Looking for a house is an exhausting and enthralling experience. For every home you drive by and peek into you have to imagine a whole life of you living there. How the dogs would run up and down the stairs, or how the kitchen might seem cramped when filled with family and friends...but cramped in a good way, or how summer nights would be lovely on the back deck with the bbq smoking, or how your bed may fit into the room, or where your couches might go, or what colour you would choose for your first remodeling paint job, or...well you get the picture.

Not only that, you have to imagine the life of the family that lives/lived there. How the little girl of the family would have loved the bright pink walls that you would immediately paint over. How the woman that is sitting outside with her brussels griffon seems so alone in such a big house that obviously once kept a large and bustling family, but now only serves to house her canvases. How the teenage boy made that dent in the wall with the edge of his skateboard (which he isn't supposed to ride in from the garage on). How the family dogs enjoyed chewing on part of the back deck on a long boring weekday.

Then you have to go through it all again when you take D back through those that made it to the short list...those you have hope for, those that you've already grown attached to because somehow you saw yourself there taking a quick dip in the pool, or making up your famous pico de gallo and passing it through the kitchen window to the group already gathered around the bbq in the back.....

And, he is just so much more practical than you.

And, he makes you remember things like that your priorities were decent bathrooms and a good kitchen....not lush back gardens and a cool dipping pool....

And, in the meantime you are preoccupied, but in a good way, about taking this big step and achieving a goal that you two made together a long time ago.