10 years

Cue the Beauty and the Beast song "Be Our Guest".  I don't know why this line popped into my head but it did, "Ten years we've been rusting, needing so much more than dusting..."  Anyway, I guess this is what happens when I haven't blogged in a while, I get kind of random.
I was driving today, and realized a few things in my thought processes.  Ten years ago this month, I was getting ready to leave Georgia to move to Texas for grad school.  Ten years.  That is so crazy.  But true.  It was a monumental moment for me.  Leaving Georgia, I think I knew that I would not move back there when done with school.  And at that time, Georgia had been home for most of my life.  I remember when I switched my license plate from Georgia to Texas.  I cried.  It was the last thing of Georgia I had (I had already switched my license).  I think that might be why I still carry my house key from my mom's house in Georgia on my key chain.  It is almost completely useless.  I mean, my brother and sister-in-law still live there, but I certainly haven't used it in the last ten years.

It also made me realize that I can't say that I've lived in Georgia most of my life.  I've lived a little over half of my life in Georgia--17 years, if I did the math correctly.  3 1/2 years in Texas.  And 12 1/2 years in Illinois--6 as a child and the last 6 1/2 years.  It was a weird realization because I have always said, when asked where I'm from, "I was born in Illinois, but spent most of my life in Georgia.  I went to grad school in Texas, and now I'm back in Illinois."  I guess in the  next couple of years, I need to come up with a new tag line for that question!