Cheri Woolsey

If you’ve read my blog before, you know we are going to try to downsize our life. Starting with the “stuff” hiding in our closets and drawers and even in plain sight. I took a couple of days off this week to get started (OK, I will admit I had high expectations of how much I would get done in one week!). My expectations were not reasonable at all, that’s all I will say on that subject. Memories got in the way.

I started with my den/office since I knew it would be the worst room (the garage will be the next worst!). Floor to ceiling bookshelves, an endless storage closet under the stairs and drawers full of craft stuff makes for slow going. Here’s why:

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Or “What’s your Purpose?’ part 2! Seriously, in my last blog post, I talked about what we as baby boomers do when our reality changes; when our identity as parents’ changes; when we have time to ourselves to be ourselves!

The problem for many of us is who are we really? When we are not the busy parents running children around or the stressed-out career person looking for a promotion and the next level of stress to climb to? Here is a key question to ask yourself:

What did I want to be and do when I was 10 years old?

Yes, that 10-year-old brain had ideas and dreams that were big (or modest) of a life yet to be lived. Well, now you have lived 2/3 of that life. How close did you come? Are you just where you thought and planned you would be? Have you done that and now look for something new? Or did you get completely off track of what you wanted?Continue Reading

The Memories

We had a lazy Sunday, and it was great! Rory works way too hard and we always have remodel/repair projects going on at home when he isn’t. Today we just took his beautiful 1973 Corvette Stingray to a local Corvette car show. Sun was shining, Elvis impersonator was singing—I even rocked it out with a little dancing! We had lunch at the venue and took time to just be together.

Later in the day, we were walking the dog and chatting about how much life we have spent together and how much has changed over the years. At the car show, there was a vintage restored VW van that almost made me cry. Back in 1981, when we only had two little angels, we bought an old, beat up VW camper van and “restored” it. We then took it camping and it broke down on the way home—we had a 2-year-old and a 3-year-old—ah, those were the good old days!

So here we are 40 years of marriage and adventures behind us. I’m not going to spin it like it was all rainbows and unicorns, because it surely wasn’t. Marriage (and life) is hard work and not for the faint of heart. We look back at our young days and wonder “what were we thinking?” about so many of our adventures. Like the time we packed up our 4-month-old, my newly pregnant body, our dog and everything we owned into a Ryder truck and moved to another state, just because Rory had been accepted into college there. We had no place to live, no job, nothing—maybe $1,000 to our name…….Continue Reading