take off to a different place

Every once in a while I look at the calendar in disbelief: it's mid-August already? I feel as though summer vacation has barely started, and yet I'm leaving for California in less than two weeks and starting my first semester of college in three. I've finally just got settled into my new house after moving out of the house I grew up in, only to be forced to move into another home two states and eight hundred miles south of the land of evergreen trees and familiarity. And even if I wasn't the one leaving, my best friend of thirteen years just left for college herself this morning and is among the first of many people I've known for years who are about to leave for different corners of the country.

I made a list of things that I wanted to do earlier this summer, but now that my vacation is almost over, I realized that I've barely completed my (seemingly modest and easy!) goals, ranging from getting my driver's license (I've started learning at least and can drive on the road now, does that count?) to making elaborate breakfasts (this ended in me making lunch at 9:30AM a few times because it turns out we don't have breakfast foods in our fridge so I think I should get points for effort here). I really hope this isn't reflective of my ability to meet goals for college, because then I would be in trouble...

When I was looking through the Anthropologie August 2013 catalogue a few days ago, I couldn't help but to feel jealous of how great these outfits would be for traveling and sight-seeing. This was the first summer in six years where I wasn't able to go on vacation because of the new house, so I've been spending most of my days lounging about on various sofas at home, attempting to read or marathoning Downton Abbey while simultaneously wishing I was elsewhere, or more specifically, taking pictures of Big Ben in London or on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées in Paris like we had planned before we decided to move.

Oh well, c'est la vie. At least I have more books to read than days I have left in Seattle to keep me company, and who knows where I'll be in a year from now, because you never really know, do you?

xoxo, vivian

images from this post are taken from the Anthropologie August 2013 catalogue