Travel: Big and Small, Pt. 1.

[Note: For the coming weeks, I'll be posting (largely) in transit. And until further notice, it will likely be the recurring theme, here.]

Looking back, the odds of it happening the way it did seem implausibly slim. We'd met a few times by way of Seager, she even tagged along with his other housemate when T. and I invited them bowling late last year. When Willie played with Joe Lally after New Years, she turned up, and accompanied us to Ella's, despite having other plans. We cooked food together before the Super Bowl, watched a movie or two... But it was always circumscribed by my relationship with Mr. Seager, and her proximity, as his housemate.

But I noticed.

And I kept noticing.

The odds she'd be shuffling back down the stairs, to the couch adjacent to the one I'd staked out for the night were equally slim. The odds we'd spend just five nights apart in the three months that've followed since she offered me the empty half of her bed were... Well, unthinkable, really. And yet, curious as such a narrative indeed is, it has unfurled just that way.

I never saw it coming; likely why I've given it next to zero mention here. Merely giving it any concise treatment required a context I didn't have the energy to provide. The people who needed to know were brought up to speed, and there's a nagging disinclination in me to publicize something so nuanced, and simultaneously so not my own. I've been keen to preserve its dignity and integrity. But it has happened, and I've begun to feel awkward not mentioning it. Quite unexpectedly, I have been swept off my feet.

And it bares mentioning here (now) insofar as it means that my days on The Hill are numbered. In the double digits. A change that marks a rather radical departure from the conditions under which I began this blog, even. Nonetheless, pretending that we do not live together has become such an exhausting drain on our time, energy, and finances that (after considerable discussion), we've opted to simply stop pretending. Thus, my library, will soon share space with her library.