Invisible in my new community

It finally happened, 6 weeks after we moved here:  I was in a store in town, and ran into someone I know! It took me by surprise, because for the past 2 months I haven't seen anyone I know, or even recognize, in a store, walking along the street, out to eat, or driving through town.

I've met a lot of people in Prescott, but there are around 40,000 residents and the odds of running into a familiar person, especially someone I know by name, are slim. I lived in southwestern Vermont for 22 years, and saw someone I knew every place I went. Sometimes it's nice to be an unknown. There are no expectations about what I'm wearing or what foods I'm purchasing at the grocery store. I don't have to search for people's names or be embarrassed when I don't remember where we met.

Not knowing many people forces me to be more outgoing. I strike up conversations with people in stores, and when they find out I'm new in town they tell me their favorite places to hike, or the best places to get lunch. I'm more likely to introduce myself to people at the gym, or talk about our workouts instead of focusing intently on my workout knowing I only have 20 minutes before the next appointment. I chat with the woman sitting next to me at the Saturday morning gardening class, and I even had a long discussion about the best places to buy quilting supplies with someone I met on the way to the bathroom while eating lunch downtown.

Because I'm out of the habit of recognizing people I know, I almost walked right past Wendy at Kohl's. In the back of my mind I thought:  I think I know her! Then she said hello, I remembered her name and that she's our interior designer from Bella Home Furnishings and we had a great conversation.

I wonder when meeting people I know will become part of my usual routine, something expected instead of unexpected?

Moving opens more doors than we realize

Often when we make a big move, like ours from Vermont to Arizona, we focus only on the problems:  packing up all our stuff, deciding what to keep and what to give away or sell, figuring out where the grocery store is located, getting lost driving to the post office, meeting new people, finding a job.

As I was talking with a friend this past week, she commented that this move has opened up doors and opportunities that I never expected.

Because I'm working fewer hours, I have time to take webinars, clean out my email inbox, and I even signed up for a digital photography class at the local community college.

Living in unfamiliar surroundings gives me the opportunity to learn about the area. I love history, and the first book I checked out of the library before we even had any furniture except a mattress was a history of Arizona by Marshall Trimble. When I heard that Trimble was performing at the Palace, one of the oldest frontier saloons in Arizona and located in historic Whiskey Row (downtown Prescott - that's another story), we invited a couple we recently met to join us.

I bet most parents have boxes of their kids' artwork, school papers, and childhood memorabilia stored away in the attic or basement. Now that I have time, and need to find a home for these boxes, I've started actually opening them up and going through the contents. Yesterday I found a folder of Duncan's 5th grade writing projects and read through each:  stories about his dog, Jasper; letters to penpals describing his life as a soccer player, reports of a vacation we took to Cozumel, and the dreams of a 10 year old looking forward 30 years into the future.

A large part of my work focuses on helping people figure out how to make changes in their life. I've found that moving makes this process of change much easier, because almost everything in my life is also changing. I can develop new routines, and decide what routines are important to me and which I can let go. I remind my clients that changing our habits involves everyone around us, and requires friends and family to get used to our new routines. Because I've moved thousands of miles away, the people I meet in Arizona don't have any expectations of who I am or my routines.

Of course we don't have to physically move to a new location to make these types of changes, but moving makes the process easier.

How many times in our life do we truly have the opportunity to think about the person we want to be, and put those changes into practice? I remember going to college and thinking that because I know absolutely no one in Vermont (I grew up in Indiana), I could be whoever I wanted. I told our boys when they went to college that this is a rare opportunity to give themselves permission to change things up and live their lives differently.

The door to our house and my life in Vermont closed, and the door to our house and life in Arizona opened. Who knows what's around the next corner?

Shaking up routines

I've been reading about how habits and routines shape our lives, primarily so that we don't have to think through every detailed step in hundreds of activities that take place each day. We have a morning routine so we don't have to think:  which side of the bed do I get up on? Do I take a shower before I eat breakfast or after? Which route do I drive to work?

Moving throws many of those old habits and routines out the window. Not all of them:  I always sleep on the side of the bed closest to the bathroom and unless I'm exercising first thing, I shower first and then eat breakfast.

A big part of the stress - and fun - of moving is developing new routines. One of my neighbors encouraged me to try a new activity or group three times before deciding if that group or activity is right for me. In the past few days, I've tried several new things that may be surprising to people who know me:

Yesterday I took a pickleball class. I'm not usually a person who takes group exercise classes, participates in competitive activities (I run in races, but I'm not competing against anyone except myself), or plays sports that require hand-eye coordination. My family played tennis when I was young, but my version of tennis involves more laughter than balls hit expertly over the net. Pickleball as far as I can tell is a combination of badminton, tennis and ping-pong. It's the second most popular activity here in Prescott Lakes, right behind golf. Not only did I have fun in the class, I met two new people and we got together today to practice.

That's another new thing for me:  inviting people I've just met to do something with me. I've been doing a lot of this:  inviting a neighbor to go for a walk, asking a couple we met to join us for dinner theatre, and I even sent someone I've never even met in person a Facebook message, asking her to go for a run with me.

For the past several years I haven't made the time for knitting, crocheting or cross-stitch embroidery, activities I loved from the time I was young. My daily routine revolved around work and exercise, and the only time I did anything creative was when I decided to make a gift. That usually entailed late nights filled with frantically trying to finish the project on time instead of a relaxing and enjoyable hobby. I'm starting to develop an evening cross-stitching routine; of course the sampler is one I started in 1998 (I only know this because the '98' portion of the date is completed) but it feels good to sit and stitch instead of working in front of the computer.

I actually started cleaning the house every day. For the past 20+ years our house was messy, lived-in, and definitely not cleaned on any type of schedule. I vacuumed only when the dust balls were large enough I could see them rolling across the floor, cleaned the bathrooms only when I noticed an off odor, and dusted only right before company came to visit. Since we've moved, I've cleaned the bathrooms once each week, used a dust mop on the wood floors without seeing dust balls, swiffered the tile floors without any muddy footprints, and cleaned the cooktop every single time I've used it.

I wonder if I'll fall back into my old habits and routines of too much work, too little down-time, and a messy house; or if this move across country is the start of some truly new and different routines.

New floor completed and memories unpacked

We now have a beautiful oak floor in our living room! Of course we only have one true, comfortable chair, but the floor is awesome! Light streams in through the windows making the whole house seem brighter.

We spent the day moving dishes into the pine hutch we purchased in Germany 30 years ago. The hutch now contains Grandma Michael's china dinner service for 12 that I helped her pick out and Mike's Uncle Lyle's dinnerware for 8. We have enough space that we can actually use our family's dishes instead of storing them in boxes packed away in the attic, brought down only for special occasions. That means more handwashing and less use of the dishwasher, but Grandma Michael and Uncle Lyle didn't have dishwashers, either.

Mike once again put together the pine shelving unit that we also purchased in Germany. Each time we reconfigure the shelves and carefully unpack the books, pictures and photo albums (Remember when you had to send away film to be developed into pictures, and the excitement when you picked up the pictures?) I spend time with the memories:

- The books we read night after night to the boys:  The Story of Ferdinand, Stella Luna, and several much-worn books by Dr. Seuss and Roald Dahl.
- Forgotten framed photos that we found in dusty boxes under the guestroom bed:  Duncan as a 5-month old with a big smile and curling his toes, Nate with a big grin sitting in the grass when he was 4 months old, family photos from trips to Jamaica.
-  Small glass and china cups with names of towns in Germany, Austria, the Caribbean, France, Canada, Mexico, and numerous places throughout the United States we've visited.

Moving is an opportunity to pull out the dusty boxes stacked in the basement and attic and find the treasures we lovingly packed away years ago.

New floor and new furniture

 

This is what our living room with the carpet ripped up looks like, complete with large garbage can in the middle of the room. We're putting in oak floors, which is a 2-3 day process. In the meantime, the dining room chairs are in the bedroom, the bottom of the hutch is in the kitchen, the top of the hutch is on the back porch, and the only real piece of living room furniture we moved from Vermont - Mike's leather chair - is also in our bedroom. My office is full of boxes of wood flooring and there is a coating of dust everywhere.

 

It's all worth it because look at the beautiful wood floor! We also ordered a couch and love seat for the living room and two gorgeous round chairs for the library that are so big I can curl up with my feet under me and still have room. Picking out the furniture was easy, choosing fabric was moderately time-consuming, and picking out fabric for the pillows, to make sure the color flows through the house, took a lot of time. Thank goodness Wendy from Bella Home Furnishings is talented and funny or I would have given up.

Moving is definitely an exercise in patience and waiting:  packing up everything in Vermont, waiting two weeks after we arrived in Arizona for our stuff to be delivered, waiting another 2 weeks for the floor to be put in, and now waiting another 4-6 weeks for furniture.

And I thought moving would be easy!

Where does the time go?

One month ago today - July 26th - we got on our BMW motorcycle and left Vermont, headed for Arizona.

In the past month we traveled across the country on the motorcycle, moved into our house in Prescott, AZ; met several of our neighbors, attended more social functions than we have in the entire last year in Vermont, and are beginning to feel comfortable in our home.

My days in Vermont were ruled by my calendar, filled with appointments with clients, running groups, volunteer activities, and writing assignments. My calendar these days contains blocks of empty space, leading to a much slower pace. In the past week I've:

- Transplanted two bushes and planted three new heuchera perennials that love the shade, and learned that the soil here truly is more rock than dirt. No wonder our neighbors use a jackhammer - the kind that you see workers using to break up concrete - to dig holes for planting. We picked a rainy, wet weekend to do the planting which made digging holes with a shovel a possibility.

- Attended Zoo by Moonlight at the Heritage Park Zoo where we walked around the animal sanctuary after dark, guided by flashlights. I saw my first javelina, wild pigs that roam our area, along with coyotes, mule deer, and even emu.
- Strolled around Prescott during the monthly 4th Friday Art Walk, visiting local art galleries and dreaming about pieces we can place in our house - someday.
- Went to dinner at a neighbor's home and talked about the motorcycle trips we plan to take together this Fall.
- Invited other neighbors over to give them tips about their trip to Vermont in September. They asked  that if Vermont is so beautiful and has so much to offer, why did we move to Arizona?
- Met with Wendy, our interior design guru from Bella Home Furnishings to help us decide on furniture, colors, and decorating our home.
- Went to lunch with Margie Geiser, a dietitian I met years ago when we both volunteered with a national group, and who luckily lives in Prescott. It feels good to start to get to know the local dietitians and find out what's going on with nutrition in our community.
- I've been running almost every day, exploring trails and streets around our house. On the Peavine Trail early one morning I saw rabbits, heron, ducks, a mule deer, and a coyote long before I ever saw another person. Prescott is a mid-size town, but it's really easy to get outside town into the countryside and get a good idea of what Arizona was like 100 years ago.
- Baked a belated birthday cake for Mike, and learned that following the high altitude guidelines (Prescott is at 5400' elevation) is essential.

Mike's birthday cake:  it rose too fast, overflowed the sides of the pans, and then sank in the middle. Not my best effort!

 



We're still not completely moved in, waiting for oak floors to replace the carpeting and shelves for the closets. We can fit both cars into the garage, thanks to a wall of shelves for boxes of things we don't use every day.

The current goal is to have everything unpacked and put away in the next week. Now all we need is furniture for the living room!

The first time I bumped into someone I know

I couldn't go through a day in Vermont without running into someone I knew at the bank, post office, grocery store, or even driving down the road. Some people I recognized but didn't know their name; we would say hello and share a smile. The people at the bank and post office knew my name, and we'd talk about the weather or local news. Or I'd run into friends and we'd stop and chat so that I almost forgot why I walked into that particular store in the first place.

None of that has happened since July 26th when we left Vermont on our motorcycle for Arizona. It seems that folks in Prescott are genuinely friendly:  people on the street make eye contact and say  hello, we've had conversations with the folks sitting at the next table when we went out to dinner, and I've talked briefly with neighbors walking their dogs.

Today was the first day I bumped into someone I knew and we had a conversation. We met Mike when we first walked on the Peavine Trail, an old railroad bed that's now a beautiful, flat trail that winds through the granite dells around Watson Lake. It turned out he and his wife were in the process of moving to Prescott from Boston, and we chatted about moving across the country, looking for a house, and running.

Today I took Carole, one of my neighbors to the Peavine to walk. She's only lived here since June and hadn't heard of the Peavine. As we started off on the trail I recognized Mike coming the opposite direction. We said hello, he decided to walk with us, and we walked and talked for the next two miles.

Until we moved across the country, I took knowing people and the ability to have spur of the moment conversations for granted. I never had to make an effort to meet people and chat, and stopping to talk simply became part of the day. Here I make an effort to say hello and get to know people, to make a connection.

Carole and I plan to walk together again, and Mike suggested we make plans to hike in Sedona. I feel like I'm in the middle of a K'Nex toys project; meeting new people, making a connection, and introducing a new friend to someone else.