There's a garage door opener clipped to the visor in my car. There's nothing special about it, to look at. You've probably had several like it, throughout your life.

But I haven't. This is the first garage door opener I ever owned. And it's not just a thing that opens a garage door - it's a key that opens a portal into a kind of life I never actually thought I'd lead. It opens the door to the garage at the house that I own, in a city that I love, with a family I adore. It's not something someone gave me to open their garage door. It opens my garage door.

Growing up we just had a car port. My grandfather never saw the point in finishing the garage and enclosing it. He never saw the point in putting walls and windows on the back patio, either, to make it a useable space year round. Actually, he never saw the point in improving the house at all. For all his much-vaunted handiness, he actually never undertook projects that improved our lot - just did the maintenance that (mostly) staved off entropy a while longer.

But not my house! My own house. We started with an enclosed garage with bare studs on the walls and a half-rotted, water logged door that weighed a ton. We insulated and put drywall on the interior, painted it a nice clean white and then had that heavy old door replaced with a sleek modern, insulated one that opens at the touch of a button. Now it seems a shame to put a car in there! And there's a top notch workshop attached to the back of the garage, a perfect place for tools for everything from leatherworking to carpentry, and you can bet that's going to happen too.

pyr8queen deserves a lot of the credit of course - without her drive and the help of her family, we would have had to settle for something much more modest. But we got there - and my name is on the deed. I mean, not the only name - but it's on there! We've redone all the floors, repainted every wall and ceiling. Dug vast trenches in the back yard to root out the old defunct sprinkler system in advance of putting in a new one. We repaired and replaced lights and fixtures, added a hardwood floor to the kitchen with seriously sturdy 3/4" oak planks. We pulled out the toilet and repaired the seals. We plugged and waterproofed the tiling in the showerstall, and replaced the shower head with a luxurious rainfall shower head.

And we haven't even moved in yet. But ...this is my house. A beautiful place made even more beautiful by aching backs and sweaty brows; by labor from friends and family (but loved ones all.) My own house.

And for the first time in my life, I have a garage door opener. Given the wonder and amazement it causes in me when I look at it, you'd think it lead to Narnia.

My garage door opener.