Are You Willing to Fight For Your Dreams?

May 13, 2015March 3, 2018 / Laura Lee Carter / 3 Comments

One of the most important lessons I have learned from my midlife struggles, is the need to be willing to fight for my dreams. This journey began for me back in 2004, when I lost my job and then spent months in introspection.

I focused on this question: What do I need to happen before I die?

I concluded that for myself I needed to find ways to believe in love again. I so wanted to find one genuine love in this lifetime. This book is a summary of what I learned in this process. I fought through a lifetime of tragedy and disappointment to change my perspective and find new faith in the power of love. Then I found a great new partner within a few months.

With Mike I found true partnership where we are able to work successfully together towards shared goals. One of his lifetime goals was to build his own solar custom home with an incredible view. This is the goal we have been working on for over a year now.

So many obstacles have arisen in this process. Leaving behind our life of 20+ years in Fort Collins was our first challenge. I wrote about that extensively in my memoir of this entire experience. Suffice to say this kind of change is never easy.

We moved into a 100-year-old little house in Walsenburg and put much into storage last June. It took five months just to get a proper slab completed in this rural Colorado county.

We noticed every step of the construction process was costing much more than we had budgeted. We found that our contractor was not taking bids for work, but simply using his regular sub-contractors. At that point Mike decided to take over the contracting part of the process. He took bids from both local and Pueblo companies and cut over 30% off the cost of the electrical and stucco work. Our builder was not happy.

This week, after almost a year of struggle, we were finally ready to complete the inside of our home. We have collected everything we need to complete the kitchen, baths, trim, etc. The response from our builder? I may be able to get to that in a few weeks. I went ballistic! In response he hung up on me.

Luckily Mike apologized profusely, and so we’re back on track again. It will all get done, and we will move in sometime in July, more than a year after we moved here.

I tell you this NOT to discourage you from pursuing your own unique goals, but to warn you that pursuing dreams can get ugly sometimes.

You must be willing to fight for your dreams…

How did I end up here, feeling so fortunate?

It’s a long story, one I can now share with you in my new memoir!

Remember: WHATEVER YOU’RE NOT CHANGING, YOU’RE CHOOSING.

Terrible hail and May snow!

May 11, 2015November 26, 2015 / Laura Lee Carter / 3 Comments

We have an adage here in Colorado. We say it is safe to plant outside after Mother’s Day, but this year is obviously different!

Last Thursday we got stuck in the WORST HAIL STORM I HAVE EVER EXPERIENCED! Driving on I-25 south of Pueblo we got hit with a deluge, that cracked our windshield and trashed our van.

This is the scene outside of our rental this morning:

On a recent clear day, I could just catch a glimpse of the Spanish Peaks from our front yard in Walsenburg.

This is what I saw this morning! Poor trees! They were just getting into blooming mode and certainly weren’t ready for this! I guess that’s what happens when you bring in trees that aren’t adapted to this area of the country.

Up at Navajo we will be living in a native Pinon-juniper woodland. Those trees have adapted over the centuries to handle snow in any season.

Can you tell I was raised by native plants Nazi Jack L. Carter, author of Trees and Shrubs of Colorado and Trees and Shrubs of New Mexico!

A visit to the old Libre Community in Huerfano County, Colorado

May 8, 2015December 31, 2018 / Laura Lee Carter / 5 Comments

When asked about the best thing that happened to me this past week, I could only answer my introduction into a whole new world in the northern part of my new county.

Since moving to Huerfano County in southern Colorado last June, I have heard various references to the Libre Community, established here in the late 1960s as an alternative to traditional American life. Some call it a hippie commune, but Libre is a community of families or individuals who have been invited to build their own homes. These structures as well as the land they are built can never be sold. Which is why Libre has endured since 1968 while the communes of northern New Mexico and southern Colorado are long gone. New members were required to build their own homes and then homes were traded between members as needed.

Luckily I connected with one of the elder members of this community at a local function. Sibylla invited Mike and me up to see and learn more about the history of Libre. So last Saturday we took a drive up to see these rural dome homes built in the shadow of the Wet Mountains.

Sibylla now lives in what she calls her “hobbit house” which I found quite an apt description. Most of these dome homes started small and were added on to through the years. Sybylla is a transplant from Germany. She and her husband moved to Libre in the early 1970s and built a larger home for their family. Now she lives alone and so she has moved to the hobbit house.

We enjoyed her hospitality, wonderful stories and a cup of tea on her back patio while looking at tremendous views of the distant mountains. She referred to her bird feeder as her television as they have no TV or Internet up there, and the phone gets hit by lightening sometimes! Sibylla is an artist like many who came to Libre.

After a few hours of fascinating conversation, Sibylla took us next door to meet her partner Dean Fleming, a founding member of the Libre Community. Dean lives in a larger dome house which he uses as his art studio. The views of the Wet Mountains were amazing from here.

What a fascinating afternoon full of warm friendship, interesting elders, and local history…

We’re newcomers to rural southern Colorado, so after a few years I decided to compile a diary about my life after moving here from Fort Collins. We chose the foothills west of Walsenburg to build a passive solar home. Please share this blog with your friends if they are considering similar life changes. Contact me directly to discuss any of these challenges, and to order your own signed copies of any of my books. Email me at: MidlifeCrisisQueen@gmail.com

A Memoir of Retirement: From Suburbia to Solar in Southern Colorado

Paradise is Personal

May 4, 2015October 18, 2018 / Laura Lee Carter / Leave a comment

“Paradise is where I want to wake up every morning… where I can be the way I want to be.” — Huerfano: A Memoir of Life in the Counterculture

When we were certain we would not be able to work full-time again, Mike and I began considering our options back in 2013. Where would we find our own inexpensive paradise?

After a quick trip down to Cuenca Ecuador in September, we decided to take a closer look at southern Colorado. Mike had an idea that the Huerfano west of Walsenburg might be a good place to begin our search, so we came down here and camped at Lathrop State Park. As luck would have it, we drove right into our first Octoberfest that fall!

Between the fantastic mountains views, the friendly people, the mild climate, the dark skies at night, and the completely reasonable land prices, we decided to research Navajo Ranch further, and the more we learned, the more we liked this area. It had its own water district, electric and phone service already present, and lots priced between $10,000 and 15,000. We returned in December to look at specific lots.

We found it difficult to distinguish one lot from another and hard to tell which lots were for sale. But as luck would have it, the only one we got out to look at more closely was the one we ended up buying in January 2015!

Then all we had to do was go back to Fort Collins, sell our home, and say goodbye to our life of 20+ years up there, a task that turned out to be far more difficult than expected.

**To read the whole story behind our great leap of faith, check out my Memoir of Retirement: From Suburbia to Solar and please follow us on TWITTER!**

New Progress on our Colorado Foothills Home!

March 12, 2015March 12, 2015 / Laura Lee Carter / 2 Comments

This week we have lots of action and progress up at our house in the foothills west of here. This is EXCITING!

We are bringing in the water from the county road. After that we’ll have the septic system put in and finish up on the plumbing.

We are also getting the house wired, not an inexpensive proposition. But we found a great company in Pueblo to help out.

After these systems are all installed, Mike plans to do the cable installation himself, and then we’ll be ready to insulate and get some drywall put up!

Some day all this stress and these hassles will be a distant memory, and we’ll be happily looking out on this fantastic view every morning… Cocktails on the patio anyone?

Our home will be “dried-in” soon!

January 31, 2015February 1, 2015 / Laura Lee Carter / 1 Comment

OK, back to this week’s progress on our solar home…

This week our home became almost completely dried-in. This means the building shell is sufficiently completed to keep out the weather. As you can see, the roof is now completely covered with weather sealing, and the windows are going in.

The steel roof happens next week…

We love the HURD windows Mike chose for the house! He remembered seeing them in new construction while growing up in California, so he checked them out for quality and price when we started construction.

Mike found Hurd to be the best deal while looking for windows whose parts are pressure-treated with preservatives so they will not rot later. He’s had some bad experiences with some of the better-known national brands and refuses to use them ever again!

When the windows and doors are all in, we will begin on the electrical and plumbing. The insulation and interior dry walling come next.

Click on these cool cloud photos to enlarge! This one is looking up at our house…

The East Spanish Peak was peeking out of the clouds in a lovely, Taoist way…

Time to get to work ordering the kitchen cabinets.

Click on photos for full-size views, and follow us on TWITTER!