Moving. An adventure in 21 steps.

1. Say yes to the tall, funny guy who asks you to marry him at the top of a collapsed volcano after you have run 40+ miles (because what else would you do on vacation?).
2. Make an offer on a house you adore. Lose out to someone else's higher offer.
3. Get married. Live somewhere in between your two houses for a while. At first, worry that this is going to be weird, being married and not really living together. But in actuality, it turns out to be awesome, this in-transition phase where you get to have both a husband and your own house with a super awesome roommate.
4. Try to make an offer on another house and lose out again.
5. Go to look at more houses. Comically awful houses. With two toilets in one room and another toilet next to the washer and dryer. With yellow tubs and green tubs and no, seriously, someone tell me what is the deal with all these terribly pastel bathroom fixtures?
6. Go to visit a house with your realtor that you really think could be "the one." Except that the key in the lockbox seems perilously close to breaking off in the lock. But hey, the kitchen window is open so the three of you hatch an ingenious plan wherein Pete will lift you up through the kitchen window and you will crawl over the sink and then unlock the front door from the inside. The story you get from this will turn out to be far better than the house.
7. Make an offer on a third house. That is accepted! Wait what feels like 2 million years, but is actually only about 2 months, for your closing date.
8. Go to the closing and sign your name approximately 87 billion times. You give the bank the biggest check you have ever written. And the bank gives you 2 pens and a key. Those are some very expensive pens, apparently.
9.  Rip up the carpet in your new house to discover that yes, there are hardwood floors underneath but no, they are not in very good condition.
10. Conspire with Alison and Bob to kidnap Jeff and cheer him up with Saturday shenanigans involving pizza, euchre, cookies and pulling the carpet staples out of your master bedroom floor. It takes the 4 of you 2 hours to pull up the approximately 7 thousand staples in the floor. You know you have the best friends when they let you kidnap them and even drive you around and suggest helping you with manual labor.
11. Give up on de-stapling and think: Who you gonna call? Ghostbusters! I mean, Rochester Hardwoods. They are awesome and you can't even believe how much better the floors look after they have been de-stapled, sanded, stained and coated. Apparently the company can't believe it either because they take before and after pictures to use in their new commercial.
12. Go to the store with Pete and pick out paint colors for your entire house in only 5 minutes. This task takes a surprisingly short amount of time, especially considering one of you is colorblind. Agree that you are both sick of painting after painting all the rooms in your own respective houses over the years, so you decide to hire Wade from Red Truck Painting to paint all the rooms in the colors you have chosen.
13. Get a California King bed delivered with a 9" box spring so you can feel like you are sleeping on a mountain every night. (This is the most important step!)
14. Be ruthless in the culling of your possessions so that you have less shit to move. While packing, have conversations with yourself like "Do I need any of these pans?" "Haha, that was a joke. Of course not." "Do I really need 3 ice cream scoops?" "Yes, but for the sake of minimalism I will only take my most favorite one." "Do I really need all these shoes?" "Yes, but for the sake of minimalism, I'll cut it down to 2 pairs of trail shoes, 2 pairs of road shoes and 1 pair of hiking shoes."
15. Spend your very last week in the very first house you bought all by your very self. Surprisingly, the things that make this move seem real are not the things that you thought would. The house going up for sale doesn't phase you at all. But you run from your house to Cobb's Hill 3 times that week because it makes you sad to think it's the last time you're ever going to do that. The last Doctor-Who-and-burritos night with Adam makes you sad because the girl is going to give up the adventure and The Doctor is mad at the soldier and the soldier is...why is he even there anyway? And you want to yell at the girl: Don't choose that boy over a lifetime of adventure! Choose the kind of boy who will adventure with you!
16. Devise a secret plan to hire Sheridan Brothers moving to schlep the big furniture from your house and Pete's house to the new house while he's away on a work trip so you can surprise him after you pick him up from the airport. Have to ruin the surprise and call him when the movers tell you his couch won't fit into the finished basement room and one of the movers offers to buy it.
17. Be lucky enough to be friends with Chris, who brings you pizza and helps you set up internet in your new house while Pete's flight keeps getting delayed. Have fun thinking of names for your wireless network. Chris suggests RobotSailor and you suggest RobotSeaman and Chris is like seaman spelled "S-E-A-M-A-N!"
18. At long last, pick up your seaman from the airport. Spend the rest of the weekend working on your new house. While at the hardware store, come up with an ingenious plan to fix the kitchen garbage drawer, which refuses to stay fully closed, a fact that has been bothering you since the first time you saw this house, with Gorilla Glue and magnets. Pete says "That's almost a good idea." Which you are now going to say to him all the time. For the record, it was totally a good idea and a successful one. Robot 1, kitchen drawer 0.
19. Find the Pier 1 elephant curtains you have wanted for years but were too cheap to buy on eBay for a fraction of the price. Buy them, wash them and hang them in your new master bedroom. You're not a "stuff" person but elephants, man. Elephants are good luck. And they never forget. So every time you wake up in your new bedroom you will look at the elephants and you will remember. Even on the sad days, when your Pete is deployed in a far away place and you didn't even think it was possible to miss someone so much, you will remember how ridiculously lucky you are.
20. Get high off the fumes from the goop remover you are using to remove old dried-on paint from the slate on the floor in front of your fireplace (you have a fireplace!!!) while Pete assembles the new TV stand and TV. Think about how weird it is having a TV again after a decade of using a projector. Answer the door to find that a neighbor has brought you muffins!
21. Sitting on your couch in front of your fireplace (Again I must emphasize: You. Have. A. Fireplace!!! And a firepit! All the fires! Oh, and a candle that you forgot to blow out until the next morning. Oops!), watching The Flash on Netflix, your stomach full of delicious tacos and muffins, your jetlagged Pete having fallen asleep on your shoulder, it hits you that this is it, this is home.

Lyric of the moment: "I'll follow you into the park, through the jungle, through the dark. I never loved one like you. Moats and boats and waterfalls, alleyways and pay phone calls. I've been everywhere with you, that's true...And in the streets you run a-free, like it's only you and me. Geez, you're something to see. Ah, home, let me go home. Home is wherever I'm with you..." ~Edward Sharpe And The Magnetic Zeros "Home"