We're Burning Up Here, Folks

Both figuratively and literally, we are burning up here.  I never would have guessed that the Colorado summer could be so brutal. 

The thermometer above shows the temperature in the blazing sun on our terrace - yes, you read it right: 129.9° at 6:18 p.m.  But even in the shade, it was a balmy 105°, the highest official temperature ever recorded in Denver and the fourth straight day of 100+ temps with no end in sight.

Wait - that last reading wasn't really so bad.  Just 27 minutes later, you can see 133.5°as the outside temperature.

But anyone who is not in danger of being actually incinerated by flames cannot complain.  Much of the state is burning down.  There are at least 12 wildfires throughout the state, burning countless acres.  Colorado's governor said today that about half of the nation's firefighting personnel are in Colorado right now.

So let's just continue to pretend that global warming doesn't exist as we simulate hell on earth.

Chalk Art 2012

I've been negligent in my blog postings of late but there is not that much of interest in my life right now.  That's not a bad thing - I've been enjoying the quiet time and the beautiful spring weather.

Last year, I wrote about the annual Chalk Art Festival here.  Since it's close to where I live, I went on Saturday and Sunday this past weekend.  Sadly, rains came Saturday afternoon and washed away that day's work.  So the photos you see below were taken late Sunday morning, as the artists tried to recreate what they'd already done.  I'm still amazed by what these folks do with chalk.  By the time I'm writing this on Monday morning, all of what you see below has been hosed down and washed away.  Enjoy.

One artist's tools

Fashion and Style

I recently went to the Yves Saint Laurent retrospective at the Denver Art Museum. Interesting exhibit - I learned a lot about fashion (do you know that St. Laurent was the first designer to send a pants suit down the runway and this was considered scandalous?), and it made me think more about this topic in general.  It's always been fascinating to me - I love to look at all sorts of fashion, whether it's in a magazine, on the street, or on the red carpet.  But, it dawned on me when thinking about this exhibit that I don't ever really try to incorporate fashion into my own life, other than as a spectator.  It's intimidating and frightening to me. I would never, for example, wear the beautiful gown in the photo above, even assuming that I had somewhere to wear it. The pink would be too bright for me and the bow way too big.  Yet it's a stunning and classic gown when you see it in person.

I am actually scared of prints and bright colors (except in small doses).  I wear the same solid, boring things all of the time - light colored solid top (often white) and dark bottom.  Or, if I really feel wild, dark colored solid top (often black) and light bottom. Why is this so?  I'm not really sure.  There was a time in my life when I was young (teens and twenties) when I would wear bright colors.  I'm thinking of a particular a-line dress that had color blocks (so trendy now) of chartreuse and hot pink.  (So wishing that I had a photo of myself in this dress that I adored at that time.)

But as I get older, I just want to fade into the background, not call attention to how I look.   This phenomenon of becoming invisible as we age was discussed in an article I read recently.  The article is about aging stylishly, and it made me realize that being fashionable (which I know I can never be) and being stylish are two totally different things.  I admire women who have their own style - you know  they'll look great in whatever they show up wearing.

Then I read about a new book called Advanced Style that shows photos of older and very stylish women. The author and photographer of the book also has a blog where he features these aging fashionistas.  It's clear in looking at these women that it takes a lot of time and effort to really show up with style.  Maybe that's why I have no style - it's just too darn much work.

Another current exhibit at the Denver Art Museum - Read My Pins : The Madeleine Albright Collection - gave me an idea.  Maybe style is possible while dressing blandly if you have a reoccurring theme in your dressing, like Albright's ever-present pins.  The pins were fascinating as they tell a story of her life.  They're more than just a fashion accessory to her as she uses them to express how she's feeling on a particular day or to send a message to those she's seeing.

So no lessons to be learned here.  I simply want to think more about our superficial appearances and what that says about our insides, if anything.  Does what we wear make us more or less interesting people or just more or less interesting to look at?  

The Little Old Lady from (South) Pasadena

View from South Pas House

It's official.  We closed on our retirement house in South Pasadena last week. Unfortunately, we won't actually be living there until Barry retires from his Denver job, but I can now see my future as The Little Old Lady from (South) Pasadena.

For those of you too young to remember it or for those of you too old to remember the classic lyrics, take a listen to this 1964 Beach Boys song with a click here.  Back in the day, I was never a big Beach Boys fan - they seemed too clean cut to me and that California sound was way too far away for this Jersey girl.  In 1964, I was entranced with the Beatles, the British invasion of music, and the R & B sounds that were the soundtrack for my childhood.  But somehow the Beach Boys' songs and lyrics have stuck with me, and I still remember their big hits.  I could never have imagined then that I'd be living in so many places all over the country and that I'd wind up actually being that little old lady.

So the lyrics go:  ". . . and everybody's sayin' there's nobody meaner than the little old lady from Pasadena . . ."  That would be me.

April (Snow) Showers & Carpe Diem

April 3, 2012

After a glorious spring month of March with nary a snowflake to be seen, today is a gloomy snowy day.  The fact that April has begun seems to not impress the snow gods even one little bit.

But today is gloomy for reasons more significant than the weather.  I learned early this morning that my friend Sheila died today.  She was a wonderful person - liked by all. Sheila was a retired kindergarten teacher so that tells you right there that she was kind, patient and giving.  We had dinner together at Nicola's on LaVista the day she learned her diagnosis.  By that time, we had both researched the long name for what she had on the internet and both knew that the prognosis wasn't good.  So we cried, we laughed, we talked, and, of course, we drank wine.  We hoped that she would be included in the small percentage of people who were able to beat her kind of cancer, but it didn't work out that way. 

So, once again, the lesson to be learned is life is short.  Seize the day.

Sloshing Past the Doldrums

In my last blog post, I mentioned that I had attended a four-day seminar in Santa Barbara called LifeLaunch.  I didn't seek this out - it found me in the form of my friends who harassed me into going.  There were people at the seminar from all over - Australia, Belgium, Netherlands, etc. - and as we began on Day 1, they spoke about how they researched a variety of courses to eventually settle on this one.  When it was my turn to speak, I said that I had no idea what we would do here since I came at the request of my friends and had done little to no research about what to expect.  But, if I had been totally honest, I would have said that I went because this is my year of expecting more from myself (always mindful of my new year's resolutions).

LifeLaunch is really for people in transition, and I'm not actually at that point, having moved from grits to granola about a year and a half ago.  But I still don't feel as settled in Denver as I'd like and certainly don't feel at all like I did when I lived in Atlanta with my great life there.  It's been confusing to me to not be able to settle down the way I'd like, and it's been too long to continue to whine about it.  Right before I left for Santa Barbara, I read a quote that resonated with me, and I finally understood what was wrong. It's from Azar Nafisi, who wrote in Reading Lolita in Tehran (which I've never read but now want to):  "You get a strange feeling when you're about to leave a place . . . like you'll not only miss the people you love but you'll miss the person you are at this time and this place, because you will never be this way, ever again."  This was exactly my problem.  I knew that I'd never be the person who I was in Atlanta, and it's a bit confusing to figure out who else I wanted to be.

The time spent at LifeLaunch was definitely worthwhile.  I've never spent four days of introspection before and may never again.  As you can see from the photo above, LifeLaunch divides your life into four phases with the idea that while all phases are necessary, the ultimate goal is to be in Phase I: "Go For It".  As the coaches explained the various phases, I realized that I had definitely been in Phase II: "The Doldrums" for a good part of 2011.  But now that we've made it to 2012, I found that I was sloshing (their term, not mine) between Phase II and Phase III:  "Cocooning", where you spend a good deal of time by yourself trying to figure out your next steps.  There are no limits to the number of times that an individual may go through these phases in a lifetime. The important thing is to not get stuck where you don't want to be, i.e. The Doldrums.

LifeLaunch utilized small groups and visualization of your goals.  It has its own vocabulary for the various exercises that we performed, such as "bouldering". Bouldering describes verbalizing your goals, specifying all of the negative things that you say to yourself to sabotage these goals (the boulders that keep you from achieving), and then both physically and mentally breaking through those boulders to get to the other side.  On Day 4, we spent all of our time creating detailed individual plans for how we would achieve the goals that we set for ourselves.  The plan includes dates for accomplishment, and I'm trying to stay on track.

This experience was actually a lot of fun - much laughter and getting to know a whole new group of varied people.  I came back feeling lighter, happier and more focused, though I can't exactly explain why.  Maybe I've sloshed my way into Phase IV: "Getting Ready"?

California Dreaming

Birds of Paradise grow all over in California

Since I last posted on this blog, I've been to California twice.  The first trip was to the L.A. area where we spent a week in a cute rental house and did serial real estate hunting with our agent every day.  The result of this trip was that we have a contract on a house in South Pasadena.  As anyone who has ever bought or sold a house knows, any deal can sour until the closing, so I continue to keep my fingers crossed that it will work out.  This does not mean that we will move to California any time soon, but just that we will already own our retirement home when the time comes.

View from house with spiral staircase to rooftop deck

Our interest in this house proves a real estate adage that I've been told:  "Buyers are liars."  Originally, we told our agents that we wanted a condo near the beach in a walking neighborhood.  Well, this house is none of those things.  It's small, built in 1939 though has a modern California look.  The selling point is the beautiful 180° view as the house is high up in the hills.  If you would like to see photos of the house and view, shoot me an email and I will send you a link.

Santa Barbara

My second and more recent trip to California just ended on Sunday when I returned from what my daughter referred to as my "hippy retreat" in Santa Barbara.  In reality, I went to a seminar called LifeLaunch at The Hudson Institute of Santa Barbara with my good buds from Atlanta, Cloe and Haley.  We had an amazing time.  Santa Barbara was so lovely; the seminar was very different from anything that I've ever attended and requires a lot more time to explain than I have right now; and I loved spending time with my wonderful friends.

Moi, Haley & Cloe - 3/3/12
(Photo by Jozef Lievens)

So a little over 2 months into 2012 and I'm happy to say that I have been working on my new year's resolutions - in particular, these trips to California work right into Resolutions # 2, 3, 5 and 8.  I review all of the resolutions often and hope to stay on track as the year goes by.