Yesterday was a perfect day. Not just a nice day, not just a good day, but an authentically perfect day.

I’d been dreading it for weeks. My last full day in my house, my last moment to say good-bye. I expected loneliness and sorrow, regret and probably some worry about the future. Instead, I puttered around, moving stuff from one place to another. I went for a walk with a friend, cleaned and swam, saw another friend, ran some errands. Spent half an hour on the phone with R, made a snack sort of lunch, swam some more. Cleaned some more, went out and saw some other friends, made dinner in Serenity — a salad of mixed greens, turkey chunks, pecans, and dried apricots, with a balsamic and peach honey mustard vinaigrette.

And at about 9, when I was tired and ready to sleep, instead I went back into the house and out to the swimming pool and lit the torches and swam by firelight under a starry sky. It was lovely, so beautiful as I floated in the still water, watching the colors of the flames against the backdrop of the green leafy bamboo. The sweet olive tree was even blooming a little again, making the whole backyard smell tropical. It was as magical as I could have imagined, maybe even more so.

The only not quite perfect thing about the day was that poor Zelda was so tired from staying two inches away from me while I wandered around that when I swam she didn’t play with her ball. Instead she slept, as if she was grateful for the chance to get some rest while I was contained. She, of course, doesn’t know that it’s going to be her last chance to play in a pool for a while.

But even that’s okay. I’ve been fighting to keep her ears healthy — drops every morning, cleaning them every day — but I’m pretty sure that I’ve failed and that she’s working on infections, maybe in both. It would be impossible to keep her out of the pool if we were home, but her ears will have a chance to stay dry when we’re on the road. And if I decide in a few days that this is an infection that needs more than Zymox, I can find a Banfield on the road and use her wellness plan to see a vet pretty much anywhere.

And today — well, today’s the big day. I shouldn’t be writing a blog post, I should be finishing cleaning out the house, making last decisions about all the things left inside, dragging the trash out to the curb. Maybe scrubbing the kitchen floor — I did a fairly half-hearted job yesterday. Definitely finishing emptying the fridge and cleaning it out. Checking the laundry situation, maybe making a last run to Goodwill. Oh, and cleaning my bathroom.

I suspect that today is both going to fly by and have long moments where it feels like it’s dragging, but at 2PM, I will sign the papers. One set of dreams will come to an end, but another will begin. I have no idea where I’m going to be spending the night, whether I’ll still be in Florida or have made it to Georgia or South Carolina. For that matter, I have no idea where I’ll be tomorrow night either. How fun!