24 Hours to Close

It's 1 PM, on November 29.

In 24 hours, we will be sitting in our lawyer's office, signing paperwork. We'll be closing on our new home, our first house.

It seems so incredibly unreal, at this point.

It's going to be hard to leave our current place behind. We fell in love with our apartment the first day we saw it. The carpets were torn out, the fridge was in the middle of the kitchen, but it instantly felt like home.

As we stayed, the town grew to become home, too. We buy books at the annual library sale. We go to the town's art show and vote for the best painting (trust me, competition is fierce among the retirees for this honor). We attend the fall festival, buying apple crisps and entering our names in raffles. We've gone hiking in the town's protected open spaces, I've gone running and biking on the back roads, and we've taken long walks on quiet side streets in the middle of snow storms.

We have a pizza place at the end of our street that gets business from us far more than they should. The Chinese Restaurant delivery guy could probably pick us out of a line up. Our favorite "nice" restaurant is a mile down Route 20. We can get to the movies in 5 minutes, walk to the library, and easily get to every major road.

We've been here seven years, and have the memories to match. Of course I'm glossing over some of the unpleasant aspects of where we live, but overall we've been content here.

And now it'll be time to build new memories, in a new place.

They say you have to be willing to sacrifice the merely good to experience the truly great. I guess we'll see.