Happy Anniversary to Me!

Three years in St. Louis today! As of today, I have lived in St. Louis for three years! Three very very short years. Three incredibly long years. Three amazingly fun, exciting years. Three years of learning more then I learned in the other 20+ years.
After three years am I still allowed to call Interstate 64, "64," instead of "40" and when people correct me, can I still say "Oh, I just moved here"? Can I complain that I just don't get this city because "I'm new"? Am I still "new"? Can I still say "Oh, I didn't know that - I'm not from here"? When do you officially become a "resident" of a city? I still have Florida plates and a Florida license (mainly due to laziness and the desire to avoid personal property tax- yes, Floridians, we pay not only INCOME tax, and SALES tax, and PROPERTY tax, but also PERSONAL PROPERTY tax - sucks to be in a state not blessed by tourism - guess not as many people visit Branson as Disney - go figure) - can I even be a Missourian? I don't know a thing about corn - or the high schools here - or even why people would want to live in the burbs - can I be a "resident"?
Anyway, I still can't believe it's been three years already - it seems like just yesterday my baby brother was graduating college and I was driving up here following Cody on his motorcycle in the pouring rain. On the trip up here we stopped for the night in Cadiz, Kentucky and saw that one of my fish had had babies - lots of them - during the ride here. So we had to scoop them out into water bottles so their mommy wouldn't eat them (for some reason my fish always have babies during momumentous events - the first time the fish had babies was the first day Cody's parents saw my apartment in G'ville - so we were trying to show them around and at the same time scoop baby fish out). Boy does time fly when you're having fun. It's been a great 3 years - really it has. I've learned so much and experienced so many new things. I've learned things living away from home (not just 2 hours away at college - 13 hours away - living - no spring breaks, no summer and holiday breaks) that no other experience could have taught me. And of course it brought Cody and I together. There's something about having just each other to depend on and lean on that makes you grow stronger as a couple. There's no running to our parents, or even long-time friends, when there's a fight - just us two to work it out. When things get scary or sad or lonely or homesick or upset - we just have each other here - which has taught us a lot in terms of how to provide support and accept support from each other. For me at least, it's just as hard, if not harder, to accept support as it is to give it - and that's made us learn a lot about each other, life, independence and relationships. I think us living here has been one of the best moves of our lives - as much as we miss family sometimes, the independence we've gained here is priceless. We have a new "home" here and that's special - when we say we're going "home," we no longer mean Tally, we mean here, to our home. Tally is where our folks live and we'll always visit, but it's no longer "home" to us - I think we've created a great "home" for ourselves here that we enjoy though.
So - happy three years in STL! Not sure we'll make it another three here, but here's to enjoying every day of it!