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)

Journey Back to Self, Finding Home…

June 22, 2016November 6, 2021 / Laura Lee Carter / 13 Comments

I saw a great profile of one of my favorite human beings last Sunday on CBS Sunday Morning. Richard Gere has been a bit of a guru for me ever since he found me at exactly the right moment, in the midst of a tremendously depressing afternoon in the summer of 2004. From the television, he looked me straight in the eyes and said, “Hang on, it all changes.” That was enough for me, and he was so right!

Richard now works as an advocate for the disadvantaged of the world. He recently played a homeless man in his film “Time out of Mind”, twelve years in the making. He also works to bring attention to the terrible plight of immigrants worldwide: People without a country.

I find Richard has a knack for asking the important questions, questions like, “Where am I safe in this world?” and “How did I end up here?” And then he said, “We’re all about our stories…”

fe truth I have been focused on lately is how so many of us seem to find a way to return to our original or true self through the chaos that midlife can be. For example, the constant questioning of how I ended up so unhappy with my life at age 49, led me to rediscover who I am, and what I needed to accomplish before I died.

I see now I was in search of a new sense of home and comfort within myself. I was looking for my place in this world.

What did I love and want more of in my life? What parts of my life did I need to jettison RIGHT NOW? What voices in my head were leading me to unhappiness, and which ones were wise and compassionate?

Finding the right voices to listen to has led me to this place in rural Colorado, where the birds sing me awake each morning, and…

“the sun pours in like butterscotch and sticks to all my senses.” Thank you Joni!

How did this happen? 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!

The wildflowers are lovely at Cordova Pass!

June 18, 2016June 21, 2016 / Laura Lee Carter / 3 Comments

To celebrate our two year anniversary of moving to this beautiful part of Colorado, we drove up to Cordova Pass yesterday. As usual we had no traffic on the way up there and only met one other couple along the way.

Cordova Pass, at 11,248 feet, lies on the western shoulder of the West Spanish Peak, east of the Culebra Range of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. The drive up the pass can be a bit rough at times, but I enjoyed moving through the various eco-systems, and did not even know that we might be able to camp up there sometime. They have a bathroom!

We had heard that mid-June is a great time to see wildflowers up there, and they were right. These Blue Flag Wild Iris were everywhere…

…along with lots of Golden Banner and dandelions.

Along the way at the lower elevations we saw lots of these beautiful bushes in bloom. Thanks to my botanist friends I now know these are New Mexican Locust. No wonder I never saw them up north.

Lots of great views near the top of the pass…

…and the trees along the road were florescent GREEN!

Then there is this very cool arch cut into a dike on the other side of the pass. We had to stop so Mike could study the geology of the whole thing, of course.

Our drive down the North Fork of the Apishapa River Valley, down through Gulnare and Aguilar, was lush and so beautiful! This is one of the few places I have been in this country where everything seems exactly like it might have been a hundred years ago.

And I loved this cool looking Teletubbie village up on the hill!

Bye Bye!

Why write about yourself and your experiences?

June 13, 2016October 31, 2017 / Laura Lee Carter / 10 Comments

As I begin working on my next book, a journal of retirement, I wondered why anyone would find this story interesting. I have certainly had more interest in this blog than I ever expected, with over 50,000 views so far from over 25,000 visitors all over the world! I so enjoy seeing those from other countries taking an interest in our escapades in rural southern Colorado.

Of course the next question is why blog at all? Why do some wish to share their daily lives and lessons with others, while most can’t even imagine it?

In this particular case, I thought there might be some who would like to see what it feels like to choose to leave a nice suburban home in one of the “best retirement cities in the country” to move to a rural area with little traffic or shopping, but so much amazing natural beauty and lovely silence. And as I read the posts I wrote a couple years ago, when considering this gigantic change for myself, I do find my thoughts and worries interesting in retrospect.

I guess what interests me the most is the psychology of changing something major in your life, especially past age 50 or 60. Why do some take the risk and go for it, while others stay home and watch TV? I guess it just comes down to personal taste, but also a gigantic fear of change.

I was full of fear the day we sold our nice home in Fort Collins. I really did not know what to expect, and I admit it, parts of our experience down here have been quite discouraging. But now I know we made the right choice for both of us. Sometimes you just have to take the big risk, leap, and build your wings on the way down.

“We must be willing to get rid of the life we had planned, to have the life that is waiting for us.” — Joseph Campbell

The Best of the Boomer Blogs – June Edition

June 5, 2016June 6, 2016 / Laura Lee Carter / 9 Comments

The wildflowers are just taking off in this part of southern Colorado. Springtime here is truly glorious! Check out the yellow flowers on my header, taken last June near our home. We think this beats the hell out of mowing a lawn!

And speaking of spring, here comes a few great blog posts from my boomer friends. Meryl Baer says: Baby boomers grew up during the turbulent 1960s, not so long ago in the minds of those of us who lived through the era. Yet the 60s decade came and went over 50 years ago. This week Meryl Baer of Six Decades and Counting faced the harsh fact that the 60s not only occurred over 50 years ago, but are ancient history to younger generations. Read about her revelation in I am History.

cute puppy

Doing a little bowl-sitting…

It feels like the dog days of summer early in her part of the country, so Carol Cassara at Heart-Mind-Soul presents us with some dog posts. Here are her tips for traveling with your dog this summer or any time. And because everyone loves cute dog photos, which of these gorgeous pups are your favorites?

On The Survive and Thrive Boomer Guide, Rita R. Robison, consumer journalist, writes about two pieces of news for consumers. A federal agency is proposing a rule to end payday loan debt traps. And, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is issuing voluntary guidelines in an effort to work with food companies and restaurants to gradually adjust sodium levels in food. While the payday loan rule has the potential to save consumers nationwide billions of dollars in unfair fees and interest, the salt guidelines are voluntary and only will be helpful if companies decide to follow them.

This week Tom Sightings takes on the issue of men and women. In Part I — What Happened to the Men? he discusses recent trends in employment and education, and concludes with one hope for his children.