It hasn't felt like home [before you]

The end of another day, and a busy one, busier than most Mondays. I stayed at his place last night to do laundry, and yes, also to be around his stuff. But I overslept and had a babysitting commitment this morning. Even rushing I got my coffee made and drove his monster truck to keep the battery charged. I pulled in a mere seconds before Jen and baby, luckily. Then an hour coaxing her stand, and because we are both so fashion forward, Baby Girl and I paid our daily homage to What Not to Wear.

After Children's Hour at Chez Moi, I had to go back to his house to get my clean clothes and drop off his gas-guzzler...and take the trash to the dump before my afternoon class. I also stopped by an antique store to look for a subject for my latest project idea--a bar for my giant, beautiful dining room.  In one of the latest Domino issues, they made a bookshelf into a bar/sideboard.  Something kind of like this:

(thanks apartmenttherapy.com)

...except I want a dark wood for the outside and an orange background, something warm and pumpkin-ish, not periwinkle.  I devised a plan for said [untouched] dining room: if I can get myself excited enough about decorating it, then I will surely be compelled to fill the china cabinets with china and stemware currently forgotten in boxes, and to clear off my sprawling dining table turned catch-all and care-package-central.  To accomplish this task I raided Pier 1 this weekend, stocking up on an armful of [fake] poppies and varied greens and four curtain panels in rich browns and firey red-oranges.  It's the final room to be tackled and my favorite, not to sound like the rest of the house is finished.  My bedroom is painfully in need of painting and cleaning, and all of those clothes that hang so gracefully on the closet bar are still scattered in my floor.  Still, the dining room has been neglected and it's time to wrap up this "getting settled" bit.  

I got to give The Staff Sergeant a virtual tour when we spoke via chat/webcam.  He said that the living room at least, looked completely different in a good way, which made my efforts seem momentarily worthwhile.  Until it's all finished, I power on.  I've hung curtains continuously for weeks...ok, maybe not exactly continuously, and found places for crap that laid homeless and lost in the corners of chaotic rooms.  All of this has reminded me of how much I dislike the moving process, and yet I know within a year I'll be doing it all again.

How good is a man that lets you look past the strife of separation, of uprooting, of packing all the minuscule pieces of your existence painstakingly in boxes to leave places that feel like home for new uncharted ones and then each night, also leaves you drifting off to sleep with a smile?