On our way home from the grocery store the other night, Rob and I walked past a Thai restaurant in our neighborhood and it reminded me of a bad day I had in July. Rice noodles in savory beef broth or topped with peanut sauce and bean sprouts are sort of my comfort food, so whenever I'm sad or upset (or just hungry), you can usually find me ordering Pad Thai takeout (or a big huge bowl of pho). We got food from there once but haven't been back, even though it's within walking distance.

As we walked down the street, grocery bags in hand on our way home together, that restaurant on the corner said hey, you live here in a way that nothing else really has so far here in Charlotte.

In July, Rob was already working here during the week and I was in Minneapolis packing up our stuff. He'd come home on the weekends and we'd do all of the things we used to do when he lived there and I was the one visiting--Modern Times breakfasts and happy hours at Chino Latino and visits to kooky bookstores with almond milk lattes in hand. It was fun and it felt like vacation and one weekend he stayed and I came to Charlotte for the week, where we stayed at the Residence Inn he had been living out of. One night I felt overwhelmed and anxious, so we picked up two orders of Pad Thai and ate them in bed at our hotel while we watched whatever was on TV. I never felt like I lived somewhere less than at that moment, crying into my Styrofoam container of not-spicy-enough noodles.

We always said we were going to stay in Charlotte and I think we will, which is why we haven't yet put much effort into getting to know it. There's no rush like there was in Minneapolis, where we spent only a year and a half combined. Rob was there for six months alone and then I joined him from August to August and we went to museums and concerts and as many restaurants as possible. We saw lakes and walked around Minnehaha Falls. We went to Wisconsin twice and drove to Chicago once and felt very much a part of the Midwest. And we ate the best Pad Thai from a little hole-in-the-wall place down the street from our apartment on a regular basis.

I look back on Minneapolis as this dreamy little pocket of time in our lives where the climate was extreme and most of the time we felt like we were living in a different world more than just a different state. We planned our wedding and got married and came home from our honeymoon to our first married summer and it was the best. I packed up our apartment and thought man, this is going to be hard to top.

But Charlotte is where we will celebrate our first married anniversary, and where we get a dog, and it's where we hang things on the wall without worrying about having to take it all down in eight months and fill the holes with that pink caulk that turns white when it dries. It might even be where we have children. We wake up and live regular days and we meet for lunch or coffee and we take the train and we walk everywhere and on the weekends we sleep in and I make eggs and we don't always go out much but our apartment really feels like home.

I think it was a literary criticism class where we talked a bit about vertical moments in stories; how books need horizontal ones as well--not just action, but quiet passages, too--and that's so true, isn't it? Because so much of life happens in the in-between. Even if it isn't snowing, and even if the Pad Thai you get one day when you're sad isn't that good.

So we walk to the grocery store and on our way home we quietly pass that Thai restaurant on the corner and I think hey, I live here and it's good.

In the summer between my freshman and sophomore years of college, I broke up with a guy that I had been seeing for seven months and I felt terrible about it. "I'm making plans not to make plans while I'm here," my away message on AIM stated. I really thought I meant it, too. Because what could be more true than an away message composed of song lyrics?

For as long as I can remember, I've been planning something. I applied to colleges in high school, then picked one and went after I graduated. I chose classes and planned a schedule every semester. Then I graduated and moved, and started a new job, and began graduate school, where I once again chose classes and planned a schedule and left work one half hour early every Wednesday evening.

Then Rob graduated from college and he began graduate school, so we both packed up and moved to Charlottesville, where he chose classes and planned a schedule and I served lattes every morning and wrote my master's thesis every afternoon, wondering what in the world life might look like for someone who isn't a student.

And then there was a year of working full-time and being in a long-distance relationship, where life was about planning the next trip to see each other, or where we might be this time next year, and if we should get the white or the black kitchen table.

We planned our wedding, and a move from Minneapolis to Charlotte. Bridal showers, bachelor parties, boxes. It was 200 days until this and your lease starts on August first. I had a checklist for everything and a ton of excitement and anticipation packed into every moment of my day.

Now that we are here and settled, I'm finding myself wondering what every day life should look like. Planning a fun weekend away but absolutely treasuring our uneventful nights of Netflix on the couch and Thai takeout that we say we aren't going to get but almost always end up picking up anyway. A life of top knots and an early bedtime and leggings, but also an aggressive list of goals that I sit down to write at the beginning of every month. Brewing coffee in the morning while my husband is still in bed. And making plans not to make plans, as true or false as it may be at any moment.

Every morning I stand in the kitchen, watching my husband have breakfast at the bar. It sounds so silly, but it's one of the times every day when I really feel like a wife. We aren't much into traditional gender roles, but because I work from home, sometimes it feels like it might look like we do. Either way, making him a cup of coffee while he gets ready for work in the morning makes me smile, whether it screams "housewife" or not.

We've only been married for four months. But even after living together for several years, there are old things that somehow now feel new. I think it's the move from Minneapolis to Charlotte more than the marriage, though, because I didn't really feel this way in Minnesota. Making our bed. Eating dinner together on the couch. Waking up on a Saturday and vowing to do absolutely nothing all day.

And then there are the new things that will still feel new for months. Referring to Rob as my husband, or his parents as my in-laws. Taking the train to meet him for lunch in the city. Driving instead of flying to visit a friend in another city. Writing "Megan Peterson" on anything. After we moved, we finally unpacked our wedding gifts, so this apartment feels like the first place we've lived since the wedding. New plates, new glasses, new pots and pans, a new life together.

Fall is on its way and I'm always amazed at how nostalgia just floods my heart and brings me right back to high school or college or whatever I was doing the previous year. And every year, I pick up a few new experiences and add them to the emotional album that is my life. Last year we were planning a wedding, visiting Virginia for engagement photos and a party, missing fall while we felt winter slowly but surely descend upon Minneapolis. We turned an unfamiliar place into our home, and as I find myself missing it so much this year, I can't help but think about where I will be next year--hopefully feeling settled and at home here in North Carolina.

A lot can happen in a year.