Hello to all! I am excited about this forum, there is sure a lot of good topics to explore. I am an artist, writer, poet. I am led toward spiritual topics in all these areas. I love to paint or visually express myself by experimenting with all media.
I am a single mom with a 13 year old who is energetic, creative, and smart. I got pregnant with him at 45. I already had a generation raised! It was a surprise. I thought it was menopause when I missed a period. He is a treasure and exhausting. I am always struggling, it seems, to get time for myself. His father lives close by but is unavailable most of the time.
I have a lot to share and learn and I'm looking forward to meeting you all!
Oh, the renegade artist thing, I formed an art group to promote contemporary and abstract art in my area. It is a fun project and is good for me as well as others in many ways.
thanks!
Renegade

Welcome, Renegade! I'm glad you joined us. I see your creativity flows in many directions. What a blessing!

Wow! I can imagine what you're going through with your teenager. My cousin got pragnant in her late thirties and had a hard time keeping up with her daughter. 45 is even a greater challenge!

Hope you enjoy this great forum!

Renegade,

Welcome! What part of the Rockies do you call home?

I am a mountain girl myself - reduced to city living for the time being!

Danita

Welcome Renegade from another poet-writer-artist! You sound like you're having a great life.

Welcome from me too Renegade. You are in for a pleasant journey with us. Do you have a website. I'd like to read/see some of your work. Does your son follow you in creativity?
chick

Welcome Renegade from yet ANOTHER writer/artist. You will love this website and I'm sure we will enjoy getting to know you.

I'm with Chick - would love to see some of your work...do you have a website??

Have fun traveling around the forum....and again WELCOME.

I'm adding my welcome too. You sound so interesting. I hope you come back often to share.

Welcome renegade. Yes ladies, she does have a website. Just click on the little house icon above her post. I'd love to see some close ups of your work. Any way you can do that?

I have 2 teens and a 20 year old so maybe we can swap stories about kids too.

Make yourself at home. Please join in the other forums.

Hello Renegade. Welcome to BWS. There are a lot of women here that share the same interests as you.

Thank you for all your encouragement! I will try to answer some of the questions.
Danita, I am on the east side of the mountains about two hours from Denver. Up north. I like to come to Denver and play. After a while I get stressed from so much input. Spoiled to the quiet life.
Meredith, your jewelry is awesome! Good stuff there, so delicate.
Chickadee-yes my son is very creative. Drama, writing and sculpting.
Dotsie- My web site is not set up for detail, yet!
Nice to know so many creative types are around.
Thanks again
renegade

Hello Rene, welcome, welcome, welcome! How interesting that you got pregnant at 45! I am also an artist and author. I prefer abstract, watercolors and collage. I am in Colorado Springs. We will probably meet. Danita, too from Denver, and she goes to Estes to play! Love and Light, Lynn

Welcome to the boomer forum, Renegade. You're spiritual and creative interests are amazing. You'll find so many like-minded women here to share with you.

I hope that you come back and visit often. But be careful, this site is addicting.

Hi Renegadeartist, saw and welcomed you in another post and am glad to see you stopped in this one to introduce yourself. You'll love it here.

I can't believe so many of you are in Colorado! I couldn't find any of you in the 36 years I lived there (including college at CU in Boulder) -maybe now that I live in South Carolina I'll get to know some of you! A lot of my family is still in the Denver area, so we get back there often! I'm so glad I was led to this web site yesterday morning!

Dreamer

Welcome Renengade! My youngest was born when I was almost 43!! It is different. I can still do everything but the patience isn't readily available and I make those awful sounds when I have to bend down to change a diaper...
I'm in Southern Colorado - Pagosa Springs.

Renegadeartist,
I too was an artist and writer until 2 strokes did some brain damage and physical damage. I am still trying to be creative by writing poetry. It is NOT the same as short stories! LOL
I recently wrote a poem about a Natural Hot Springs located in Ouray, CO. the Switzerland of America. My husband and I on our honeymoon, 20 yrs ago, discovered Ouray! It is wonderful! I just wonderded if you or anyone else from CO. knew anything about it. We have been back many times since. Welcome, and I am new and just posted my first post telling a little about myself a few minutes ago.

YOu gals have to check out junebug's site. It's lovely.

Junebug, I have a funny story to tell you about the song I Can Only Imagine which plyas on your site. I got a message one day from a dear friend . She was listening to that song and wanted me to hear it so she held her phone to the the radio and left this message for me telling me through tears about how much she was moved by the song. I can't hear it without thinking of her.

I am loving your site. I will have to go back and look and listen a little more.

I am happy to see you are still capable of sharing such creativity after suffering from two strokes.

Dotsie,
Thanks so much! It is positive attitudes like yours that have helped keep me going. I feel the positive energy around me from this site, and do believe it will be really good for me. I hope I can give back to others also.
I just love that song, my favorite! If you look around that site, it also has more great music and imagery you can email to people on special occasions, like fathers day and mothers day and more. It is called Andie's Isle:

http://www.andiesisle.com/

Junebug - I just saw your post about Ouray. We live a few hours from there! We haven't gone that far yet, but we did make it to Silverton, which is a great old mining town. It's a beautiful ride and if we had more time that day, we would have loved to have gone to Ouray. I've seen pictures and it is beautiful.

Junebug, I'm from Canada, but vividly remember Ouray. We were traveling from Loveland to Pecos New Mexico way back in 1983. It was a breathtaking trip all the way, but Ouray was particularly spectacular.

And also extremely frightening. There were no guardrails, the rain was pouring down like sheets, and I was looking out my window into these endless chasms just a few slippery feet away. It was difficult to enjoy the mountains while those valleys were staring me in the face (I'm sure there's a life analogy in there somewhere).

Fortunately, the memories today are mostly of the splendour of the mountains and not the terror of the valleys!

Bluebird, I think we had talked elsewhere about my travels through Colorado (the same trip that took me through Ouray and an overnight stay in Durango). I had mentioned being stopped along the way by a parade and military planes buzzing us...that was Silverton! As soon as I saw the name, it clicked.

Eagle, that's how I felt when we drove to Silverton(it's the same road, not as far north).
I spent most of the time yelling at my husband to slow down and not keep pulling over. I was so petrified that we wouldn't be able to stop and our Suburban would go right down in the chasm. And then he would want to get out with our little children. I kept picturing one of them slipping down and I would lose them.

That is so funny...I wrote the last post before yours went up!

Well I have a good one to relate which at the time almost did me in. In October one year I was in Minnesota and had to drive a big U'Haul to Nevada full of stuff, furniture and boxes etc. I had driven the route many times by car, thought I had a handle on things. One cold blustering snowy morning I found myself approaching the pass in Colorado and had to drive over it to get to the other side. Ever done that. A heavy truck going up. so slow and jerky then all of a sudden a missile flying down the steep hill, riding the brake all the way, white knuckled and crying terrified of going over the sheer cliff on the right or hitting a car sailing by on the left. It was the worst thing bar none I have ever experienced and at the bottom as soon as I saw a placed to stop I did and the woman in the gas station wanted to call an ambulance for me I was hyperventilating so badly.... Never again, no trucks (on mountains) for me not even as a passenger.

Sounds terrifying! Do you know what pass it was?(I think there's a gazillion of them in this state).

chatty, poor thing. I would have been petrified. How did you stay behind the wheel and get to your destination?

Once we were on St. John vacationing with the family. We rented a jeep. Ross and one of the kids were in the front. The two other kids and I were in the back (open air, sitting on benches...how dumb is that?). It began spitting and the streets became slick. We were heading up this cliff when the jeep began slipping backwards. All I could do was pray and hold the kids. All I could think about was us falling out and Ross running over us. Nice way to end a vacation. The tires eventually gripped the ground and we made it to the top...all in one piece.

Why in the world would they rent these jeeps?

This must be the topic for bad driving stories.

A week after I got out of a cast from a car accident, I and a friend from high drove my little red pinto to vail to ski with some other high school friends over Thanksgiving. The poor little car would only go about 20 mph up the mountains. The first day they took out 16 skiers with broken legs, but I was young and fearless so I just kept skiing. The guys cooked a turkey and all the trimmings and buried it along with a gallon of wine at the top of a mountian and we had a wonderful time.

Then the blizzard started. My girlfriend and I were both nurses and we had to be back to work so we bought chains for the car and started home. Traffic was bumper to bumper with cars being hoisted up the side of the mountain all along the way. We were going so slow, my friend would get out and walk beside the car to clean the wipers that froze over with snow.

We finally found a hotel with a room, but it was Unheated. We were both total wrecks so we took the room. We wrapped up in blankets and sat in the sauna fully clothes til we were toasty warm then ran to the room and slept til we woke up freezing and did it all over again.

It was a fun trip though and I have never been so glad to get home.

smile

Junebug...wait a minute. I think I'm familiar with you. Don't you work with Mike on his site of music with Ron? I'm at a loss for the name of the CD but it's uplifting and about freedom.