Orange County, California (“out of my league”?)

Soon I will depart this beautiful place. I know the next destination, but I won’t reveal it in this story — it would be a distraction. Here, I just want to pay tribute to the best place I’ve ever lived.

“Spoiled brat,” I can imagine someone thinking.

If you do a simple Google search “Is Orange County expensive,” you get this:

or this:

Or maybe they won’t think I’m spoiled, but they’ll frown at the notion of someone praising California as much as I do. People often have a love-hate relationship with California, I’ve found.

It’s not like I’ve spent a lifetime here, but I’ve never fallen in love with any other place as much as I have with Southern California’s Orange County.

I just scrolled through my iPhone’s pictures to recall when we arrived in Irvine — it was in April of 2019.

The five years that followed were full of storms — professional and personal — and, of course, we all…