Well, y'all, in just a few days, it will be official. I am moving to the loveliest village on the plains, where the eagles soar and the tigers roar: Auburn, Alabama.
I guess this is kind of sudden to most everyone who knows me, but be honest, y'all, it's not that much of a surprise. Is it?
THE MOVE has been in the works for a while now. If I want to be good and Southern about it, and dramatize how long it has been, I'll say since I was moving out of my apartment in Auburn in 2004. Really, though, it's been about two or three years in the making.
After I took my first serious boyfriend down to Auburn one weekend in the early days of our relationship, I knew I wanted to move back there. After my first serious boyfriend and I broke up the first time, I really tried to move back down there, but it wasn't very practical. When I was in the process of looking for my first house, I peeked at properties in Auburn (and I found THE quintessential Auburn home on Samford Avenue - of course, it sold within a matter of days). And within a couple of months of buying my first house - a townhouse in Birmingham's Highland Park - I declared, "If things don't get better in six months, I'm moving to Auburn."
I gave it well over a year before I actually made good on that declaration.
So, here I sit in my hotel room, about to go to bed because tomorrow is a big day: I have the inspection on my condo. If all goes well, I will be moving in a couple of weeks.
So many people ask, "Why Auburn?" I tell them so I can breathe. I'm only half-joking. The air is fresh, people are more than nice, and I need to remove myself from the bad situation that is Birmingham. Plus, I don't know how much more Southern you can get than Auburn.
