Here's a picture of me and my new roommate.
I think we look pretty good together.
After all the fun of moving in, we plan to host Thanksgiving at our new home. The confirmed guest list includes: my mom, my grandmother, my dad, my step-mom, his mom, and his two sisters. It should be quite the to do.
We discussed inviting our new landlord, who lives in a cabin on the property six months of every year. His name is Lucky. (the other six months, he splits his time between Indonesia and Mexico)
Last week, I got a semi-frantic call from Lucky. I ended up driving up there during my lunch break because he was concerned that he didn't show-and-tell me enough about the move-in protocol, and he was about to be traveling, and I was about to be traveling, and Joe was already traveling, and god forbid he didn't communicate some essential information to me before I moved in.
Such as this:
"Here is where you will find the hidden key to get into the room where you will find a furnace, just in case. Here is the pot that hides the key that lets you into the room where you can turn off the water, if you ever need to. Here is the piece of the house you lift up to find the spot where you go to flip the switch when you blow the fuse." If the apocalypse comes early, I feel ready.
Maybe for Thanksgiving, I will show how serious and big deal this whole moving-in-together thing is by doing this to the front door:
Things keep changing, and 50% of the time, I feel like that's a good thing. I can't tell if I feel older or wiser or better than I did before, but I'm trying to take it all in stride. This is the man I want to be with, so we're going for it. Some people might shrug it off as not a very big deal, but for me, right now, it is. I got back in touch with an old friend recently, and she ecstatically told me how her and her guy were moving in together. They met each other three weeks ago. Joe and I realized there was something big and good between us that we couldn't ignore, and that was three years ago. It takes all kinds.
We will have room to spread out in this new home, and that is exciting. I will have room for a garden of my own. And now, when I get home from a long day at work, I won't walk up to my doorstep and smell my 72-year-old alcoholic shut-in neighbor and hear his blaring TV tuned incessantly to local news that I never care to hear. Maybe this will be me now:
This is a new beginning, and as dorky and cliche as it sounds, I will treat it as such.
