Ever since I purchased the stone dragon and named her ‘Rhyme’, she has needed the obvious mate. Richard and I agreed that we would find him together, no matter how long it took. I did find the identical dragon when I was at DragonCon in Atlanta a while back, but I remembered the deal – find him together – and left him there. We figured the most likely place to find him was at another festival like the Scottish Games event where I found the first one.

This weekend, we were wandering around Old Sacramento. Searching for Reason was the furthest thing from our minds, but then I suppose that’s often the way it goes, so of course we found him. He was high on a shelf, flanked by a rather grumpy looking gargoyle who also ended up having to come home with us, but there he was. We’ve joked about our search for Reason (yes, in a world gone mad), but it was surprising, at least to me, that we found him so fast.

Finding the dragon doesn’t mean that our search for reason has ended – just the physical part. This past weekend Richard and I came to a decision that is a rather big one for me. He’ll be moving in this weekend when he flies back from spending the week in Portland for work. I suppose in a way it should be no different, simply because for all intents and purposes he has been ‘living’ with me for months. But it will not longer be the pretense of keeping two addresses. When the phone rings on Saturday mornings with my parents on the other end for the weekly phone call, he’ll be able to pick it up. The answering machine message that says ‘we’re not home’ really will mean ‘we’ now. There will be new furniture in this house and I’m going to have to rearrange some things so that his stuff has somewhere to go. The fact that the garage door remote died a few weeks back now becomes a moot point because we both can’t park in this skinny garage so it will become a place to store boxes of stuff he’ll bring over. I have no idea where we’ll put all his books (he’s got a lot of them, just like me). There’ll now be two of us responsible for filling cat food bowls and making sure that the trash gets to the curb every Thursday morning (something I’m really good at forgetting to do). I’m going to have to get my extra mail key back from the friend who usually watches my house when I’m out of town. And most importantly, he’ll be living here. With me.

So this is where my own search for reason has taken a sharp turn. I know that a lot of people have lived with their significant others and so maybe this isn’t quite so big a deal for most of you. But it is for me. I’ve never lived with a man before – not even as just another housemate. One of the reasons I never anticipated even getting married is that I simply couldn’t visualize the concept. I’ve spent too many years independant; at least with roommates we each had our own room to go to when things got tense. Living with a significant other means no privacy, and I really never thought I would find someone who would make me want to give that up.

Fair warning now – if you abhor mushy I suggest you stop reading right now…because you see, I cannot imagine Richard *not* being here. When he is up in Portland I miss him. I miss curling into his arms as we sit on the couch to read. I miss looking over at him while we are both on our computers, being silly with Instant Messages when we’re only a few feet apart. I miss just knowing that even though we are both in different parts of the house, I at least know he is *there*. There are a lot of perfectly good, rational reasons for him moving in – financial, convenience, etc. But none of these matter more than the simple reason that I have discovered that having him here does not mean that I am giving something up, but actually gaining something far better.