Oh, the lives that could have been…

July 14, 2016October 11, 2016 / Laura Lee Carter / 9 Comments

Isn’t it fun to fantasize about the other lives you might have had if your mind had been more open, and you had known yourself better in your 20’s, when you chose your first career?

I love working with living things and color!

Rooting and transplanting different kinds of plants and succulents is one of my favorite pastimes now, and I love growing all sorts of plants!

I see only now how much more fun I would have had if I had found some kind of work in some artistic field like floral design or gardening. I feel I could have expressed my full being through a job like that.

It seems to me now, that I was so pre-programmed to work in universities. I do completely enjoy reading, thinking and the freedom of my own intellect. I love intellectual exchanges with others. But I also love the beauty and freedom of light and color.

Perhaps I could have been a painter in another life or a musician. I have fantasies of playing the harp lately. No, not something practical like the guitar, the harp! What does that mean? Perhaps I’m headed for heaven? Or is hell looking for a harpist.

Of course, there’s still time. It seems like everyone presently moving to this rural Colorado county wants to become a ‘grower.’ Perhaps I can still run a greenhouse eventually, and put my green thumb to good use. At least I can plan how glorious my new gardens will be here, after we get our patio done!

It’s never too late to find out who you might have been!

I am filled with gratitude that I can now live like this forever. Please go learn more about our move from Fort Collins to here in my new memoir!

The Best of Boomer Blogs, #456

July 10, 2016July 10, 2016 / Laura Lee Carter / 3 Comments

Welcome to the longest-running Boomer Blog Carnival online, started sometime back in the early 2000s! This is our version of a clickable magazine of recent posts by long-term, reputable boomer bloggers.

Relax, ENJOY and click away!

Summer is all about relaxation, and for some that means vacation. Veteran traveler Carol Cassara over at Heart-Mind-Soul today offers us 5 ways to have a relaxing vacation and also a list of must-packs that will come in handy on any vacation.

Tom Sightings in Volunteering an Opinion reflects on the benefits of volunteering in retirement Here he offers a few facts and figures as well as some perspective from his own experience.

Meryl Baer of Six Decades and Counting says: There is nothing like a day in the city to energize mind and body. She enjoyed a day in the Big Apple recently with friends, eating and theater-going: Showtime in the Big Apple. However, she also reminds us there is no place like your chosen home.

On The Survive and Thrive Boomer Guide, Rita R. Robison, consumer journalist, writes about the first inventory of the accumulation of cancer-causing chemicals in the human body. Up to 420 chemicals known or likely to cause cancer have been detected in blood, urine, hair, and other human samples, the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit research organization, found when it reviewed more than 1,000 biomonitoring studies and other research by government agencies and scientists in the United States and around the world. Biomonitoring studies measure the burden of chemicals present in the human body.

I say whether you chose to go on vacation or stay home this summer, take a mind vacation everyday. Tell that busy, demanding part of your brain to shut up and take time to RELAX. De-stress and embrace the ‘F’ word, FUN, one of our greatest and undervalued pleasures in life.

Free Your Mind… It’s OK to Relax!

July 8, 2016December 19, 2021 / Laura Lee Carter / 9 Comments

One of the BEST lessons I have learned from my husband Mike is how to truly relax. I have a natural guilt around sitting around spacing out. If you are anything like me, you will first need to be convinced that it’s OK to relax.

Consider the long and arduous history of mankind on this earth. Yes, they had to keep busy looking for food and protecting themselves from anything that wanted to eat them, but I feel certain they also knew how to relax. I just can’t see a caveman or woman being all stressed out over their to-do list. Primitive tribes today still know how to spend hours doing nothing.

It’s healthy to relax, stare off into space, and enjoy this present moment. In fact, it can even be ‘productive’ in its own way. Did you know some of our most creative ideas came from spacing out? Ask Newton. That’s how he first noticed gravity.

So the next time you are feeling pressured to get too many things done, remember relaxation can be very good for you. De-stress and embrace the ‘F’ word, FUN! You do enough. You are enough. You have enough…

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: 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…

To order your own signed copies of any of my books. Cheers, Laura Lee (email: MidlifeCrisisQueen@gmail.com)

What does freedom mean to you?

July 4, 2016July 4, 2016 / Laura Lee Carter / 5 Comments

Today I am feeling a tad bit more patriotic than usual, perhaps because I finally live in the right place for me in the good old USA. Having finally found MY perfect place, I appreciate my freedom even more than ever!

I appreciate the freedom to choose and receive a great public education, to find jobs I have enjoyed mostly in public universities, the freedom at age 49 to find my perfect mate, the freedom to save up for retirement in a reasonable way over decades, and then my ultimate freedom to choose the best place to live out the rest of my life.

Since I have lived in a number of other countries, I appreciate so many freedoms that others simply do not have. As a single woman, I enjoyed so many freedoms not available in other countries, and as a married woman I have been free to define myself separate from my marriage partner.

I have done the research. This is the BEST TIME to be alive in human history, and especially as an American woman! We live longer, healthier and freer than anyone else, and yet it sometimes seems, all we do is complain! Yes there many things wrong in the world, and unfortunately we are constantly bombarded with this news. But please take a moment today to appreciate what we generally take for granted. We are a country with free public education, freedom for women, safeguards for children, great medical care, and best of all, the right to VOTE! You’ve just got to love that!

Hailey Carter, Emerging Artist

June 30, 2016April 13, 2019 / Laura Lee Carter / 7 Comments

At the risk of sounding slightly biased, I feel the need to share with you the art of my niece Hailey. She’s a beautiful young woman who has already fought a few very tough battles at age 20, and still she persists as a talented writer and painter.

She visited her Dad, my brother, this past April by coming out to Arizona for the first time from the East Coast. She stayed in Mesa and then drove out to Sedona to spend some time with John, at his camp along Oak Creek north of Sedona. I’m so happy they were able to get together after many years apart.

This is Hailey’s interpretation of her drive from Mesa Arizona to Sedona through the eyes of a person who has never seen such amazing natural beauty.

I love Hailey’s sense of color and movement.

Her style reminds me of Georgia O’Keefe‘s early works of the southwest after she first started traveling to Abiquiu New Mexico in 1929, where she eventually bought her Ghost Ranch. Georgia has always been a muse for me personally. Her strong sense of purpose and independent spirit inspires me even today!

We originally considered retiring on land near the orange buttes of Abiquiu ourselves. To me this land is magical. I introduced Mike to the area when I first met him in 2005 and he loved it too.

On our first trip we originally planned to stay there for just a day, but ended up spending a few days enjoying it and looking for land for sale. Perhaps I’ll share an essay I wrote about our first trip together there one of these days…

What is a palisade anyway?

June 28, 2016June 28, 2016 / Laura Lee Carter / 11 Comments

Yesterday was so much FUN! My brother from Sedona Arizona got a ride up to Taos, New Mexico the day before, so Mike and I drove down there to pick him up.

This is a beautiful drive from where we live, through lots of mountains. On the way there we took the direct route west to Fort Garland, and then south to Taos, but on the way home we drove further south through Red River, Eagle’s Nest and Cimarron New Mexico. Along the way we found some incredible “palisades.”

I have never known what this word meant although I’ve seen it used all over Colorado. Turns out it originally meant “a steel or wooden fence or wall of variable height, usually used as a defensive structure.” But the common usage in the U.S. today is steep cliffs or buttes…

Like these! Is that cool or what?

We just came around a corner and boom, they were right in front of us!

We, of course, had to stop and enjoy a walk down to the river and take pictures:

This is Mike and John enjoying the scenery…

So there you have it, that is your English language lesson for today. Now go find your own palisades to enjoy!