After three years in a 3rd floor walk-up apartment with two mid-sized dogs who like to thump around a lot and crash into walls, we’re finally moving to a house with a fenced-in yard!  I have been extremely looking forward to this move for roughly eighteen months. 

We actually tried to move last year; even went so far as to give notice at our apartment complex, and then chickened out early on after looking at a few particularly unsavory houses and deciding we might as well stay put.  I tried to tell myself I liked where I was, but really, I was sick of living in an apartment.  It’s one thing to do that in a big exciting city when it’s the only real option, but in Garner, NC you really have no excuse not to have a big ol’ backyard and a garage and a bunch of outdoor space to call your own.  There’s just so much of it everywhere and the rents are so reasonable.  And this may surprise you, but apartment living in Garner is just not that glamorous.

So when the time rolled around we gave our notice again, but this time we meant it.  Our lease was up during the summer, but I started house hunting in around, oh say February.  This was hard to do, because people are not generally advertising their rental houses six months before they’re going to be available.  I would call real estate agents and let them know when I was looking to move, and they would laugh at me, tell me to call them back in five and a half months, and hang up.

It is scary giving notice that you will not be renewing your current lease without having a firm idea of where you’ll be living next.  I worried that we wouldn’t find anything again and would decide in desperation to stick it out in the apartment for another year, only to be told that it had already been rented out from under us, and that we had to move. 

But!  Instead, we found the cutest house.

We started moving a few things in last weekend, and at one point I couldn’t resist showing the dogs their new digs.  For months I had fantasized about being able to boot them out the door and into a yard where they could run and play, without having to worry that Sophie would bolt into the woods for no discernable reason, as is her wont.  It can take hours to corrall her back once she gets loose, and the whole time she dances around just out of reach as you scream her name she’s giving you this big droopy and yet strangely vacant stare and having the best time ever.  It’s completely infuriating. 

Of course, the first thing Sophie DID do when I let her out in the yard was run around to the side of the house and nudge the not-quite-locked gate open with her nose.

That small instant of panic aside, once I’d firmly locked the gate, it was the moment I’d been waiting for, and it was wonderful.  The dogs sniffed cautiously, then leapt around with joy and took off running across the wide open expanse of grass…until they reached the eight foot high fence.  It was magical.  It felt like the ending to that movie Born Free, except for their not being free, or lions.


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