Well, here we are, in beautiful western North Carolina. Almost 3,000 miles from my home of 16 years- Tucson, Arizona. I have lived here off and on before, and have tons of family here. My 13 year-old son has never lived anywhere but Tucson, so this is all new to him. My old car wasn’t going to make it across the country, so I sold it for a few hundred and bought Greyhound bus tickets with the money- it was a rough 48-hour ride, with very little sleep and crappy, expensive food, but we made it.
It’s so green here, I can’t get over it. There are trees, and grass, and rivers and creeks, and this fluid falls from the sky on a regular basis. It’s weird, y’all. It smells good. Someone is always cutting their grass around here, and you smell that, plus there is a nice fresh breeze blowing all the time. It feels good, it smells good, it’s not 100 degrees and the sun is not burny.
I sold my furniture and am having the rest of my things shipped in increments. I found a little old country house, out in the country, where the owners left town for 6 months, and it’s fully furnished, and I mean fully, for real cheap. The neighbors are hillbillies but very nice and friendly. I’m looking for a cheap car, but they don’t seem to be as plentiful as they were in Tucson (you can find $800 cars all day long there but not so much here), so that might take a while. But I have 6 fairly stress-free months here to work and save up for another place and furnishings for it- I think I really lucked out in finding this.
The biggest reason I decided to move out here was because my son was having behavioral problems, and I wasn’t receiving much family support back there and I could get that here. He had been doing much better recently there, and has backslid a bit since being here (it’s only been a few days since we’ve been here), but I already have tons of support here and I have faith that it’s just an adjustment period for him and that he’ll rebound and recover from this soon.
I wasn’t able to bring our pets on the bus, so they’re in foster care in AZ and I am looking for someone traveling here to bring them, or some sort of service to do that. In the meantime, the neighbor’s cat has adopted us and basically lives here now, so that helps.
There are a lot of adjustments to make- primetime is 8 to 11, not 7 to 10, it’s hard to understand people when they talk, these little country roads are so narrow, I don’t have air conditioning, I am citified and there’s not so much as a convenience store to walk to around here, and these country dogs bark at all hours and nobody seems to care. OTOH, I am surrounded by very caring family- my uncle says that if he finds out I needed something and didn’t ask him, he’ll be pissed! and the water is drinkable right out of the tap, you can actually go outside during the day and it’s pleasant, and downright chilly at night, and people wave at you riding down the street. And, of course, it’s beautiful. And green. So, so green.
Thanks to all my Doper family for their advice and moral support and encouragement in my making this decision. I’m glad and relieved that we’re finally here and starting our new life, and I think that it will be good.
