I didn't see him at first. I was standing at the patio door with a cup of coffee, still in that early-morning fog that follows an unsettled night, when I looked up and found him looking back at me. A deer. Calm, unhurried, close enough that I could see the soft flicker of his ears and the velvet of his still growing antlers. He stood along a grass line in front of the path just beyond the glass for a long moment — long enough that I put my cup down — and then he moved on to the path, disappearing into the green without any particular urgency.
Two weeks into Ohio, and this was the welcome.
I've been trying to write this post since the boxes went into the truck, and I kept stalling — not for lack of things to say, but because moves are strange and full and hard to hold still long enough to describe. But that deer stopped me in my tracks in the best possible way, and I think it's the right place to begin.
The Road Here
Florida to Ohio is not a short drive. We did it in two days, which sounds manageable until you factor in two cats who had opinions about every single mile of it.
Fitzy — my very sweet but dramatic Ragdoll who has an established habit of making his feelings known — was reluctant in a way that I can only describe as theatrical. He wasn't distressed exactly. He just wanted me to understand the full weight of what was being asked of him. His sister was quieter about it, but no less expressive in her own way. By the end of day one, we had all reached an unspoken agreement: we were doing this, we didn't have to like it, and there would be treats at the hotel.
There is a particular kind of exhaustion that comes with uprooting a life. It isn't just the physical tiredness of packing, loading, driving and unloading — it's the emotional weight of leaving what was familiar, even when the leaving is chosen and right. Florida had been home for a long time, and leaving also meant leaving the place where a long and tender season of caregiving had finally, quietly closed. That weight was part of the road too.
But somewhere on day two, somewhere in the long green stretch of the drive north through Tennessee, something else started to come through. The air changed. The landscape began to look like something I recognized not just from maps but from memory — the particular roll of the land, the quality of light through hardwoods, the way the sky opens up differently here. I grew up knowing these seasons, this landscape. And by the time we pulled into Sheffield Lake, what I felt wasn't the disorientation of arrival in an unfamiliar place. It was something quieter and more solid than that. It felt like coming home.
Sheffield Lake
The apartment is still becoming home, which is its own quiet process. There are still a few boxes that haven't been opened yet and corners that don't quite know what they are yet. But the light — softer in the morning, with that cool Lake Erie undertone — I know this light. It lived in my bones before Florida ever did. I find myself noticing it the way you notice something you forgot you missed.
Fitzy has claimed the spot by the patio door as his own. He sits there in the mornings with the focused attention of someone who takes his job seriously, watching whatever moves through the green outside. He has settled in with more grace than the road trip suggested he would. His sister found her favorite spot in the guest room within the first forty-eight hours and has largely decided that Ohio is acceptable.
The patio itself is a gift. The deer path runs just behind it — a soft worn line through the grass and low brush that I didn't notice until I did, and now I can't not see it. There is something deeply settling about living somewhere that wildlife has its own routes, its own reasons, its own unhurried rhythms. It makes the pace feel slower here. Or maybe I'm just ready to slow down.
What Stays, What Changes
Island Thyme Soap Company made the move with me. The business is now a Ohio registered LLC. The name stays the same. The sourdough starter, I'm happy to report, survived the journey without complaint and has since been revived and is actively doing its thing on my counter.
Cozy Cove Living moves with me too, which is perhaps the most natural thing of all. Hygge was never about a specific place. It was never about a particular zip code or a certain kind of weather or a backdrop that looked a certain way. It's a practice — a way of paying attention, of choosing slowness, of finding warmth in small things. A handmade candle. A loaf of bread cooling on the counter. A cup of coffee held in both hands. A deer at the door.
What changes is the view from the window, the rhythm of the days, the particular character of each season as it arrives. But here's the thing about coming back to a landscape you grew up in: you already know what's coming. I know what the first cold snap feels like, the way the light goes amber and low in October, the specific silence of a snowy morning. I'm not bracing for an unfamiliar winter — I'm looking forward to one I remember. There's a different kind of coziness in that. A homecoming coziness.
I'm curious what it will mean to practice Hygge here, in this particular place, with all of that familiar landscape just outside the door. I suspect it's going to feel very natural.
Back to the Deer
There's a reason I keep coming back to that moment at the patio door. It wasn't dramatic. The deer didn't do anything. It just stood there, present and unhurried, and looked at me the way wild things do — without alarm, without agenda, with a kind of calm attention that I found, unexpectedly, steadying.
I think that's what I needed after two days on the road and two weeks of boxes and adjustment and the low hum of change. A moment that just was what it was. Still. Quiet. Enough.
That, I think, is what Cozy Cove Living has always been trying to say. Not that life needs to be slower everywhere and always — but that it's worth stopping for the deer. That the small moments of genuine stillness are the ones worth paying attention to. That home is less about where you are and more about whether you're present enough to notice what's right outside your door.
Ohio — this Ohio, this landscape I grew up knowing — is going to be very good for that.
If you're new here — welcome. And if you've been here a while, thank you for following along into this new chapter. There's sourdough baking, handmade soap and candles, honest writing about slow living, and apparently now a resident deer to look forward to. I hope you'll stay.
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