Living in the O.C.

The jokes are true that you see in your email with regard to the traffic in Southern Califoria. Only in SoCal do you measure by time rather than by miles.

I live in Orange County. If someone new to here asks me about going to Los Angeles, I'm going to give directions, but I'm also going to tell them how long it will take to get there, not how many miles they are going to be driving.

To get to Los Angeles from O.C., you have to drive for 2 hours in the morning, but only 40 minutes to an hour in the late morning or early afternoon. This is because L.A. is only about 40 miles from O.C.

I just finished picking up my step-son from his job, which is only 10-minutes away from my homebecause it was 9:00 p.m. and not 3:00 p.m. If it was 3:00 p.m., it would have taken about 30 minutes or more to get there.

Even though we live approximately 20 miles from the ocean, because of traffic, it takes about 1 hour or more to get there. Forget about finding a parking space once you arrive. A better idea is to plan on parking several miles away and rollerblading in. Not for the faint of heart if you fear impact with moving vehicles.

The coast of Southern California is beautiful and can only be truly appreciated from the sky as you are flying into or departing from John Wayne Airport. The bay areas, the tall buildings, the planned communities, the mountains surving as a backdrop, Catalina Island off the coast...

It costs about $2100 per month to rent a 3-bedroom home here. For a 2-bedroom, about $1800. Tiny living quarters. Homes built in the last 20 years are an arm's nudge away from each other. My son and my husband's son share a one-room apartment in Santa Ana for $1200 per month. No, not furnished.

And parking is premium. L.A. is worse, but here in Orange County, where houses have been torn down to build small apartment complexes, illegal aliens bunch up inside at 10 people per unit, each with a car. I remember when I worked at a restaurant and a co-worker had to call his mother to pick him up and take him to work because his car was blocked in by other vehicles.

Still, as horrible as it sounds (based on the above) to live here, there are advantages. I went to visit my daughter in Washington, Utah recently and found out that there is MAYBE one pool bar in the whole city. Here in Orange County, there is a dive pool bar at almost every intersection. IMO, the dive-ier, the better, and there are a lot of dives.

And there is a Starbuck's coffee shop just about every block. IMO, that is another important consideration. I love Starbucks. I know that some people call it "Charbucks", but I love strong-tasting coffee.

I used to drive from Orange County to Houston, TX once a month to see my then-boyfriend/now-husband, and I had mapped out all the Starbucks between O.C. and Houston. There are no Starbucks the first major city you reach in New Mexico on the 10 Highway until you reach the last major city before you exit. Can't remember the exact names of those cities unless I pull a map up, but I think one of them was Lourdesburg.

Southern California is no longer a place I would recommend to anyone if someone was looking for a change of scenery. Too crowded, too many illegal aliens, cost of living too high, schools are not as good as they once were, gas prices too high, and it's too liberal.

Oh, that's another consideration: Here in O.C., we are considered to be a "hotbed" of Republicans. It's an embarrassment to me that CA always comes up as a Democratic state on the map thing that is shown as red or blue during elections, but in Orange County, I have never known anybody but Republicans. I am a Republican and have been registered as one since I was 18 years old. (My first 3 children are Democrats, but I forgive them. Somehow, I raised them wrong after all.)