In retrospect I find it down right crazy that I wanted to be a saloon proprietress. Come to think of it, she was probably also the Madam of the Long Branch brothel upstairs, but nobody talked about things like that back then.
The first career I ever considered was acting, something my college professor Dad would have never approved of. How I got from there to academic librarian is a mystery to me! But I still enjoy watching Miss Kitty and remembering the simple, innocent dreams of a ten year old so many years ago.
Who did you want to be when you grew up and how did that work out?
Adventures of the NEW??? Old Farts 