I moved a couple weeks ago, and now I live with two energetic and interesting girls from the U.P. who I like very much, and Cody, a rambunctious yellow dog with large, flapping triangles of ears. The three of us took him walking earlier, along dirt trails by the river where he can run around off his leash and leap around in the green undergrowth like a deer, and just now I took him on a long rectangular walk through the neighborhood and by the end he was maybe, just almost, very slightly tired. I like walking with a dog because everyone you pass feels welcome to interact. They speak in dog-voices and stop to pet his head or tell me “very pretty dog” and Cody happily smells their feet and bumps his head into their calves and I end up having a conversation with all the neighbors.

It was certainly melancholy, leaving my old house. I’d lived there for seven months and it was what I thought of as “home” in my new state. Karen and Eli were skilled, friendly, and clever roommates and tour guides and friends (and for the last two, present tense would do better than past.) I moved out over the course of several days. Eli cooked some kind of amazing thing with chanterelle mushrooms. I walked barefoot around our overflowing garden and through all of the open, wooden-floored rooms, noting the field guides and mammal skulls and pinecones. It was a beautiful house. It still is a beautiful house. And I stopped in today to have a chat and harvest a cornucopia of colorful vegetables.

And new house is beautiful as well. The walls are painted vibrant colors. There are framed photos of scruffy owls on tree branches, vases of flowers and potted plants, large eccentric coffee mugs, seven foot poppies on the walls. My bedroom has a radiator and a window in an interior wall. And two blocks from the house is a corner coffee shop. My roommates are great and this place is already feeling like home too.

This post is short and hasn’t said much, but I have a meeting to run and I haven’t showered in like – three days. For real. I just realized that as I typed it and dear god.