I don’t recall the exact lightning bolt-moment, the exact point in time when it happened, but it did indeed happen: I'm tired of this adventure and I want to go home, now. Happily, my dearest, my Viking, agrees with me wholeheartedly. Of course, we are Pinky and the Brain: two mice, one brain.

I can't say our move to the East Coast was a mistake, far from it. During our five years here our business and, ironically, our leisure time grew exponentially. We produced and distributed a music DVD worldwide, created a number of new TV commercials and productions for our reel, including an industrial video for Lockheed Martin, shooting the inaugural flight of an unmanned helicopter in front of a slew of Pentagon officials, Senators and military brass. (During production, I imagined the PeterCopter epsiode of Family Guy. It could have been a whole different, Fox-worthy video had things gone differently.) We also created a whole cache of new animations and characters, including a figure which may become the new, national face of a major financial investment corporation. I wrote four novels whilst here, got three of those published and am about three months shy of publication of that fourth. We travelled like mad up and down the shoreline, from Maine to Florida, amassing footage, research, highjinks, trouble and memories. In short, our media company, our grey cells, our friendship and our love are all the stronger, sturdier and more adaptable for the adventure. We also made three very, very dear friends we shall miss immensely once back on the Golden Coast: Sterling, Stephen and Lance. Sadly, we also lost our two best friends. Alongside The House That Savannah Built shall there always be our Herr Ichabod and our fair Miss Onyx.

Now, I need some funk, a better selection of Thai restaurants and a place to get wheat grass shots.

I need more art-house theaters, more used bookstores, more vintage shops, more Bettie Page Boutiques. Once back home, I'll be an hour from the Hollywood store and a mere four from the Vegas location. As it regards the Vegas location ... Vegas!

Atlantic City was played the first time we visited, the first time someone knocked on our car window at midnight and asked us for money. AC is old, dirty, skanky, grimy and just way too Trumpy. It's like an aging Southern beauty queen or a tract mansion in Irvine: attractive and exciting from afar, but just too many coats of paint and spackle that still don't cover up the scars and cracks of sixty years of desperately hanging on and, upon closer inspection, that great foundation, those amazing lines turn out to be bursting at the seams and all held in by control and support mechanisms that, after one good sneeze, will never pass inspection.

Sure, Vegas is ostentatious, gauche and gaudy; still, nobody does tacky with more style, quality and class than Vegas. If AC is the ancient Confederate belle, Vegas is her richer, hipper cousin with a much better plastic surgeon and a make-up kit full of Perricone and Clinique, not Wal-Mart and CVS. Yeah, I'm more than ready for a few nights at Paris or even The Mirage, after which I may very well need some of that .99 Wet n' Wild lipstick at CVS when the House takes all my blackjack lettuce.

Disneyland, South Coast Plaza, peerless Orange County beaches, Eastern Sierra, Fashion Island, crystalline ocean views, San Diego Zoo, The Old Globe, open space and deserts, more Disneyland, The Norton Simon, Tiffany-blue skies, The Huntington, horizons and even more Disneyland ... I'm so sorry I took you all for granted! It is a hazard to grow up in such perfection. Poor little goth girl. It all becomes so blase before one learns to walk, surf or drive. It is also a great impetus to get up and leave, as we did. Neither of us ever wanted to be the person whom was born, grew up and died in the same town. Born in Miami, but raised in northern and southern California, California is definitely my home. Still, like Duncan McLeod, if you think my accent's a little busy, I'll answer in the same manner:

"Your accent's weird. Where are you from?"

"Lots of places."

Travelling, short-term or extensive, (For, that is how I look upon our Virginia adventure, as an extended sojourn.) makes it possible to appreciate home. If you've never been anywhere, you can't make comparisons. Snowstorms in Annapolis, spring tulip blooms in Maine, Thanksgiving in Virginia, getting accidentally caught in war protests in Paris and biker rallies down Connecticut Ave. in D.C., driving the coast from Cannes to Monaco, getting lost on a Swiss mountain, getting lost in West Philly, and eating a Heath Bar Blizzard in July, in East Texas ... these are all events not to be missed.

Equally pertinent to a full life are summer evenings on a boat with friends in Dana Point Harbor, Hallowe'en at Disneyland, camping in Yosemite, escaping summer heat in The Getty Museum's or The Haunted Mansion's air-conditioning, having your picture snapped by a tourist as you traverse a crosswalk on Rodeo Drive, stopping for CornNuts and coffee in Lee Vining, Bloody Marys in the ski lodge at Mammoth and Christmas-shopping at South Coast Plaza.

In the end, after lots of places, we're ready to come home. Wanderlust will take hold again, it always does; it's in my Native American/Hungarian gypsy genes. Yet, I have learned it is best manifested in short-term travel and lots of scarves and shiny things in my wardrobe, not in moving three-thousand miles away from our friends and family.

Whilst living in Orange County, I wrote a book about Williamsburg. Whilst living in Williamsburg, I wrote a book about Orange County. I plan to come home and do for an Orange County Darling what I did for a poncy London Squirrel ... just, with more sunshine and funk.

Someday me and Adele be walking down the road and we'll see your book and we'll buy it and put it on our coffee table.  -Early Grayce