What Is My Comfort Zone?
- home
- family
- friends
All Set, Ready, Let’s Go!
The defining moment for me recently was moving to Prescott, AZ. I had lived in CA for 35 years and made friends as close as family. They replaced my family when Mark died in 1994 and Mom died in 2006. Randy, my only other immediate family member was still in Portland, too far away to leave.
Vince has always loved the high desert and had wanted to move since we got married over 20 years ago. We had a home on an acre in CA near my closest friends in Woodlake. His son in Sacramento came to visit regularly. I had no intention of ever moving. EVER!
When Vince turned 73, I noticed that the upkeep of our home was not only exhausting him, but with his never-ending projects might break the bank. LOL (We bought a 1966 Ford DUMP TRUCK as YARD ART for our new 1/2-acre garden!) And that was just the beginning of the newest ideas he had.
I entertained the idea of moving. We were in the middle of COVID.
My friends and his son tried to talk us out of it, but the more horrendous things that happened to our home in 2020, the better it sounded. There was nowhere in California I wanted to move close by except the coast. We looked at property in Sacramento and Ventura, CA and passed on those ideas.
In July 2020 our realtor agreed to go on a road trip with me to check out Prescott, AZ, where Vince and I had tentatively chosen to move. We got a 2-bedroom suite and spent four days looking at homes while Vince tended the animals and the GARDEN. We texted pictures back and forth, talked on Facetime, and narrowed it down to a few choices.
Vince made a couple of trips after that. In October, he found a condo for his sister to live and us to move into temporarily when we got there. I looked at the pictures and said yes. We started talking to a builder, then backed off until our house sold. Our house was still torn up after our ruined air conditioner/flood disaster and the septic tank repair that tore up our beautiful front yard.
Our neighbor Carmen and her sister planned and executed our garage sale, which was more like a community estate sale with me as the butterfly hostess hugging everyone who came to say goodbye. (I didn’t take the 6-foot distance seriously.)
On November, Vince drove all of Cindy’s belongings in a rental truck. Cindy and our realtor’s husband left the next day with her dog and Prius of stuff. I stayed until the movers left, cleaned what I could after the furniture and all the vacuums were gone, packed our three animals and a few things into our Prius and left my beloved home, Bellavista, for good.
I called Vince as I pulled away headed out for the nine-hour drive at 3:00 pm. He suggested that I stay at my friend, Sally’s for the night and head out in the morning. I called her and two minutes later – literally – I was unloading my animals into her guest house.
Have you ever tried to sleep with two outdoor cats and a dog in a strange house? Size doesn’t matter. Normally the house would hold 6 or more people, but my cats were not used to being inside.
After their prescribed traveling drugs wore off, they had to be with me constantly.
After little sleep, I took off for my new home in Prescott. We had no family or friends in Prescott.
It was an adventure WAY outside of my comfort zone!
Marsha Ingrao - Always Write 
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