Category: Uncategorized

I am so exceedingly sorry that I have not written any posts since December! I really do apologize, it quite honestly has been a very demanding few past weeks, thanks to finals next week. I am thoroughly terrified, and I am truly attempting desperately to focus on my studies and not let anything distract me from those beautiful As. I’m a little frazzled.

I am honestly not in any state to write a well-written, meaningful blog post right now, but I will however, share some of my favorite songs that have been tremendously helping me in getting through the immense studying I am currently doing. Please, listen to all of this lovely goodness and thank me later.

Have an interesting and excellent week!

Always Where I Need to Be- The Kooks

A Case of You- Joni Mitchell

Where Is My Mind?- The Pixies

Wake Up- Arcade Fire

Deep Blue- Arcade Fire

Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want- The Smiths

Gotta Get Away- The Black Keys

I Always Knew- The Vaccines

Mind Over Matter- Young the Giant

Fire- Augustana

It’s Only Life- The Shins

Breezeblocks- Alt-J

The Look- Metronomy

Rosie (acoustic live version)- The Kooks

West Coast- Coconut Records

L.I.F.E.G.O.E.S.O.N. – Noah and the Whale

Here’s what’s been inspiring me, oh so much, this lovely (stressful) “cold” Los Angeles December.

Felicity Jones is unfairly sort of amazing, just saying. (go watch the Theory of Everything RIGHT NOW, crazy good soundtrack)

Charles Bukowski is one of my favorite writers, despite how well he is known for his raunchy/explicit/scandalous, albeit sometimes perverted writing style, to me, he is still a brilliant writer. Sorry.

See my Pinterest for more of my odd obsessions, quotes, quirky favorites, and whatnot. Have a lovely rest of 2014, and please, be brave.

I miss middle school. I really, really do. I don’t miss it for the curriculum or the workload or anything like that, I miss it for what school used to feel like.

Eighth grade was an incredible year for me. It was very rough, of course, as every year of middle school was. Preparation for high school was ensuing and it was a pure chaotic stress-filled world. But all of us frazzled, sleep-deprived, overthinking humans were all the same way, together. School felt like a haven, because being so close with everyone made it feel safe. I would go to math, my worst subject, and because everyone was on the same boat as me, because everyone was so easily relatable, I would be laughing my head off in that class and still getting 100% because for some reason, we all got each other.

But those days, that once seemed like they were mindless and endless, are long over. Freshman year isn’t just different, it’s about a million times harder.

I am in this state of realizing that everything is changing, or maybe, rather, everything has already changed and I am supposed to just somehow magically be okay with that. I’m not okay with it. Any of it.

See, high school isn’t what I expected. It’s not because of the rigorous workload, because we have been trained for that for years now. It is because of the space. I am so prominently feeling this odd, weirdly-shaped space between me and everything that has ever made me who I am. I used to fit into that space like a crevice in a sidewalk, like a piece to a puzzle. I used to fit. Now, though, that space has turned into something oddly misshapen and too small, yet also too large, for me to snuggle into.

I looked around my school the other day, and I just stopped in front of my locker, and thought, where are all of my friends? It’s a stupid question, but I didn’t feel so stupid for thinking it. Really, I have been feeling as if my closest friend these days, is myself. I am finding it much more difficult to keep the pace with all of my friends, because we are all so busy and moving in different directions all at once. People who I was once so, almost sisterly, close with, are seeming to drift away like nothing has ever happened between us. I don’t really know how to explain it, but it’s there.

These spaces between me and my old friends, between me and my old passions and dreams, are really damn uncomfortable. And they sting, too, in a weird way. The spaces sting. I feel like I’m missing something that everyone else has already figured out. Meanwhile, I’m sitting here, nostalgic about the old family I had created for myself, that is now gone. My “person”, or multiple people, really, don’t feel like they’re my people anymore. Nothing is the same, and maybe that’s good, but I just haven’t figured out exactly how it’s good, yet.

I really hope that I do. Soon. I mean, what is there to live for if all you have is a blank space where everything you loved used to be? I have so much room for new things, but none of those new things have entered yet.

As the new (brilliant) One Direction song states, as Niall’s angelic and heartbreaking voice sings:

The spaces between us
Keep getting deeper
It’s harder to reach her
Even though I’ve tried
Spaces between us
Hold all our secrets
Leaving us speechless
And I don’t know why

Who’s gonna be the first to say goodbye?

♦

I was recently listening to some old Taylor Swift on the plane ride back from my latest trip to Toronto and New York, and albeit I’m a little embarrassed to say that I started tearing up on that airplane, thanks to Ms. Swift. See, two of her older songs will always remain to be some of my favorites. “Never Grow Up” and “The Best Day” are these two terrific songs.

I’m coming to the abrupt realization that I am slowly growing up. Yes, I am not going to be fifteen forever. I am going to come into myself. I am going to be that mortified little girl half of the time, who was too reticent to even make smalltalk with my mom’s friends, but I am going to also be the confident and new person I am slowly growing into. I have always felt so out of place in my world. I’ve felt like I have some subtle difference within me, as I am a monster in a sea of aliens. I don’t know exactly how to accurately explain my unfaltering, consistent uncomfortableness, but it had always been there, sort of sitting in the pit of my stomach at grotesquely dull middle school parties, at late night, unbearably extraverted soirees my mom threw when my dad was out of town, at the youthful cheer that occurs when summer begins.

I’ve always felt a bit different, a bit more unsure of why everyone else seemed to feel a common emotion that I wasn’t. It was only very, very recently that I have come to understand that every person I know is uncomfortable, especially right now. I used to secretly have the notion that all of my friends’ brains thought at exactly the same pace, in the same exact way. I used to think that these emotions spread like the flu, and I somehow got a vaccine when everyone else had yet to. A vaccine for being young.

What I am trying to say is that I have always been more interested in activities, that are seen as things that being a “grown up”, or a “big kid”, entails. While my best friends were fondling the idea of crushes and the most naive form of flirting, I was called the class bookworm when I read To Kill a Mockingbird in fourth grade. When I came to seventh grade, suddenly, so suddenly, everyone was obsessed with scrutinizing everyone else’s flaws, everyone else’s statuses in popularity, in relationships, in every little details, details I truly never even observed. I felt as if I had been shoved into this completely paradoxical world, a world where I was expected to instantly pick up on the new game of the year: popularity, but not let my confusion ever show. The social ladder was one I had no interest in climbing. That was only until the slight intuition that slithered its way into my confusion: all of my friends were moving on without me.

And so I jumped onto the train, not because it looked particularly grand or enticing, but because it seemed to be the only route to what we assumed was maturity. Maturity being aging, maturity being nothing but what we assumed was true, what we saw on TV and what we were corrupted by society to think. But we weren’t growing up. We were being middle schoolers. We were being immature. No one likes to point this out, yet I notice when we all sit around a fire and the topic of middle school comes up, a fear creeps in that everyone will somehow remember who we used to be. Who we used to be is who we are desperately trying to leave behind.

I spent all of my childhood feeling older than I was. Now, though, I feel so incredibly stuck in immaturity. I want to grow up, but I also want to stay in the blissfully ignorant, beautifully naive time of being a child. Adolescence is the epitome of feeling uncomfortable. I don’t quite know where I belong yet. I am not one to categorize myself into a specific part of my school where I belong.

I used to be obsessed with defining myself as one, great thing. Now, though, my views have erratically shifted. I recently read this transformative quote by the German writer Franz Kafka. This quote is very accurate about I how I feel so strongly, about myself:

I never wish to be easily defined. I’d rather float over people’s minds as something strictly fluid and non-perceivable, more like a transparent, paradoxically iridescent creature rather than an actual person. 

This is my idea of how I am slowly, slowly, growing up. I am not letting myself be defined by one aspect of me anymore. I am shifting from my “thing” to my many things. I don’t want to be defined anymore. I want to just be me. Me is enough, now. I have so many passions, so many interests, and I hate this world because there is never enough time to do everything that I want to do, that I want to experience. Everything is so quick and bittersweet and unfair but beautiful and vast and endless, but it does end. The world isn’t meant to give you a career as a surgeon, and as a Broadway star. You pick one or the other. And yes, of course there are the lucky ones like Emma Watson and Lea Michele and Alexa Chung, or whomever you want to look at, but in the end, we are all determined by the one thing we choose to exhaust ourselves for. The one thing we would die for.

Everyone is looking for a home, their home. Some find their homes in the arts, in passion, in love, in whatever it is they would die for. But I feel as if I have multiple homes. Is that okay? Can I have divorced homes that are best friends? Please?

So, growing up is finding your home, to me. And I’ve yet to ground myself in one thing, but as I try, I know, that everyone else is trying too. And what is so wrong with that?

I haven’t updated in quite a while, and I apologize profusely- high school is sort of insanely hard right now. I know I am only in ninth grade, but already, I have an inane amount of work. Chemistry is sort of a brain-killer. I try very hard to keep some time off specifically for myself, meaning this blog as well, but that is much harder than I really expected. So, I decided, since I have a few minutes in free period, I’d try to update you all (whoever that may be) on my humble little life.

reading- I’m rereading The Catcher In the Rye, a novel I absolutely love but surprisingly, it’s not as loved by everyone. I also just finished a spectacular read called Conversion by Katherine Howe, it is most definitely worth a read- be sure to have a nice cup of Earl Grey while you devour this unearthly book, you will definitely need it. It’s hard to find books that will consistently keep me interested in this age with so much technology, but this book is so twisted yet so relatable that it will keep you all captured in it. Maybe it’s just me (typical) but I only like books where there is something dark and twisty to them. I mean, that is what my friends call me?

Listening- My favorite songs right now are these: (keep in mind, they’re sort of an eclectic random bunch)

1. Fireproof- One Direction

2. Ways to Go- Grouplove

3. Twice- Little Dragon

4. Bad Habit- The Kooks

5. You Should Know Where I’m Coming From– Banks

6. For Emma- Bon Iver

watching- One great struggle I face is Thursday nights (sense the sarcasm please). Three of my favorite shows are all on on Thursdays, and me being a neurotic high school student, I don’t really ever have time to watch all three, if even one or two. These shows are Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal, and The Vampire Diaries. I know that Shonda Rhimes, aka Jesus, will be the death of me. She is honestly so truly amazing yet addictive, her shows encompass what I want in my life. Powerful women, with issues that do not just involve men, are quite hard to come by on television in general. And Shonda completely breaks the norm with Olivia Pope and Meredith Grey. And the Vampire Diaries is my guilty pleasure- it is breaking my Delena shipping heart right now. Sigh. The truly unbearable hardships of a fangirl.

wanting- I am pining after this beauty of a bag– the Mansur Gavriel mini bucket bag- but if you take a quick look at the price, unfortunately it is something my dear parents aren’t keen on getting for me. Perhaps a Christmas gift?

loving- super irish breakfast tea. It is delicious, especially on a rainy day which we have approximately zero of here.

writing- I am working on a new piece of writing that I am incredibly excited over, more coming soon

trying- last week, I made the “daring” chop and got myself some new bangs. I love them right now, but I’m not sure if I will love them so much in a month or two…

traveling- I’m elated to be going to Toronto in November as well as Chicago, and perhaps New York to visit one of my best friends, who I miss so very much. Long distance friendships sort of suck sometimes.

feeling- stressed as hell, but also determined.

It’s a beautiful day to dream.

As those of you who regularly (I hope) read this humble little blog of mine, you’re probably aware that I have quite the respect for powerful women. And my favorite fictional example of a particularly amazing woman is the Olivia Pope, of ABC’s incredible show, Scandal.

Scandal is excellent, I thoroughly enjoy each and every episode, so much, in fact, that dear old Livvy (only Fitz can call her that) inspired this post in honor of herself.

Olivia Pope has changed the once all too stereotypical face of women on television. She is the epitome of “breakthrough”, of a slightly fresher breath of air. I know there is much controversy about calling her a role model, but in my (very) humble opinion, I find her to be exactly the type of role model a young, adolescent woman so desperately needs. Some people do not need role models, of course, some generate their dreams from themselves. And that is absolutely fantastic, but unfortunately, that isn’t me.

Olivia is a person who does not live inside anyone’s boundaries except for her own. To me, she is so incredibly powerful because she never cowers to anyone. She does not succumb to others’ values, to others’ opinions, to any other person’s idea of who she ought to be. Olivia is Olivia, which is the most definite thing she has. She is herself, and no matter how many unexpected, sometimes tragic, choices she makes, she does not apologize for being herself. This is a quality I feel so deeply that I must gain: fearlessness. I don’t mean literally and truly having no fear, because that is just outright stupid and most definitely impossible. But as many people have preached before me (lookin’ at you, Taylor Swift), fearlessness is doing something regardless of the fear. Fearlessness is perhaps being terrified out of your wits about something but accepting the fear and still doing that one thing. It… isn’t falling into the deep end of the pool, it’s diving into it. I have yet to acquire such a trait, but Olivia is one of the main inspirational guides for my new goal.

Liv is extraordinarily hardworking, in every single one of her endeavors, no matter the weight they carry. She accepts any challenge that is handed to her, and when I say handed to her, I definitely do not mean on a silver platter. I mean on a dirty dishrag. Her work is to handle other people’s many issues. Her job is to handle. Her job is to, well, fix. And the hardest part about her occupation is that while she is constantly on the move to fix everyone else’s issues, it leaves minute time to fix her own. And yet, she carries on so gracefully, in such a strong, effortlessly powerful manner, even if she is completely crumbling inside. How does she carry such a quality? I know, she is fictional, but my point remains. We can’t pretend we don’t have problems. But we also can’t let those problems become our everything.

Olivia does not allow her fear of the unpredicted to define her, does not let the fear knock her down. Fear encourages her to do better, to do it anyways, to beat that dread. I want this. I want her qualities. And yes, ok, she is in love with the President of the United States of America, who just so happens to be married, but that is her truth. Her most vulnerable humanity is when she is with Fitz (the POTUS of the show). She loves him more than anything else in the world, but she remembers to give room to keep loving herself as well.

Olivia makes mistakes.

We all do. And she, in spite of these many mistakes, doesn’t succumb to fear, to injustice, to cowardice. She keeps on breathing. And, in the end, isn’t that all any of us can truly ever do?

As for any issues that spring up amongst my freshman year, well, to my teachers, parents, and friends alike, I only have two little words to say.

It’s handled.

I was recently featured on the fantastic, hilarious, addictive website founded by Amanda Dyer, The Living 360

I wrote a “letter to parents” on the sometimes laughable indignities of being a teenager and dealing with parents and their perspectives on fashion.

Please, go take a look. I hope it’s worth a read. Let me know what you think.

http://www.theliving360.com/open-letter-parents-teenagers-written-14-year-old-girl/

Oh, and, dear readers…

(It’s a beautiful day to dream.)

I had an utterly, insanely, and absolutelyamazinglycrazily surreal weekend. Why?

I experienced the one thing I have been waiting for since 2010.

I met One Direction.

It was the best experience of my fourteen years of life. I love those five boys. I truly, really, do. How to even describe, to fully express the love, is beyond me. When you carry love with you, love for boys who do not even know you exist as someone other than just a simplified “number one” fangirl, it weighs you down. It literally feels like a stone, a stone that sits in you, that makes you stronger, but also holds you down. It seems impossibly silly, so stupid, to call my insatiable obsession with a boyband love. And maybe, maybe it is sort of silly. I put so much energy that I could be investing in actual hobbies, in people closer to me, into strangers. Strangers who do not truly see me. Right?

Wrong.

These boys, they are not strangers. I am not trying to claim that I personally know these boys, that I really and truly am in love with Harry, Niall, Zayn, Louis, and Liam. And yet, I somehow feel the love. I feel the love as prominently as I feel it for anything else in my life. I’ve truly, honestly, really, have tried as much and as hard as I possibly could have to know these boys. I love them. Since the moment I first watched the What Makes You Beautiful music video (circa their tattoo-less days), I felt that… feeling. These boys have changed my world. I have never truly been made as impossibly happy, as giddy, before this band. Everything they are, everything they represent, is what I think makes a role model. See, they’re not perfect. Hell, what “role model” is perfect? I wouldn’t want a squeaky clean, almost eerily flawless idol. I want real. I want genuine. And that is the whole essence of One Direction. Their honesty. Their realness. Have you ever heard one of them apologize for who they are, for the flaws that make them human? Why would we want them to mask themselves, to wear a facade of perfection before they become unrecognizable? To all of those ignorant adults who don’t want their precious children corrupted by pop culture, I’m sorry, but you need to take a step back and understand just what you believe.

These boys make mistakes. That is exactly why I love them so damn much. They make mistakes, but so do I. The thing is, I don’t enjoy making these seemingly horrible mistakes, but the boys have taught me this: It’s totally and completely okay. There is nothing wrong with me. I am human, just like all of us. And their intentions are always the best they can be. Everything they do, they do with their fans, with their family, blood and not, in mind. One Direction are, well, selfless. Even if you loathe their music, you cannot hate on them as human beings. You don’t have anything to hate. Happiness is something hard to come by in these kind of freaking horrific years of high school, of adolescence, of “teenagerism”. And so, why would I ever even feel the need to apologize for that one slice of happiness?

I love their tattoos, their witty, stupid knock-knock jokes, their ability to make me drop everything I’m doing to pre-order their new album. I love their stage presences, their differences, their similarities, their postures, their mannerisms, their girlfriends, their relationships with their families, their outfits, their silly dances. I just love them.

These boys mean the absolute, literal world to me. And so when I say it meant everything to meet them, it sincerely did. I have waited for four years, and four years seems like forever in my span of things. Everything is rushed, except for this. I waited and it happened. I dreamed, and that dream became truth. Reality.

On Saturday, September 13th, I went to the One Direction concert. The drive was painfully long, with the most apprehensive feeling I have ever felt in my whole life. I don’t know why. See, I had no idea I would be meeting the boys. I just believed I would be going to the concert, and still having yet another time of my life. I always do.

Two of my best friends (and fellow “crazed” Directioners, mind you) came along with me to the concert, along with my willing mother (who I am very grateful for). 5 Seconds of Summer went on, and who, please no fangirls murder me for this, I don’t quite love, but they were admittedly quite likable (Amnesia is my jam). After the opening performance, it takes about an hour or so before 1D goes on (yes, I did go two nights so of course I know this). During this long, long, hour, my friends started giggling. Literally, squeal-like, frantic, giggling. As in the most stereotypical “girly” giggle you can think of. I was bemused, of course. I had no idea what was happening. Our seats were killer, and I had no idea why my mom said “We have someone we want you to meet”, why we would leave them. I followed them all, their hands pulling mine along. It soon became quite evident that we were doing something sort of restricted. And as a man came over and started to lead us backstage, it quickly and completely clicked inside of me.

I was meeting them.

I started shaking. Truthfully, shaking, as if a typical earthquake (which is not unusual in California) had started to pop up. Hyperventilating was also a huge part of my freak-out. I was smiling so widely my cheeks hurt. We waited in a line backstage, a black curtain separating us from the “boyband of our dreams” as my friend Stella, puts it. And then… it didn’t anymore.

There they were. Right in front of me, alive, and in the actual flesh. I could not even comprehend that these surreal beautiful people were merely a few feet away from me. Niall was dancing, laughing and tackling Zayn. My eyes met Harry’s, who evidently saw my extreme panic and smiled the most earth-shattering smile I have ever seen. He waved at me. It was one of the best moments of my four years of obsession.

I hugged them all, and they were the best hugs I’ve ever received. We all talked for a bit, and wow, it was insane. Paul waved me out and was one of the nicest security guards I’ve ever met (not that I know very many). It was quick, short and sweet, but it was perfect. So there you have it. I don’t want to give all the details of the experience, because the experience is something I want to keep, but that’s the gist of it. The conversations, I will say, led me to know that these boys are the sweetest, and most genuinely good people in the world.

It was everything. Sorry if you think I’m just a crazy, obsessed fangirl, I know I am, but what’s life without a little fangirl-ness? What’s the point if you can’t love who you want to love?

dress- H&M

shoes- asos

necklace- urban

Thank you, One Direction, for being you.

And, thanks for the midnight memory.

Yes, I did make a One Direction pun. Many more to come. ♦

Freshman year is already… well… a slippery slope.

I feel like there is so much room to fall, so much room to tumble downwards, yet also so much opportunity to rise, to open up, to become.

But how do you choose? How even start? It is all so utterly confusing, so unbalanced, to me. I am sort of at a loss to understand what exactly to do. I know that it’s only my first year of high school. I know I have a lot of time. I know college and… well, life… isn’t coming for a little while.

And yet…

I don’t really have that much time, do I? Four years is actually very little in the grande old scheme of things. When I entered middle school, I had seven years of school left. Now I only have four years. Four safe, secure years, right? That’s what I think they should be, but I know they won’t be. See, there is so much pressure now. Things are becoming all too clear, too soon, too fast, too much! I know we have time. I know we have so many options, but I think that is my issue. I don’t like all of the options. I want to do everything, absorb everything, and yet, I can’t. So how do you choose what you want, who you want to be, amidst a sea of choices? The butterfly effect is oh so evident right now, it’s too persistent. One little flap of the wings leads to a hurricane.

Choices are so… complicated. At least for me, the smallest little decisions seem like they’re going to add up to be my biggest definitions of who I am. But the thing is, as rocky and trippy and strange as freshman year is, it’s also brilliant. Why? Because we all have a chance. We all have so many chances to become, to do, to see, to just… live as we please. I love the responsibility we have over our own lives. The independence is different, it’s scary, but it’s so worth it. I feel like I own myself, instead of teachers and parents and other people, I feel like I have myself.

It’s so… weird.

I hated middle school, though, so this is better by any standard. The freedom is a new sense of self, a new occasion to be whatever I want. The responsibility feels… big. Like, as I said, this is all adding up to something that I don’t know yet. I know that one day, I’ll (hopefully) figure it out.

So here we are. High school. It’s uncomfortable, it’s amazing, it’s tragic, it’s four short years. There isn’t anything more to do, only to live the best we can. So I’m going to try.

Here we go. Let’s try not to tumble too much.

One of my new favorite films, that I’d been desperately meaning to watch but forced to by my good friend Stella, is the iconic, fantastic, heartbreaking, and almost unfairly romantic is When Harry Met Sally. I absolutely love this movie, for oh-so many reasons that I won’t even go into (ranting Sof is not enjoyable Sof). But all you need to know is that it features young, naturally endearing Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan in New York City in 1989. If you have yet to watch this life-changing experience of a film, I suggest- no, I command you to go find it, whether it be iTunes, your parents’ old DVD collection (insane, right?), or even, perhaps, by finding it online somewhere (wink wink). I am not going to tell you any of the story, the plot, or really anything that will give the beauty of a classic away. Go. Now. 

As I watched it, I obsessively would keep my eyes on the gorgeous Meg Ryan’s style choices. I fell in love with both of the characters, (as any great film should make you do, usually) and I especially fell in love with the unique, 1989 standard outfits of Sally. I always say, if I could choose another time to live in, I would always choose the 80s. Perhaps all of the movies and television shows (Carrie Diaries, hello) I have watched have glorified the truth of the time period, but man, the style then seemed phenomenal. Ultra high waisted everything, so many collars, shoulder pads, and so much more. As a result of my love for Sally and even Harry’s unforgettable and on point outfits, I’ve decided to share a few of my favorite style moments from the film. Of course, there are some cringe-worthy choices, but we can totally and completely overlook them because pre-plastic surgery Meg Ryan (and Billy Crystal in leggings, need I say more?) could pull off anything. A talent indeed.

The poofy bob, the wispy bangs, the burgundy peter pan collar, the oversized blazer- need I say more? It all works, somehow, impossibly… it just does.

 

 

I really do love Sally’s outfit here, I must admit. The long brown coat, the adorable bright turtleneck, the high waisted jeans… Something about the whole outfit, which is typically seen as more masculine, makes her look all that much more feminine. 

 

 

Sally’s baby pink dress is simply adorable. It’s effortlessly feminine and chic, yet the scalloped neckline also adds sort of a playful nature to her look. Mixed with her messy, big blond hair, it looks gorgeous.

 

I think this is my favorite style moment from the movie. Sally looks cute as ever, with a classic, thick cropped turtleneck, a black skirt, tights, and boots- it all flows together so simply and almost artfully. Harry definitely steals the applause, though, because his iconic chunky white cableknit, paired with the bright blue skinny jeans and sneakers, is just, well… awesome.

Nobody else in this world, so far as I know, can pull off high waisted bermuda shorts, kneesocks, a button up, and a slightly large cardigan except for the one and only Meg Ryan. Kudos to you. 

 

 

 

This is one of the most iconic and well-known stills from the film. They both look wonderful, with Harry’s simple yet very city-like outfit, and Sally’s remarkably perfect getup. The hat, the high waisted harlem pants, the floral button down, the chic blazer, the bag…. it all just looks absolutely stunning. And with the lovely colors of fall behind them, the whole damn scene is perfect.

It’s a beautiful day to dream.