It's happening. Really happening.

As I sit here, surrounded by an avalanche of boxes and a flurry of activity, it's really sinking in that I'm leaving this place. It's nine years almost to the day that I've been in this house. And my entire adult life that I've been in New Orleans.

I've moved within this city a few times, between apartments before I bought this place. But this is only my second large-scale interstate household move. The first one of course being when I came down here nearly eleven years ago. And this is the first and only house I've ever owned.

There has been A LOT of living that has taken place within these walls. The decade from my early twenties when I bought the place to now in my early thirties has been the most transformative time of my life. It wasn't always easy, at times it downright sucked, but looking back on it now I can see the road that I traveled to get to where I am. And where I am now is a really great place. I'm in a great relationship with an amazing man, we have a beautiful Brady Bunch family of four dogs, and I'm more comfortable in my own skin than I've ever been before.

The opportunity in Alaska is a great one for both of us in a lot of ways. My new job that's bringing us there is a welcome and refreshing change. The team I'm on is great and the work is exciting and challenging.

The house we're getting is going to give both of us some things we've been wanting for a long time.  Rich gets an amazingly awesome five-car garage/shop and I get land where I can have horses! Horses have been sadly missing from my life for far, far too long. I get butterflies just thinking about coming home from work each day to soft muzzles and fuzzy faces. And the dogs will have plenty of room to roam around and be dogs.

The car people came and took my car this morning. The TV people came and crated the TVs, and the packing ladies have been whirling through the house like banshees putting everything in boxes. Tomorrow the furniture people come, then we'll have someone clean the house and spruce up the yard and.... we're gone.

All around me I'm aware of so many lasts: last trip to the grocery store, last load of laundry, last walk around the block with the dogs, and tonight, the last night in my room. This whole thing is exciting, sad, and just surreal. I'm really going to miss this house. I poured so much of my blood, sweat, and tears into it over the years. It's totally unrecognizable from when I bought it (and that's a very good thing!). It feels a little better when I think of the new owner coming in here, falling in love with it, and then enjoying it as much as I have. This is an old house, it has a heart and a soul and a history. It deserves to be loved and appreciated. I wonder how many families have lived here over the 100 years or so that it's been here. And that list includes me and Rich too.

The house actually played an important part in the beginning of our relationship.  Rich was here when I bought it. We redid the kitchen together and I can still remember how much fun we had. Then, life happened, he went his way and I mine, and seven years later we wound up finding each other again. So he was here at the beginning and now he's with me at the end of my time here. Funny how things work out like that.

It all comes down to this: you can't go somewhere new without leaving where you've been. I couldn't be more thrilled about our new adventure and getting to know and love a new place. So I go, not without some heaviness of heart, but also with many valuable life lessons and memories of time well spent, a life well lived.