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It is almost midnight on June 25th and I am talking this out into MacWhisper instead of typing it because my carpal tunnel has been bad lately and I do not want to wreck my wrists before work tomorrow. So bear with me if this reads a little differently than usual.

We moved back home on June 20th. One week ago. We had been living with my in-laws since November 14th, which is a long time. The renovation ran long, the way these things do, and for eight and a half months Heather, Matilda, and I were living out of a mattress and about ten boxes in Heather’s old bedroom at her parents’ house.

I never had a childhood room the way some people do. Not because we did not have rooms, but because we moved every single year, so no room was ever the room. That is the thing I keep coming back to since we got home.

The night we moved in, I tucked Matilda into her room. And she looked at me and asked, is this my room? Yes. It is yours. Ever since, she keeps asking if she can go play in her room, and every time I tell her yes, it is your room, you can go in there whenever you want. If everything goes to plan, this is the room she grows up in. It might actually become her childhood room, the one she remembers. I never had that, so I cannot fully explain why it hits me as hard as it does. But watching her walk in there like she owns the place, because she does, is something I was not ready for.

If I am being honest, I think I am more happy about this for my family than I am for myself. I am still not entirely sure how to process that, but it is true. I am happier that they have this home than I am that I do.

The house is not done. The bathtub upstairs drains into the garage right now. A few outlets are missing and some lights do not work. They are still finishing the mini-splits and heat pumps five days after we moved in. The living room is full of furniture waiting on the downstairs getting painted, which happens this week. The driveway is too steep and rough to pull a low car into without scraping, so we are waiting on paving. The solar panels come off and get reinstalled next week after half a year of no production. The landscaping does not exist yet, so the patio, the fire pit, and the lawn are all still ahead of us.

But we have a certificate of occupancy, we are sleeping in our own bed, and the small things feel enormous. Taking a shower here and actually feeling clean, because our well water is genuinely neutral, zero across the board, which I have always appreciated and which also happens to make great brewing water. Washing and drying our own clothes for the first time. The kegerator is running again, two kegs on tap, one of them the beer we tapped at our wedding seven years ago and never finished.

Heather turns 36 on July 7th. I knew we needed to be home for her birthday so she could have the lake, because the lake on her birthday is always a big deal for her. The movers came Saturday the 20th, ran two loads, about $1,400 all in, and we slept in our own bed that night for the first time since November.

Heather talks up how good it was, as someone in her 30s, to live with her parents for a few months and be in their daily lives, and how much it meant for Matilda to spend that time with her grandparents. I did not really have that kind of thing growing up, but I can appreciate what she means. It was part of the process. And now I am ready to resume living in our own home.

I will be honest about the rest of the summer: I feel pressure I did not expect. Every motorcycle I own needs work. All of my riding gear is still in boxes. It is almost July and I have not ridden once. I know that pressure is self-imposed, but it is sitting there anyway.

Strangely, I think I am most looking forward to winter. That sounds wrong coming from someone with a lake and a garage full of bikes, but winter means the house is finally done, the garage is organized, and I can be down there in the evenings actually working on my projects. I have never had a garage before. The idea of spending a winter out there, doing all the overdue service and the projects I have been putting off, sounds genuinely great to me.

I turn 40 in August and I want to do something that means something. It does not have to be elaborate. Maybe I just load up the bike and ride somewhere far. It does not have to be special. It just has to mean something. I have the time off. I just need to actually do it instead of letting the summer slip by.

But I have been talking to myself for twenty minutes instead of unpacking, so that is on me. There is still the server rack, the closets, the living room, the patio, the driveway, the solar. One thing at a time.

I wanted to mark this moment even with my wrist hurting, because being away from home for this long and finally being back felt worth writing down.