Where did four years go?

When I first accepted this job, decided this would be my next adventure, I had no real clue. I thought it sounded fun and I was desperate not to have to move home. Love you Momma, but can't live with you!

The original #montgomerymove was like a comedy of errors. At the end of a whirlwind weekend, I was officially a permanent resident of the state capital. And I hated it. But it slowly got better, I found some friends, I found a groove at work, and things got better.

I learned what the hell a skidder was, how to properly fake interest in a fiberboard production line, and just how ridiculously important to the world the forest products industry really is.

Did you know, thanks to improved forest management practices, we have more trees in America today than we did 100 years ago? Working forests not only provide jobs for millions of Americans, including me, but they are good for the environment providing clean air and water, wildlife habitats and carbon storage. Plus, do you really want to wipe your ass with a pine cone?

I don't think that first year, or even really the second, it sunk in that I lived here, that I wasn't leaving.

The plan was always to leave.

Then I met a boy, and he decided I should change my last name and change all my hopes and dreams for the future. I actually found myself agreeing.

Now, I'm here. I live in this place I hated for so long. Hell, I'm on every major television network encouraging people to vote for our next mayor. My family is comprised of seventh and eighth generation Montgomerians.

I go to the same sushi restaurant at least three times a month and they know my order without me having to speak. I have close friends here. My sons will make their first close friends here. Mark and I are in the process of buying a bigger house here. We have couple friends here. We go to dinner parties; I’m in a book club. I met my husband at the same table we sit at every Wednesday evening when our friends gather to catch up on our lives and enjoy the Southern weather and a few adult beverages. Our lives are here.

I'm not leaving.

I always thought when my fourth anniversary at Hatton-Brown came I would be in the interview process somewhere else. Instead I spent it in the low country of North Carolina, meeting with a couple of loggers and going for a late night treadmill run in the Rocky Mount Candlewood gym. I take fuzzy selfies all around the country and I love on my 78 lb. German shorthair. I have one husband, two sons, two stepkids, four dogs, nine turtles and one helluva life. 

I'm lucky: Even when it doesn't always feel like it.