#they hiked the grand canyon together

[fandomsandfeminism]

Yall wanna hear a kinda funny, kinda sad story about my grandmother and hetero-normativity?

Ok, so... when my grandmother was in her 50s (I was an infant), she met a woman at the Unitarian Church. And, as can happen when you meet your soul mate, this event made it impossible for her to deny parts of herself that she had fiercely hidden her whole life.

All the drama- their affair being found out, the divorce with my grandfather, the court battle over who got the house, happened while I was a baby. Even in my earliest memories, it's just Mama Jo and Oma, and my grandfather lived elsewhere (first his own apartment, then a nursing home, then with us.)

But here's the thing- no one ever explained any of this to me. No one ever sat down and was like "hey, Rosie, so do you know what a lesbian is?" It was the 90s. It was Texas. I think my mom was still kinda processing all this, and just assumed that like... I was gonna figure it out. Don't mention it, let it just be normal. Like I think my mom thought that if she explained the situation, she would be making it weird? I dunno.

But like. In the 90s, in all the movies I had seen and books I had read, do you know how many same sex couples I had seen? Like. 0. Do you know how many "platonic best friend/roommates" I had seen? A lot. I had no context, is what I'm saying.

I literally thought this was a Golden Girls, roommates, besties situation until I was like...I dunno, 11? 12?

It was actually their parrot, an African Grey named Spike, imitating my grandmothers voice saying "Johanna, honey, it's getting late", that triggered the MIND BLOWN moment as I realized that *there's only one master bedroom and it only has 1 waterbed* when all the pieces finally clicked.

Anyway. I think it's a real important thing for kids to know queer people exist, for a lot of reasons, but also because kids can be clueless and it's embarrassing to have your grandmother be outted by a parrot because everyone just thought you'd figure it out on your own.

Anyway, here is my grandma and her wife, my Oma, after they moved to Albuquerque to be artsy gay cowboys and live their best life. They helped run a "Lesbian Dude Ranch" out there (basically just with funding and financial support. As Oma has explained "traditionally, most lesbians don't have a lot of money" so they wrote the checks and let the younger ladies actually run the ranch.)

[misfit-among-the-angels]

Been tagged by @sing-me-tosleep, @havocinthebluebox, @kladivonacarodejnice, @solomonar-culbec, @fra-helviti and @thecolombianviking to post a selfie, thank you and this time it's a special edition. 🤭

Yes, that's me and my wonderful girlfriend, we're so cute together right? 🥰💕 Zion national park and Grand canyon were absolutely breathtaking, i enjoyed my time there together with my gf. And of course an obligatory picture with me and this huge ass Saguaro cactus. 😁

Now I'm tagging: @danceswithwolves-blog, @lollobendix, @asylumsammet, @vedrividia, @ostpunk, @ongoingpanicattack, @oneleggedflamingo, @ovrottenbloodspells, @muri-chan, @moss-wizard, @mercifulempress, @jplovecraft, @bonewhiteglory, @neutralmilkhoetel, @cryptidkats and @wonderinghobbit

[joelswritingmistress]

You Scare Me Professor (Chapter 57 - The Final Chapter)

Summary: The reader is taking graduate classes at a local university in the wooded upstate New York. She is drawn to her professor, Dr. Joel Miller, though she is also inherently aware that he has something dark about him that she can't quite put her finger on. As the reader's attraction grows deeper, she has to decide whether to endure the danger or run away as fast as possible. 

Pairing: Professor Joel Miller x f!reader 

Healing. There would be an infinite amount of healing to do; though over the next six months there were little victories that aided in the process. Will plead guilty. It was an act that everyone was shocked about and ultimately it spared Carol a lot of extra heartache that she didn’t deserve. The evidence was already stacked against him, but now that Will admitted guilt, Carol would not have to sit on a stand as a defense lawyer grilled her and tried to twist her trauma around. For that, everyone was thankful.

Upon a leave of absence for the remainder of the school year, Carol returned to her job in September. In turn, she received a standing ovation from the student body and gained the full support of the staff there. Again, another part of the healing process. I knew Carol was hurting, but she persevered and thrived in her profession. She was going to make it because that’s what women like Carol did. They rose above. They made it.

“She even started coaching volleyball,” Joel informed me. “She was all-state in her younger days.”

Joel. My Joel. I had no issue calling him that all the time now. I tried to prove him wrong every day, and after a little bit of time and a lot of convincing I think it’s clear to him now that I will forever keep his secrets.

He went into a temporary retirement, and I changed my mind and pursued the rest of my Master’s Degree online. Without having to twist my arm too much, Joel convinced me to travel a bit to get away from New York State for a short while. It was therapeutic, to say the least.

I allowed him to take me to Nashville near the end of the summer, and then over to the Grand Canyon. We spent two weeks exploring California, extending our stays from a little ranch near the Joshua Tree, up to San Diego where I unsuccessfully tried surfing and concluding in wine country as autumn really set in. We hiked Washington State, made our way to Yellowstone Park, spent a few romantic nights on Lake Michigan before making it back to the East Coast in time for Halloween, where we crashed the small city of Salem, Massachusetts. It was the perfect ending, really.

Joel found us some cheap masks, and we blended in with the crowds that literally paraded every downtown street in the area. It was welcomed chaos and we spent the day taking pictures with spooky characters, sharing laughs, having some drinks and waiting in lines to slink into shops littered with folklore and magic.

When a light rain began near nightfall, Joel towed me away to a rooftop bar at the top of our hotel where he’d made a reservation earlier in the day. A gentle pitter-patter on the roof of the outdoor patio where we sat was relaxing. It was soothing music to our ears after a day of crowds.

From where we towered above the world, we could see two lighthouses in the distance over the blackened water. Below, people still gathered by the masses for whatever attraction, bar or restaurant they were seeking - if anyone.

“Here are your drinks.” A waitress came back to our two-person, high-top table with a pair of martinis and I sighed as she walked away.

“Ready to go home?” Joel asked, smirked as he placed a hand gently on top of mine.

My fingers squeezed around his and I nodded. “This has been a wild ride.”

“Happy Halloween.”

I grinned again and raised my glass. “Happy Halloween.” Our glasses tapped together and Joel leaned two-thirds of the way across to peck my lips. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.” He kissed me another time and then settled back in his chair. At the same time, we took sips from our drinks and I felt my body relax.

“This has been great,” I told him, unable to think of another adjective. “It really revived me.” I gave a nod and looked him in the eye. “How do you feel?”

“A lot better.” He grinned and added, “Thank you for sticking by me. You had every right to run in the opposite direction. You still do.”

“Dr. Miller,” I said sternly, making him chuckle. “I’m going to need you to stop trying to convince me to leave you. Unless you’re secretly trying to get rid of me.” I sipped on my cocktail and kept my eyes on his.

Joel leaned forward, never breaking eye contact. “I would never want that.”

“Then stop saying things like that,” I ordered lightheartedly, leaning back toward him just a little bit.

“Okay,” he agreed, “I’ll work on it.”

“Thank you.” When he lingered, I leaned forward and left a long, closed-mouth kiss on his lips. When I pulled back he was grinning and I chuckled.

“I’m thinking the exact opposite of that, actually.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I want you to be with me forever.”

I felt a blush form on my cheeks and I couldn’t help but smile wider. When Joel leaned back, reaching a hand into the pocket of his khaki pants, I felt like my body went numb. And then he pulled out a small, black box and pushed it across the table. I was frozen. My eyes were glued to the box and if it was anything other than what I thought it was, I knew it would be like a kid opening an empty box on Christmas.

“What’s this?” My words barely made it out past my lips.

Joel’s eyes remained on mine as he opened the box. My eyes dropped, staring at the silver ring in the center of it. A Diamond sparkled even in the dim lighting.

“Marry me,” he said quietly, linking his hands to mine on either side of the ring.

“Marry me.” I repeated the words to myself to make sure I heard them right. “Marry me.”

“Marry me,” Joel said again.

My gaze found his again and finally the tears that welded up in my eyes were tears of joy. “Okay.” I laughed and cried at the same time, “I’ll marry you.”

“Yeah?” He kept his voice quiet as mine grew louder, drawing a few glances from other patrons in our direction.

“Yeah.” I giggled and put my face in my hands as I continued to cry at the same time. “Yes.”

“Are you sure?”

“Joel!” I popped my face up. “Yes! Yes!” People were staring at us now and Joel looked around the immediate area, giving a wave and a smile before returning his attention to me. He reached for the ring in the small, black box and slid the ring on my finger.

I jumped up from my seat and I couldn’t help it. I rushed around the table and threw my arms around him, pulling him in to kiss him hard.

“I thought Halloween was a fitting night for us to get engaged,” Joel admitted, holding me close as he spoke in my ear. “I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”

“It’s perfect.” I whispered back, holding him close as my fingers gripped the hair on the back of his head. “I love you.”

“Did you two just get engaged?” A female voice shouted from a few tables away.

We both pulled back, still holding onto one another and I responded by showing off my ring. “Yes.”

The costume-clad crowd in the immediate area all began to clap and I couldn’t contain my wide, beaming smile and the tears that continued to fall. When a waitress got wind of it, she brought us over a bottle of complimentary champagne.

“I know it hasn’t even been a year since we’ve known each other,” Joel said, “But life is too short to wait. You changed my life, (Y/N). I’ve never loved or trusted someone more than you. I don’t want to ever risk letting that go.”

“I know how you feel.” We shared another kiss and then took our glasses toward the edge of the balcony that overlooked Salem. I couldn’t help but smile to myself.

A breeze passed through and made me shudder, causing Joel to pull me close.

“Any regrets?” He asked.

I smiled up at him. “None, whatsoever.”

**Thank you everyone for following this story. I appreciate everyone reading, reviewing and following. It made it fun to write. This is the longest story I've ever written and it's been fun because people were interacting and guessing whole the killer was and I loved it. It made it great for me, as a writer. So THANK YOU!

@untamedheart81 @suttonspuds @cesspitoflove @michilandcof @grogusmum @morallyinept @akah565 @brittmb115 @magpiepills @poodlebae @gobaaby-blog-blog @mermaidgirl30 @mandojojo @shotgun-shelby @itscatrodriguez-thepearl @macaroni676 @smolbeanzzz @bandluvr97

[ghostboneswrites2]

Dirty 30 || One Shot

New account! @ghostbones was banned! Transferring all my work here slowly!

Request from @mrs--hiddleston on my old blog: It's my 30th Birthday today and I was wondering if I could request some fluff of all fluff related around the reader turning 30? They're very shy, always been told they're not good enough, escapee of a abusive relationship, never really been shown love?

Summary: Daryl plans a special day for you on your 30th birthday.

18+ MDNI || WARNINGS: profanity, mentions of past abuse, mostly fluffy

        "Why didn't ya tell me?" Daryl asked from behind you. You were doing your usual; morning coffee for everyone, heating some bread and jam for everyone, other general morning duties to give everyone a start tot heir day. You were always the first to rise and the last to fall asleep.

        "Uh.. Tell you what?" You asked nervously. Had you forgotten to relay an important message? You hoped you hadn't messed up anything important.

        "Ya know." He urged.

        "I do?" 

        The only thing you could think was your birthday, but you'd never told anyone about it before and it wasn't a problem then. Plus, you'd hate to walk around begging for self celebration. 

        "Thirty?" He asked. You paused spreading jam on the toasted bread and turned to face him.

        "I..."

        "Why wouldn't ya tell me?" He pushed.

        Why would you? You two had grown pretty close since his arrival at Alexandria, where you'd spent the majority of the apocalypse. He visited you constantly, and a few of his friends lived with you. He took you on rides on his motorcycle, you two walked through the woods together. Still, you couldn't see it for what it was, and that was blatant interest in pursuing you.

        "I -- I don't know." You mumbled sheepishly.

        "Yeah ya do."

        "I.. forgot?" You tried to excuse it. The truth was just that you didn't know when or how to tell someone you had an upcoming day to be celebrated. You had never been celebrated, not once in your life. These people you had come to know and love had better things to do than spend their time on you.

        "No ya didn't." He shook his head, stepping closer to you.

        "I -- What's the big deal?"

        "It's your birthday." He said plainly.

        "Yeah, but I mean.. lots of people have birthdays. People that do a lot more for the world than me."

        "So?"

        "So I dunno.."

        "Didn't think it was important?"

        "No." You admitted. "I'm sorry."

        " 'S alright." He shrugged, grabbing a slice of toast from behind you and taking a bite. "C'mon," he talked through his full mouth, dry crumbs falling from his lips. "Eat and get ready."

        "W -- Where are we.."

        "Just hurry up."

        He was annoyed he didn't have time to get you a gift, but he still had a plan. You didn't talk much, or, really, you were borderline silent. He liked that about you sometimes, but he often wished you'd give him more. More about you, more of your interests, more of your thoughts, more of your voice, just more.

----

        "Ever been out this far?" He wondered. You shook your head. "Mm. Should take ya out more."

        You blushed a little. Nobody had ever taken you out, except maybe when your grandpa was still around and he took you for ice cream.

        You followed closely behind him. He had taken you on his bike until about a mile ago, from there the two of you had been hiking through the Virginia woods, mostly in silence. He wasn't much of a talker and you never felt like you had anything interesting to say. You came to a stop and gasped. He led you to the edge of a cliff. Not a big one like the Grand Canyon or something, but it was tall. It overlooked a waterfall on the far left, the mist raising and creating prismatic rainbows all around. You looked up at him with wide eyes as he took in the scene. His eyes landed on you, a small half smile playing at his lips.

        "Like it?" He asked. You nodded quickly, eyes falling back to the grand display of the earth's natural beauty.

        "I always wanted to see a place like this." You breathed. "You brought me here to show me?" You turned your attention back to him. He nodded as he looked down at you through the corner of his eyes. "Wow." Was all you could say.

        "Thought ya might like it. Ya didn't give me heads up enough to find you a real gift."

        "A real gift?" You scoffed. "I've never seen anything this beautiful."

        He struggled to contain a smile. Triumph. He found the perfect thing for you, even when you didn't want him to.

        "I have."

        "You have?" You asked innocently. "Like a bigger waterfall?"

        "Nah." He shook his head, eyes still on you, as nothing, not even a waterfall, would compare to that sight.

        "Oh." You choked. Was he talking about you? Of course not.

        "You have too." He told you. You pushed your eyebrows together in confusion.

        "I think I'd remember that."

        "Ya look in the mirror every day, don't ya?"

        "Well, yeah but I don't -- " Your eyes grew wide. He did mean you. "I -- I -- Oh."

        You stuttered and stumbled. Your ears and cheeks felt hot and you didn't even register the cheesy grin on your face. 

        He studied your face, grazing over every detail like words on a page. You were shy and reserved, much like him in a lot of ways, but unlike him your face was very expressive. Your eyes could tell him a thousand words in a mere second, and right now you read pure, astonished joy.

        "This is--"

        "Got somethin' else to show ya."

        He led you along the side of the cliff and helped you climb down some large boulders before he stopped you, gently tugging your arm down behind one of the boulders. 

        "Ya see?" He whispered. You peered over the surface of the large rock and scanned your eyes before you saw them. A Doe and her fawns. They were grazing the grass and drinking from the still water at the foot of the lake where the waterfall dumped into.

        "Oh my.." You breathed, eyes watering. Such purity in this world was a rarity at best.

        "Found 'em when I was trackin' a buck." He told you. "Didn't have it in me to kill 'em."

        "They look so happy." You nearly cried. He placed a hand on your back, right between your shoulders. He was always respectful of your body, never once touching an area that felt too intimate. Maybe one day, he thought, but never before you were ready.

        You leaned in closer to him, resting your weight into his side. You couldn't peel your eyes away. A family of deer knew more peace than you had ever known, and you had the privilege of witnessing it. You never would have, had it not been for him.

        "Got one more surprise for ya." He whispered. You looked over at him, daring to break away from the beauty before you. He reached in his pocket and pulled something out. The glimmer of metal against the sun caught your eye first. When he let the thin chain hang from your fingers you realized it was a necklace. A dainty thing that looked like silver, with what looked like a handmade pendant. You slowly took it from him, looking closer at it.

        The pendant was a river rock, one that was naturally tumbled to a perfect little oval by the rushing waters of whatever stream he found it in. He had wrapped it in a thin metal wire, intricately weaving it in a pattern that looked neat and tidy. You ran your thumb over the smooth surface.

        "It's quartz, I think." He told you.

        "I think so too." You smiled, a tear spinning down your cheek. "You made this?"

        "I found the chain but.. Yeah." He nodded. You couldn't restrain yourself. You threw your arms around his neck, clutching his gift tightly in your fist. Salty tears glistened down your cheeks. Nobody had ever been this kind to you, let alone a man. Men had abused you, called you names, reminded you every day how worthless you were. Your father, every boyfriend, your brothers, your uncles. Not a single masculine soul had showed you kindness before, let alone put so much thought into making a day special for you.

        "This is the best birthday I've ever had." You whispered.

        His arms settled around you, embracing you in a strong hold.        

        "C'mon. It ain't that special--"

        "No." You shook your head, releasing him and looking him in the eyes as you quickly wiped your tears. "No, you don't get it. This is the most anyone has done for me. Ever."

        His eyes bore into yours, deciding you were serious. How disappointing to know that something as simple as a rock on a chain could sweep you away like this. Surely you deserved better.

        "I'll make the next one even better, if you'll let me."

----

        It was nearly nightfall by the time you made it back to Alexandria. He helped you off his bike, ever the gentleman, and held his hand on your mid-back the entire time he walked you home. You led him inside, planning to pour a glass of homemade mead for the two of you, but you realized there was light coming through your back windows.

        "What's that?" You inquired as the two of you walked to the backdoor. He stepped in front of you, wanting to open the door first. He held it open for you.

        As you stepped outside you nearly cried all over again. He admired your wide eyes as they glistened under the lights that had been strung up all around, marveling at all of the people, food, and drinks that had been waiting for you.

        "Happy birthday!" Everyone shouted. Rosita was the first to run up and hug you.

        "You didn't think we'd let you keep it a secret, did you?" She grinned as she stepped to the side. Everyone else came one by one. Tara, Rick, Michonne, Maggie, Glenn, a few of your friends from before Rick's people arrived. You didn't know this many people even liked you.

        Abraham stepped forward with a glass of wine for you. "Happy dirty-thirty." He winked as you accepted the glass. You spun and looked at Daryl, who was watching with a satisfied little smile.

        "You did this?" You asked. He shrugged.

        "Yes, he did. Don't let him tell you any different." Carol spoke up for him.

        "More like, he planned it." Tara interjected.

        "Yeah, we did all the hard work." Rick teased.

        And there it was. The first time you felt free to just talk. To enjoy people and be enjoyed. To allow others to celebrate you, and to celebrate the love they had for you.

        Daryl spent the rest of that night by your side, a large gesture for someone who tended to avoid social gatherings. You ate food, chatted with people, opened up about silly little things you would have never thought anyone cared to hear. You drank, giggled, laughed, danced, and for the first time in a long time -- maybe ever -- had a good time.

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for not wanting to go on a walk and then telling the truth?

📚⛷️ for later

I (14f) am currently on vacation in the Alps skiing. For context, I have two younger brothers (12 and 6). What my family usually does is ski in the morning, have lunch, and then either ski some more or play board games together in the afternoon. Before, we used to go on walks in the afternoon but we stopped once we started getting better at skiing and got tired faster.

My mum loves to go on walks and regularly goes out. For the past few years she usually goes on walks in the morning when the rest of the family is out skiing as she has an injury that prevents her from skiing. Today I went with her as I am also injured lol.

My brothers and I do not like to go on walks. We’re very vocal about it, I do enjoy walking in the city (where I live) however and we all play a lot of sports so health is not an issue. This morning I decided to go with her and we went on an hour-long walk (It was snowing and the ground was very muddy, and my injury is worse when I breathe hard). She seemed upset that it wasn’t longer but she is the one who insisted that we go home.

This afternoon she drags everyone out on another walk. My dad and brothers were clearly exhausted (it was their first day and we had a 13-hour drive to come here) but my dad was a good sport and we all went out.

So now we’re all out walking and we keep the complaints to a minimum; obviously my youngest brother wasn’t very good at it but he sensed the tone of the walk and wasn’t too bad. After about an hour there comes a split in the path ; one continues straight and one goes directly up a very steep hill. My mom asked us what we wanted to do and none of us replied; I don’t know what my brothers did but I just looked at my dad. My mom then got very mad and said “Let’s just go home, you never want to do stuff like this” I argued that I hadn’t said anything, but apparently she could see it in my eyes.

While we walk back she was very mad still and kept complaining about how we never want to do stuff that she likes (sidenote: this summer we went on a 3-week long road trip where we went to Yosemite, the Grand Canyon, Sequoia National park, Death Valley, and Sedona; it was very walk/hike-heavy and it was largely because of her that we went). This is where I think I might be the asshole: at some point I got angry as well and said that she knows very well that we do stuff like this all the time, and why force us to do something that she knows that we’re not going to like? She has been giving me the silent treatment ever since.

Another sidenote since I’m trying to give all possible information: we always come to the same place since before I could walk, but always in winter. Mom been talking about how she wants to come here in summer a lot recently and is trying to sell it to us by saying how pretty it is and how many walks we could do.

Last piece of extra information: My mom had walked the entire valley that were in right now and back and least three times over the years ; the path was definitely nothing that she hadn’t seen before.

My brothers and I are staying in the same room at the moment so she came to say goodnight to the youngest only (this is not the right post for favoritism so I’m not going to go into that) and right before she left she looked at me and 12-year-old brother and just said that she knows that we don’t love her. I find this really childish and an immature way to deal with this.

Thank you for all the help

What are these acronyms?

[lastoneout]

@dittolicous I'm slapping these tags into a new post bcs it made me realize I might be weird and wanted to know of anyone else is weird in the same way.

Because like my fear of heights only seems to manifest on man-made structures? Before my disabilities got bad enough that I couldn't hike I used to climb up on top of really tall stuff all the time, like I would hang out on the Devil's Bridge in Sedona and not feel even a little bit scared, but like climbing up say the stairs to go down a water slide is enough to make me shake and have to not look down/get too close to the railing at the edge. The idea of going to the top of a skyscraper—and I mean like just the top floor inside, not like an observation deck or anything—makes my hands sweat(did you know they SWAY in the wind?????) but I've hung out right at the very edge of the Grand Canyon several times and I've never felt more at peace.

The only man-made structures that don't bother me are roller coasters(kinda), airplanes, and weirdly some playground equipment? Roller coasters are only fine if we stay moving tho, if the thing broke when we were really high up and we had to get rescued I would be a complete mess, but like, as long as we stay moving I love them. Carnival rides are a mixed bag, I enjoy going on ferris wheels but they do scare the shit out of me, and I just won't get on most other rides that go super high up in the air. Airplanes are okay because I understand the science behind it?? It makes sense(and when you take off you can feel the air catch the plane) so I just don't get scared, though if I was in like a skydiving plane that's open I would probably freak out. The logic behind playground equipment is a mystery to me, maybe bcs it's literally made for climbing?? No clue.

And like, I watch a lot of videos of people climbing cellphone towers and skyscrapers specifically bcs they scare me SO much that it works to get rid of my anxiety if I'm freaking out about something. All of my problems seem so small because at least I'm not on top of one of those fucking things. But I do actually really like watching The Walk, idk it makes me scared so bad but I love it.

The only natural structure that scares me is trees. Idk what it is about trees, especially bcs I do like climbing them, but I usually struggle to get down without help.

This also made me remember I used to have vhs tapes with episodes of the Madeline cartoon and in one episode she and her friend get stuck at the top of the Eiffel Tower and despite the fact that I have actually BEEN TO PARIS and WENT UP TO THE TOP OF THAT VERY STRUCTURE and it didn't bother me so much, that episode made me so scared I couldn't watch it. Like wtf is that about??

I've also always wanted to be able to fly or be a witch like in Kiki's Delivery Service. Idk how my brain would react to that tho since it's impossible, but I assume it would land in the "it makes sense so it doesn't bother me" category.

So yeah idk man-made structures are bad and scary because I guess I just don't trust humans to make sturdy things that won't fall down(aside from airplanes and playground equipment bcs those make sense)?? But mountains and cliffs and stuff have been there for like millions of years so I trust that they will stay under my feet and thus I don't get scared by them at all.

And like I know it's weird that I'm like this because my fiancé is ALSO scared of heights(which I find hilarious because he's 6'3" and when he picks me up so my head is level with his it makes me scared because "the ground is too far away") but he doesn't like going up on top of anything. Airplanes, rollercoasters that go upside down, tall buildings, mountains and other rock structures, it ALL triggers his phobia. He won't even let me open the window shade when we fly together, it's that bad. Idk why I'm not like that.

Anyway @ anyone else who's scared of heights:

[biblionerd07]

any headcanons about the fusion of the suarez and meade clans after daniel and betty get together? i like to think that in the summer they all vacation at the beach house the meades definitely have in the hamptons. also lots of big fun chaotic holiday dinners. also also tamales for everyone on their birthdays.

omgggg YES I have so many lol. Absolutely tamales for everyone but also Coney Island because that was the Meade tradition and one of the like only happy memories Daniel ever had lol. Nothing makes him happier than ruthlessly gunning down his cherished family members in the bumper cars.

I LOVE the idea of them all at a beach house together. Justin despairing about sharing a bathroom with DJ because DJ keeps MOVING Justin's hair products!!! And DJ's like wtf I'm just trying to get to the sink to brush my teeth and you've got ten thousand bottles everywhere! I also see Claire and Ignacio hosting Christmas parties together, like they do it at Claire's house but Ignacio cooks and he keeps asking Claire if she wants to help him in the kitchen and she's like is that the room where the stairs to the wine cellar are??? But of course the wine cellar is empty now because Claire is taking her recovery seriously with Tyler! And his parents come from South Dakota and they're constantly weirded out by the stories of like Claire in prison with Yoga (who is back because I said so) or Alexis pushing a pregnant woman down the stairs because they all thought she was carrying a child conceived with their dad father's sperm. And sometimes Wilhelmina will stop by (WITHOUT Connor because he's not invited lol) and Tyler's like 'oh yeah that's the woman who manipulated me into shooting her but it's okay, we're past it.' Also Marc and Amanda are of course part of the family and sometimes Amanda's parents come too and absolutely try to get Claire to swing with them and she's like well...perhaps...and Daniel and Alexis and Tyler all die but Amanda's like yeah go for it, get it, this family tree is allll intertwined already anyway.

One year Betty wants everyone to go to the Grand Canyon together in honor of her mother and everyone is on board despite Marc insisting he should never have to know that states aside from California and New York exist. But Betty, being Betty, schedules them for like a hike and an educational tour in the same day and at that point she and Daniel have two kids and they each have to carry one on the hike and Hilda and Bobby's twin boys almost fall INTO the Grand Canyon and Ignacio pretends his heart is too weak to hike so he can chill at the hotel instead. Hilda fakes a pregnancy to go with him even though they all know she's lying. And THEN they have the educational tour and Daniel, who tries so hard to be a supportive wife guy, can no longer take it and takes the kids to the gift shop with his mom because good God, Betty, how long can one man pretend to be interested in a giant hole in the ground and the different types of ROCKS in it?? He counts the gift shop as a museum anyway because of the "clothing museums" he grew up with lol. Betty's the only one who stays on the educational tour and she doesn't even care because hey guess what, dummies, she got a whole day by herself without everybody needing her and got to learn interesting things and write down ideas for articles she wants to research and write! Win.

[mashmaiden]

♦️ and ☯️ for Kensi, Deeks, or Densi for the head canons list. 🙂

♦ - quirks/hobbies headcanon

A few months after Rosa came to live with Kensi and Deeks, she came home from a shopping trip with a 1000 piece puzzle of Times Square at night. When she mentioned it was somewhere she always wanted to go, they not only added it to their travel bucket list, but they immediately set up a folding table by the couch and began completing the puzzle together. At least a few nights a week, they rotate picking a movie or a show to watch, and work on the puzzle as they enjoy each other's favorite entertainment. Deeks chooses "classic" movies like The Wild One and Goonies (well at least what he considered classics), and Kensi chooses her favorites like Titanic, and the John Hughes library of films. Rosa usually suggests newer movies and shows - her most recent favorite show was Shrinking - and everyone's favorite lists get expanded.

After Times Square was completed, other beautiful landscape puzzles stacked up - Yellowstone, San Francisco, London, even the Santa Monica Pier. There were other variety of puzzles thrown in, like movie scenes, or abstract art. But mostly, beautiful sights around the world. The only unspoken rule - puzzles of places MUST be photographs. They wished to bask in the real look, not an artist's rendering (no offense to artists).

For Rosa's 18th birthday, Deeks and Kensi presented her a box containing their biggest challenge yet, a 4000 piece puzzle of a new Time Square nightscape. Inside the box, tickets for the three to spend a week in New York over Christmas break.

☯ - likes/dislikes headcanon

Deeks doesn't hate camping as much as he lets on. He doesn't even need to "glamp" to consider the idea. He'd prefer not to be completely unprotected out in the middle of the desert, that is too reminiscent of difficult work cases. But give him a designated campground, a decent tent with an air mattress inside, and at least an outhouse available for use, and he's more than happy to spend a few days in the woods enjoying nature and roasting marshmallows over the fire.

A few months after they got engaged, Kensi and Deeks took a roadtrip over a long weekend to see the Grand Canyon in the fall. Deeks surprised Kensi by pulling into a KOA about an hour from the South Rim. He fell even more in love with her seeing the joy on her face as he pulled the tent and supplies from where he hid them in his truck bed. Together they assembled the tent, roasted hot dogs and marshmallows, and then snuggled in on the bouncy airbed in their tent.

The next few days were spent hiking the beautiful canyon, horseback riding around the camp, exploring the nearby towns of Flagstaff and Williams, and spending the evenings in the hot tub (yeah, he chose a place that had some amenities!). Sure, they had to make an emergency run to Walmart to pick up a few more supplies (Deeks may have underestimated Kensi's love of s'mores), but despite Deeks's initial reservations, this was an experience he'd be willing to repeat again and again - and they did!

[fuckyeah-jessicabiel]

Jessica Biel for Vogue, February 2010

The Real Biel

You can learn all sorts of interesting things about a person on a road trip together. For example: Jessica Biel is a very good driver. She is behind the wheel of a Subaru heading north from Vancouver toward Whistler, one of the ski resorts hosting the Olympics this month. Because of record-breaking snow, Biel has decided to ditch the more traditional plans she’d made for our interview and hit the slopes instead. So here we are, side by side, snacking on trail mix and listening to the sound track to Where the Wild Things Are. In the car in front of us is Biel’s assistant and best friend, Lindsay Ratowsky, who is being driven with all of our bags and equipment. Our mini caravan left Vancouver in the late afternoon in a downpour, and now we are driving in the dark in a snowstorm. Wearing jeans and hiking boots, Biel, who grew up in Boulder, Colorado, and has been snowboarding since she was a kid, is utterly in her element. “This is very much a me moment: in the snow, in the Subaru, listening to music,” she says. “I feel really at peace in this environment.”

It’s a far cry from where we were two hours ago, when Biel had 40 pounds of ammo strapped around her waist and an M4 semiautomatic assault rifle hoisted above her right shoulder. We were on the outskirts of Vancouver in an empty warehouse the size of a Walmart, part of the soundstage where she has been filming The A-Team. Paul, a dashing fellow with a British accent whom Biel describes as the “resident badass,” was teaching her the finer points of racking and reloading. After Biel squeezed off several deafening rounds, Paul calculated the number of mistakes she made and then said, “Twenty-four!” She dropped to the floor and gave him two dozen push-ups. It was only then that I noticed that she is as thin as a teenage boy and all muscle. Her usual Jessica Rabbit curves have all but disappeared, the red-carpet Sex Bomb nowhere to be found.

Who is Jessica Biel? Let’s admit it: She is a bit of a cipher. The girls who read the tabloids think of her as Justin Timberlake’s on-again, off-again girlfriend; my aunt Nancy thinks of her as little Mary Camden from the mid-nineties WB series 7th Heaven; and most men under 40 think of her as the smokin’ hottie who let Adam Sandler massage her breasts in I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry. I think it is fair to say that Jessica Biel has not yet experienced a unifying cultural moment. In other words: She can still ride the subway, which, in fact, she tells me she just did the other day. “I talked to a girl who liked my shoes,” she says. “ ‘Oh, those are cute. Where’d you get those?’ ‘I got them at Barneys.’ ‘Are you from New York?’ ‘No, I’m from out of town.’ ‘Oh, cool. Nice to talk to you.’ ‘Nice to talk to you!’ ”

My own expectations were equally off-base; I imagined her as a sort of modern-day Raquel Welch. I thought she would purr. But that notion was shattered the instant I met her. It does not take long to figure out that Jessica Biel is a mellow creature, a young woman who appears to be completely at ease with herself and who meets the world on her own terms. I spent nearly two full days with her, and not once did I see her tense up. This is at least partly due to how she was raised. She describes her parents as hippies. “They are major outdoor people,” she says. “They rafted the Grand Canyon when they were in their 20s. They are an incredible couple.”

Her father, Jon, worked for GE for many years and ran his own business consultancy in Boulder. “He is extremely motivated and ambitious,” she says. “I get those qualities from him.” Her mother, Kim, grew up one of six kids in a small town a few hours southwest of Denver where Jessica and her parents both own cabins on adjoining properties. Her mother’s side of the family is part Native American: Those crazy-high cheekbones are shared by her younger brother, mother, and grandmother. When she tells me that her parents dehydrate their own food, culture their own vegetables, and make their own coconut kefir, I can’t help laughing. “I actually do, too!” she says.

One of the benefits of having hippie parents is that they tend to indulge whimsy. Handbell choir! Jazz and tap class! By the time Biel was in her early teens, she was training as a level-six gymnast and starring in local musicals. One summer she took a commercial-acting class. It led to a talent convention in Los Angeles, which landed her an agent and a scholarship to a kids’ acting school. “I was hooked,” she says. It was around this time that her parents started making sacrifices so she could be in L.A. for pilot season. “It was stressful, for sure: my mom leaving my brother when he was so little for months at a time; my dad having to deal on his own. Sometimes I look back and think, God, you guys were crazy for letting some twelve-year-old do what she wanted. I mean, they did everything for me.”

It paid off. In 1996, when she was fourteen, Biel was cast as the levelheaded eldest daughter, Mary Camden, on the weirdly successful Aaron Spelling series 7th Heaven, a treacly morality lesson dressed up as a weekly family drama about a progressive reverend and his family. It ran for eleven seasons and is—get this—the longest-running family drama in television history. But as the show became a staple in Middle America’s living rooms, Biel blossomed into a knockout and began to chafe at the limitations of playing the same Goody Two-shoes year after year. She wanted out. It is now part of showbiz legend—and one of Biel’s enduring regrets—that just a few weeks shy of her eighteenth birthday, she posed nearly naked for the cover of Gear, a magazine owned by Bob Guccione, Jr., and got her wish. If in the end it turned out to be a savvy move, freeing her from a stultifying character, at the time it infuriated her colleagues. Stephen Collins, her TV dad, called it “child pornography,” and Spelling released her from her contract after the fourth season.

Now, as she is focused, laser-like, on getting us through the storm, she seems thoughtful about the whole episode. “I really wanted to go to college, and it all kind of happened at the same time. I did this photo shoot; the photo shoot came out; it was terribly embarrassing. I had to apologize to everybody, including my parents. It was a big learning experience: learning how to have boundaries and how to say no.”

Not surprisingly, Biel has a lot of empathy for young girls dealing with adolescence in front of an audience. “I have this overwhelming motherly feeling toward them. Just do what you gotta do, girls! Hold it together! I wish everyone would just leave them alone.” Biel has clearly figured out the importance of maintaining some semblance of autonomy in a highly scrutinized life. She likes to drive by herself the eighteen hours from L.A. to Boulder with her dogs—even though everyone tells her it’s dangerous. When I mention that Gwen Stefani wrote the song “Just a Girl” about this very phenomenon—pretty girls being cautioned not to go anywhere alone—Biel says, “Rock on, girl. I feel her pain.”

Suddenly we hit a backup on the highway. There has been an accident. If we have a minor accident, it will add drama to the story, I say. “I was thinking that, too!” she says. “Actually, I was just thinking, Where are my gloves? Because if we crash we’ll have to get out, and we’ll have to be warm.” She laughs. “And then I took it to another level: What if I kill him? My other thought was, At least they would test me for drugs and alcohol and I would be clean. I would not go to jail. But you would be dead, and it would be horrible! There’s no good outcome!” We are laughing when we finally pass the scene of the crime. “What is she doing in a skirt?” says Biel, looking at the woman who has obviously caused this mess. “And high-heeled boots?” She looks over at me and smiles. “We are going to get there alive. I just know it. I have good karma.”

If Jessica Biel seems to live a charmed personal life (rumors of breakups notwithstanding), she hasn’t had such great luck in her career. Not long after we arrive at our hotel, we meet for dinner at the restaurant downstairs. Biel shows up wearing black Frye motorcycle boots, dark-blue jeans that look like leggings, a loose black scoop-neck T-shirt, a droopy red Steven Alan cardigan, and a chunky white Chanel watch. Once again, she winds up in the driver’s seat, engaging our waitress on the wine list and then talking me into ordering a Gewürztraminer. At one point she asks the waitress about the halibut. “Is it still in season? Is it nice?” It’s really nice, says the waitress perfunctorily. “I don’t know if I believe you,” Biel says to her in the most startling, matter-of-fact way. “Talk to me more about it.” The waitress admirably rises to the challenge. Finally convinced, Biel orders the dish (and cleans her plate).

The conversation quickly settles on her vexed post-TV career, which goes like this: ill-conceived remake of famous horror film; tragic Bret Easton Ellis adaptation; even more tragic Kim Basinger vehicle; meaningless third installment of Blade franchise; terrible movie; terrible movie . . . The Illusionist! Starring Edward Norton and Paul Giamatti, it is easily the best film Biel has been in. Though it was not a commercial hit, it is a pleasure to watch, and Biel is believable as a Viennese woman from the turn of the last century. “A lot of times people I work with have said, ‘Oh, this movie is going to be the one,’ and then nothing happens. But with The Illusionist I felt it more than ever, that people really started to see me differently.”

And then there is Biel’s run of bad luck with great directors. Cameron Crowe cast her in Elizabethtown, a film that flopped on a grand scale, and David O. Russell gave her the lead in Nailed, based on Kristin Gore’s novel Sammy’s Hill, about a woman with no health insurance who gets a nail lodged in her head and goes to Washington to fight for justice. “Jess was tired of being cast as merely sultry and was more than ready to throw down for all the weird behavior a nail in the head gives her character,” says Russell. “She auditioned and went for it—she is fearless.” Gore (Al’s daughter), who co-wrote the screenplay with Russell, spent three months with Biel on the set in South Carolina. “I think her range is something that has yet to be discovered by the larger world,” she says. “She also has this preternatural self-assurance.” The production shut down because of money problems with just one thing left to shoot: the scene where Biel gets the nail shot into her head. That was in 2008, and with each passing month it grows ever less likely that her most challenging film work to date will make it to the screen.

Meanwhile, the film industry has gone through a major upheaval since the recession. “The last year in this business has been harsh,” says Biel. “There’s no material. Nobody wants to make dramas. And that’s what we all want to do.” What is getting produced, she says, are “commercial movies—horror movies, big romantic comedies, and action movies. Those can be great, but you don’t want to do only those kinds of films. You can’t live on éclairs alone. You have to have a spinach salad every now and again.”

For now, however, she gorges on éclairs. This month she stars in Valentine’s Day, an ensemble romantic comedy, directed by Garry Marshall, that features a galaxy of A-list stars: Julia Roberts, Jamie Foxx, Anne Hathaway, Jennifer Garner, Patrick Dempsey, and so on. Biel plays a neurotic sports publicist and toxic bachelorette. “I really get to play crazy,” she says gleefully. “A girl who has hit the wall with wanting to find a man. And I get to do some broad comedy; it’s a little Lucille Ball-esque.” And who better than Garry Marshall to direct her? “She was so eager to do physical comedy, in particular, because she knew I worked with Lucy and with my sister on Laverne & Shirley,” Marshall says. “She sings a wild song in the movie; it’s kind of down-and-dirty singing, and it’s really great.”

Biel and Garner became friends on the shoot. “She’s incredibly girly and warm and open—all of the things she seems to buck against when she’s looking at roles,” says Garner. “The first scene that I did with her, she was drunk in the scene. It’s hard to play drunk, not to overdo it. But she did it in such a subtle, real, kind of pathetic but very, very deeply funny way. I was, take one, totally impressed.”

The dearth of good material has pushed Biel to diversify her portfolio, so to speak. Last August, she was cast alongside Brian Stokes Mitchell when the Los Angeles Philharmonic did a three-night concert version of Guys and Dolls at the Hollywood Bowl. Biel took everyone by surprise with what director Richard Jay-Alexander described as her beautiful, “silvery” singing voice. On the last night, she received a rousing standing ovation from 17,000 people. More recently, she landed a part in Lincoln Center Theater’s two-week-long workshop of the musical version of the Pedro Almodóvar classic Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, along with Salma Hayek, who plays the lead. “I think they are going to put it up in the fall,” she says hopefully. “And I think they will approach me again.” A girl can dream, can’t she? As far as Garner is concerned, Biel should: “There’s nothing between her and bigger things except for one job.”

The next morning we wake up to discover that the snow has turned to rain. By the time we arrive at the base of the mountain, there is only one gondola running, and the line stretches all the way through the village. Deflated, we decide to eat breakfast in a honky-tonk saloon that reeks of last night’s beer. Amid the German techno music, the Madonna/Justin Timberlake song “4 Minutes” suddenly blasts over the sound system, and we stare down at our plates awkwardly. Biel looks up at me with a big smile on her face and punctures the silence: “Dance break!” (We had another awkward moment in the car during our drive when Biel was talking about her style. “I like really überfeminine, classic-looking things mixed with something rougher around the edges. I’ve been looking at Rihanna a lot, checking her out. She’s got something going on that I am sort of craving a little bit.” I nearly choked on my trail mix. I could not tell whether this was a Freudian slip, some worrisome Single White Female voodoo, or a calculated little piece of spin designed to show me that she is unthreatened by the rumors that her man has eyes for the diva from Barbados.)

Biel and Timberlake have been an item since 2007 and for a long time looked like a happy couple. Recently, however, they have had to endure all manner of tabloid speculation about their private lives. Biel recently laughed off the rumors to a reporter, saying, “It’s definitely been weird and sort of bizarre to deal with. But you have to have a sense of humor about the whole thing. Honestly, I look at a magazine and they know more than I do.” Last night at dinner I brought it up and was met with steely resolve. “I don’t want to talk about it,” she said. “I don’t feel the need to clear anything up. It’s the most precious thing that I have in my life, and I care about it so much that I don’t care about what anyone says or thinks. I have just not addressed it in any real way, and I’m not going to. It’s mine. And I really like that about it.”

There is something refreshing about a girl with boundaries, someone who has her priorities in order despite the relentlessness of the tabloids and the strangeness of doing drills in some warehouse far away from her own life. And if there is a sense that potentially great things await Jessica Biel—that she has not yet shown us who she is and what she is capable of—it’s hard not to wonder what exactly is holding her back.

One possible answer came up during our dinner, when we were talking about her va-va-voom image—so at odds with how she really is. “When I see myself in pictures with makeup on, even to this day, I think it looks weird. My eyes get squintier and smaller. On the red carpet, I’m playing a character. As soon as I get off that thing I think, Oof, wipe that gloss off. I’m wiping and wiping and pulling my hair out and trying to change my outfit. I’m immediately trying to get comfortable. It’s really a part I play.”

One wonders why she can’t just play herself. In person she projects such a winning and natural beauty. As Jennifer Garner puts it, “She’s not just beautiful, she’s kind of on another level, but there’s an earthiness and a strength to it.” Too much makeup and the wrong dress seem to smother all that, and it’s a disconnect that clearly extends to the roles she chooses.

We eventually make our way up the mountain, and above 1,200 feet, it is snowing: The skiing is sublime. Not surprisingly, Biel is both goofy and confident on her snowboard. Afterward, we head back to the hotel lounge; her assistant, Lindsay, joins us, and Biel orders an old-fashioned. At one point someone took a picture of her on the slopes and she said to me, “Smile for Biel.” Now she explains: “My grandmother, whom we call Biel, thinks it’s very unbecoming of me not to smile for the paparazzi. So every time I see them I think, Smile for Biel!”

This is a reminder of why Jessica Biel is so grounded: Her family keeps her that way. When I point this out, she says, “I might just be way too boring to ever be a really great actress.” Great actresses can live boring lives, I say. It’s great stars who kick dust up everywhere they go.

“I don’t do that,” says Biel. “Maybe I should do a little bit more of that.” She laughs at the thought. “A dust kicker-upper might be kind of fun. . . .”

Lindsay pipes up: “Think of your life if you were like that, though. I would probably hate you. Your boyfriend probably wouldn’t be that into you. You’d be a big bitch.” But it’s clear that Lindsay thinks the world of her boss. “If you met her at a barbecue, you would never know that she was a movie star,” she says. “To her friends, Jess is the most compassionate, caring, kind, loving, wonderful human being that they know.”

“See?” says Biel. “Nothing that interesting!”

[hiccanna-tidbits]

Jackunzel February Special Week 2 - Summer Impromptu Road Trip Getaway

Jackson Overland Frost just got his driver’s license, and he is determined to use it irresponsibly.

When his mom impulsively gifts him the rusty old bucket of screws she was originally planning on selling, he decides this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. A once-in-who-knows-how-long change for an escape from his boring little hometown. He gathers up every last penny he’s earned from summer jobs and plans the most epic cross-country the world has ever seen.

...okay, perhaps not the most epic. The most epic cross-country road trip on a teenage shoestring budget the world has ever seen.

And who better to take than his lifelong best friend, especially when said lifelong best friend has been wishing for months to get a break from her insanely overbearing mom?

Rapunzel doesn’t know what she’s expecting the first night of summer vacation, but it certainly isn’t Jack pulling up in front of her house at 1 in the morning and telling her in an excited whisper to “pack a suitcase as fast as she can.” It feels like a scene from an action movie--“there’s no time to explain, just get in the car!”

And who is Rapunzel to refuse the call to adventure in her very own coming-of-age indie epic?

Besides, her...feelings for the mischievous scamp she’s known since elementary school have been shifting lately. She’s always been comfortable and relaxed around him--entirely herself.

But now there’s something else, too. Her heart races when he accidentally touches her. Her stomach gets full-on vertigo when he hugs her. She finds herself being more obsessive about fixing her hair, more meticulous when planning her outfits.

She jokes to Anna that it’s the newly-died white hair. It’s such a striking contrast from the unassuming chocolate mop of their childhoods that of course it would make her feel an inexplicable shift in their friendship. It’s jarringly novel, and of course she’d be anxious that Jack trying on something so different might lead to...well.

To him drifting away. Becoming a new person she didn’t recognize. Leaving her behind as he grew into whoever he was meant to be and realized he just wasn’t the same guy she smeared finger paint on in their kindergarten class anymore.

But Rapunzel doesn’t think she’s anxious. She’s not really worried Jack’s planning on ditching her--not after they’ve made it this far together.

If anything, what’s stirring in her is more excitement than fear. Anticipation for something she can’t quite place.

They drive off into the night, leaving behind everything they’ve ever known. Rapunzel decides the weird cushiness she’s been feeling in her stomach is a problem for her future self. After all, she’s only trapped in a vehicle for a week plus with the very same guy who’s been giving her strange tingling sensations as of late--what’s the worst that could happen?!

And so the trek begins--from Yosemite to the Grand Canyon, from the Rockies to the Appalachians. Being led on ill-fated detours by incompetent GPS systems. Stopping for ice cream to undo the distress caused by said GPS systems. Spontaneously stopping and hiking 7-mile Pacific Northwest trails to burn off the ice cream calories. Crashing at run-down motels in the middle of nowhere, their neon signs flickering and buzzing like dying fireflies.

And maybe Rapunzel’s going crazy, but she swears that Jack can feel it too. This...new energy between them.

His gaze lingers. He looks for excuses to pat her hand and hold her fingers. His arm finds its way around her shoulders even when he isn’t drunk (his cheaply-made fake ID works much more than Rapunzel expects).

It’s hard to deny the sheer newness of it all--the strangeness. Perhaps it isn’t a bad change. But there’s something a little overwhelming about accepting that their friendship can never really go back to how it was. Things can never be quite the same again.

They can never be the same because of that evening on the ferris wheel, hundreds of miles from home.

It’s just past sunset when the ride gets stuck. It’s funny at first, the thought that they expected anything else from podunk county fair in rural Ohio. Then a quiet serene washes over them, taking in the cool dusk air and the sound of crickets and the glimmering town lights below.

Then he turns to her, and his eyes glint with roguery and starlight. Suddenly, she knows he understands.

And she does too.

They end up lip-locked, unable to get their hands off each other even when their ferris wheel car reaches the ground and a very annoyed ride attendant ushers them out the gate. They hold hands all the way back to the motel, and they fall asleep wrapped up in each other.

Rapunzel only manages one coherent thought, staring up at the stucco ceiling and beaming so wide her cheeks hurt.

Now I get it.

***

Tfw you just wanted to write a fun little vignette about Jackunzel summer road trip shenanigans...and then you accidentally dived in to the existential dread of growing up and the inherent fear of changing relationships, even if it’s a change both people want ^^; BUT HEY, is that not the draw of Friends to Lovers, My Most Beloved??? Where’s the fun in it if it doesn’t shake things up a lil when they make the change from friends TO lovers??? Like!!! Dating someone and being friends with someone can be pretty different, but the overlap is also fuckin epic, if you can make it work!!! 10/10, would recommend, from my VERY limited amount of experience escaping the friendzone lmfao

Anyways, if I had a few more concrete ideas I’d write a one shot out of this--because I truly do love AUs where Jack and Rapunzel just go like “eh fuck it” and yeet out of town on a road rip without warning XD I just think they deserve to go sightseeing and sing really loud to the radio on the open road!!! As a treat!!!

Actually very very pleased with how this came out though <3 The ferris wheel, the middle road trip-y pic, and the Rapunzel hiking pic I’ve been wanting to use in a moodboard for ages :O And now!!! They can all help Jack and Punz go on adventures lmao Also I highkey wanna visit the forest on the bottom left but I don’t know whERE IT ACTUALLY IS DAMMIT The site I saved it from didn’t say lol

Aaaaand now I’m just rambling because damn it I want a cool indie coming-of-age road trip where I explore fun, pretty places and find myself and fall in love ;______;

Moodboard pic credits available upon request, as always!

[spotconln]

national park enthusiasts javey au because i had one thought and it spiraled into this. 

both have their reasons for going to the parks aside from appreciating the beauty and going on hikes. jack goes to paint/draw the scenery. most of the time, he sketches out a draft and roughly colors it in then paints it at the hotel. but on occasion, he’ll set up a canvas and bring his paints. davey, on the other hand, loves studying the wildlife and animals. the nerd probably has a notebook to keep his findings in. definitely has scratches all over his hands from getting just a tad too close to a squirrel or something. 

they meet at the carlsbad canyons in–guess where–new mexico. jack’s there for his usual artistry routine and davey goes to experience the bat flight program. they’re down in the caves, jack has his whole setup and davey’s hiking. davey gets distracted by something and trips, skinning his knee or something. jack, the good stranger he is, helps patches him up and davey just has to thank him somehow; so he offers a coffee date before they leave nm. and how could jack refuse the pretty guy who, quite literally, fell into his life? 

davey ends up watching jack work on his painting of the caves and becomes a little addicted to the way his tongue pokes out when he’s really focused, the attentive glint in his eyes, the flecks of paint that somehow get onto him. when jack’s done, davey blurts out an invite to watch the bats with him later. jack wasn’t initially planning on going, but, again, how could he refuse? they part ways until then, definitely looking forward to seeing the other again. dusk arrives, and davey is just so excited to see the bats, jack thinks it’s cute. he finds him even more adorable when the bats take flight and davey’s bouncing up and down with joy. the setting sun makes his skin look warm, and coupled with his bright grin, jack’s mentally sketching out the sight for later. 

both had planned to hike the rattlesnake canyon trail (i know.) the next day, so they decide to go together. they spend the whole time getting to know each other. they’re pleasantly surprised to find they’re both from new york, especially so when they both live in manhattan. they’re already planning to meet when they’re back in the city. also, they do come across a snake. jack nearly screams and davey thinks it hilarious. davey flies home the next day, so that’s when they go out for coffee and exchange numbers, social media, etc. as a parting gift, jack give davey the fleshed out drawing of him from the previous night, and damn they are crushing. 

when they’re back in ny, they literally do not stop talking to each other. can’t shut up about the other to friends and family too. they go out for lunches often, going back and forth about new art and research and their own lives. they reminisce a lot on how much they enjoyed being at carlsbad canyon together, and next thing they know, they have a hotel booked in wyoming for a getaway to grand teton national park. they lowkey annoy the other people on their flight with their excited whispering, but they don’t care. the trip goes about the same as the last routine-wise, but they stare at each other a lot more and crush even harder. 

the trips become a semi-regular occurrence whenever they have the time and money available. they try to stay close to ny so they can just drive, but it’s under the stars in the joshua tree national park in california that they become boyfriends. jack paints a stunning rendition of them under the stars to commemorate the milestone. their routine stays the same, but they’re in love and eventually move in together. a lot of the time it’s jack who chooses where to go and davey looks for hotels for them to stay at. 

(thanks for this next hc, @daveysjackie) one day, davey stumbles upon jack’s pinterest account (they both have it) and finds a board named “places i want to paint”; 80% of it is just from national parks. davey plans their next trips based on that board and jack’s heart is thoroughly warmed. the theme of their relationship milestones being at parks continues when they get engaged watching the sunset at arches national park and have a small wedding ceremony at yellowstone. 

the walls of their home gets filled with photos of them on trips and paintings of jack’s that he didn’t sell. jack typically doesn’t add people in scenic art, but he always makes an exception for davey. even if he’s the size of an ant on some cliff, he will be in the painting. they also have a cabinet dedicated to gift shop mugs. they are souvenir mug people i’m not sorry. jack also gets park pins and patches, and davey gets those calf-length socks with park maps/scenery on them. also, also, they totally have those shirts with all the national parks listed on them so they can be ticked off. eventually, they do have every single one checked off. 

that got long. anyways. javey national park enthusiasts my beloveds.

[whileiamdying]

Greta Garbo, the “Furious Lesbian,” and a Classic Hollywood Love Triangle

In this exclusive excerpt from her new biography of the silent star, author Lois Banner explores the period in the early 1930s when Garbo was entangled with both the acting coach Salka Viertel and the glamorous writer Mercedes de Acosta.

BY LOIS BANNER

SEPTEMBER 6, 2023

GETTY IMAGES

reta Garbo began her acting career in her native Sweden and moved to Hollywood in 1925, where she quickly became one of the industry’s most beloved stars. She was in a relationship with her frequent co-star John Gilbert, who also served as her acting coach. At the dawn of the 1930s their relationship was over, but Garbo’s star remained on the rise.

After the break with John Gilbert, Garbo had no acting coach. In April 1930, a year after she and Gilbert parted, she found a new coach at a party at the director Ernst Lubitsch’s home, a center for the Hollywood German community, where she met Salka Viertel, a Berlin stage actress. Garbo and Salka spent most of the evening talking on the terrace. Salka, who was sixteen years older than Garbo, found her “hypersensitive, although of a steely resistance,” while her opinions about people were “just, sharp, and objective.”

Salka had come to Hollywood in 1928 from Berlin, at the age of thirty-one, with her husband, Berthold, and their three sons, David, Peter, and Christopher. Fox studios had hired Berthold, a writer and director known in Germany. Salka had been a successful actress in Berlin, but she was rarely cast in roles in Hollywood films; she was, she said, “too old” and “not beautiful enough.”

Garbo and Salka Viertel in a scene of the German version of Anna Christie (1930).BY METRO-GOLDWYN-MAYER/DE CARVALHO COLLECTION/GETTY IMAGES.

Salka had a sensual glow. For several years she had an affair with her next-door neighbor, Oliver Garrett, a successful Hollywood screenwriter, who helped her navigate the ebbs and flows of Hollywood. She then had a long affair with Gottfried Reinhardt, the son of Max Reinhardt, the Berlin theatrical impresario. Gottfried was twenty years younger than she, but he was stocky, with a solemn manner, and they didn’t seem that different in age. The Viertels had an open marriage, and Berthold was so often in Europe and with other women that Gottfried often lived in her home and functioned as her husband. He worked as an assistant producer at MGM.

In 1929 the Viertels moved to a large house in Santa Monica Canyon, near the beach. Salka held Sunday afternoon get-togethers, with coffee and homemade cake, conversation, ping-pong, and walks on the beach. Garbo didn’t always attend Salka’s salons, partly because of attacks of shyness, but also because eventually she sometimes went to other Hollywood gatherings—at Vicki Baum’s home in Pacific Palisades, for example, a few miles up the coast from Santa Monica, or at director George Cukor’s home in the Hollywood Hills. Baum, from Berlin, wrote the novel on which Grand Hotel was based. Cukor, who was homosexual, held luncheons for gender-crossing friends. His home was a showpiece, with six acres of gardens terraced up a hill.

Salka often joined Garbo in hiking in the hills or swimming in the ocean early in the morning. Following Swedish practice, they swam in the nude. When together, they discussed films, the theater, literature, and their lives. Both Garbo and Salka wanted to return to Europe, but they felt they couldn’t. Garbo had her screen career and her drive to be financially independent, while Salka and the boys were dependent on Berthold, still employed by Hollywood studios. Jacques Feyder suggested that Salka play Marthy, the prostitute in Anna Christie, in MGM’s German version of the film, which he was to direct, and Garbo agreed. She and Salka grew close; Salka was the mother Garbo wanted; Garbo was the daughter in Salka’s family of males.

Fred Zinnemann, Berthold’s assistant, later an eminent Hollywood director, described Salka as “one of the world’s most generous and opinionated women,” and she dominated Garbo. At their meetings, Salka was the star and Garbo the audience. After reading a biography of Sweden’s Queen Christina, Salka suggested to Garbo that she play the queen in a biopic. Garbo agreed—and suggested that Salka write the screenplay. Salka wasn’t a writer, but Garbo knew that, at her request, Thalberg would partner Salka with MGM’s best writers. Garbo gave Salka a career—as a writer and an acting coach. Salka participated in writing the screenplays for Queen Christina and most of Garbo’s subsequent films. Deeply impressed by Salka, Garbo developed an abiding love for her. But Salka was never certain how she felt about Garbo.

Mercedes de AcostaBY NICKOLAS MURAY/ULLSTEIN BILD/GETTY IMAGES.

In the summer of 1931, while Garbo was making Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise, Salka was persuaded to introduce Garbo to Mercedes de Acosta, who had come to Hollywood to write a screenplay for Pola Negri—and to seduce Garbo. Mercedes had heard through the lesbian grapevine that Garbo wasn’t a lesbian, but she could easily become one. De Acosta, openly lesbian, had a reputation for skill as a lover, and she was on a mission to turn prominent actresses into lesbians. It’s not surprising that she wanted to meet Garbo, but Salka was worried about what might happen if that meeting took place.

Mercedes de Acosta, born to parents descended from the Spanish nobility, was raised in a wealthy section of New York’s West Side. She met celebrities through her sister Rita Lydig. Eighteen years older than Mercedes, Rita was a fabled beauty, a leader in New York high society, and a reformer who worked for women’s suffrage and birth control, as well as labor rights. The de Acosta family once had money, but Rita’s and Mercedes’s money came from their wealthy husbands.

Rita introduced Mercedes to her famous friends: the actress Sarah Bernhardt, the sculptor Auguste Rodin, Jack and Ethel Barrymore of the famed Barrymore acting family, and others. Raised a Catholic, Mercedes attended Catholic schools. In 1914 Vogue featured her as a New York debutante, and in 1920 she married Abram Poole, a New York society painter. She followed Rita into feminism, working for women’s suffrage and then for the Lucy Stone League, formed to persuade women to keep their maiden names after marriage, following the example of Lucy Stone, a leader in the nineteenth-century U.S. women’s movement.

Like Rita, Mercedes wore distinctive clothing, but she had her own style. She often wore capes, tricorne hats, and pointed shoes with silver buckles on them, looking like a pirate. She was also known for wearing a dark coat fitted at the waist, with wide lapels and a full skirt, designed by the Paris couturier Paul Poiret. Garbo liked the coat so much that she had a copy of it made for her. Mercedes dyed her hair black, painted her face white, and wore blood-red lipstick—prompting some people to call her “Madame Dracula.”

Mercedes wore only black and white clothes, so Garbo and Salka called her “Black and White.” Aldous Huxley described her as “a small but most exquisite woman, both in features and figure, and in the manner of her dress.” She was five feet four inches tall. Close to Cecil Beaton, she provided him with information about Garbo to use in his writing about her, until he and Garbo became close friends in the late 1940s.

Mercedes lived a dramatic life, engaging in what Cecil Beaton called “glorious enthusiasms.” She also had periods of deep depression. Until she was seven and saw the male sex organ, she thought she was a boy. Discovering her mistake devastated her, until she formed romantic friendships with girls and studied ancient Greek ideas of sex. She interpreted those ideas as suggesting that everyone has a masculine and a feminine side. She took up lesbianism as a cause. Cecil Beaton called her “a furious lesbian.”

Mercedes studied Hindu and Buddhist texts and followed Eastern mystics; her knowledge of Eastern religions was part of her attraction to Garbo, who continually looked for a spiritual path and never seemed to find one. And Mercedes always knew about the latest healers and remedies. She consulted Dr. Henry Bieler, who promoted vegetarianism. Not long after she met Mercedes, Garbo consulted Bieler and became a vegetarian.

Mercedes knew the two great dramatic actresses of the turn of the twentieth century: Sarah Bernhardt and Eleonora Duse. She had had affairs with prominent female performers, including Isadora Duncan, a founder of modern dance, who promoted dress reform; the English actress Eva La Gallienne, with whom she exchanged wedding rings; and the Russian actress Alla Nazimova. When Nazimova came to Hollywood in 1916 to act in films, she formed a Sapphic circle, which some say was called “the sewing circle.” Isadora Duncan wrote passionate poems to Mercedes, extolling her sexual ability and writing paeans to her beautiful white hands.

Once Salka introduced Mercedes to Garbo in July 1931, Garbo initially fell for this aristocrat, with her tales of famous friends, knowledge of Eastern religions, and skill at sex. After finishing Susan Lenox that summer, Garbo took Mercedes to a cabin on an island in a lake in the High Sierras, where they swam, caught fish, talked, and began an affair. Mercedes was known for her sexual skill and Garbo for “the unbounded freedom of her life.”

After her trip to the High Sierras with Mercedes, Garbo displayed deep feelings for Salka, which suggests that the Sierra trip was a failure, that she was comparing Salka and Mercedes as friends and lovers, or that she was forming a triangle with the two of them. On September 18, which was Garbo’s birthday, she seduced Salka, who described what happened in a letter to Berthold—her confidante as well as her husband. Greta decorated her house with white gardenias, a symbol of femininity and of secret love. She served Champagne and played Sapphic songs on the gramophone. It was, according to Salka, “a gigantic temptation apparatus.” She concluded: “So we were together—it was harmonious and beautiful.”

By the late fall, Salka’s infatuation with Garbo had dissipated for a time, as Garbo became demanding. She was filming Mata Hari and spending time with Mercedes, in the first flush of their romance. Then, looking at Garbo one day, Salka realized that not only did she slouch but she also had a hump on her back. Salka wrote to Berthold, who was in New York, about the hump, but he replied that she should forget it because Garbo had influence in Hollywood and could damage his career. Salka stayed with Garbo as a close friend and mentor but kept her at a distance by having affairs with men, first with Oliver Garrett and then with Gottfried Reinhardt. After the episode of sex in 1931 between Garbo and Salka, there is no further evidence of sexual relations between them.

Greta Garbo as Anna Karenina and John Gilbert as Alexei Vronsky in a scene from the silent movie Love (1927). FROM BETTMANN/GETTY IMAGES.

Even before Mercedes appeared in Garbo’s life in the summer of 1931, there were references to Garbo’s presumed lesbianism in the Hollywood trade journals and in movie magazines. In 1929, Variety’s review of Garbo’s movie The Single Standard slyly referred to Garbo’s free love views. In January 1931, in a review of Garbo’s movie Inspiration, a Variety writer called her “one of the strangest personalities of all the freaks or odd ones that have littered Hollywood for years.” And Mercedes persuaded Garbo to become more open about her masculinity. The Hollywood Reporter, Hollywood’s first tabloid, was launched in 1930. On August 21, 1931, a month after Mercedes and Garbo met, the tabloid noted that “Greta Garbo has a new love.” On September 23, 1931, the tabloid referred to “an ambidextrous foreign star.” (“Ambidextrous” means being able to use either hand for tasks; it was then a common circumlocution for lesbians, homosexuals, and bisexuals.) The tabloid also referred to “the two Garbos.”

But Garbo was ambivalent about Mercedes. After Salka, in her subtle, poetic way, informed Garbo that they could be close friends, but not lovers, Garbo turned to Mercedes for sex. That action unleashed Mercedes’s obsessive nature, expressed in constant demands for deep expressions of love. After several months, Garbo fled to New York to get away from her. When she returned to Hollywood after a month away, she found Mercedes living in a house near hers. Ever after, when Garbo moved, Mercedes moved to a nearby house. Garbo wrote to Hörke Wachtmeister, a close friend in Sweden, that Mercedes made her nervous. She also disliked Mercedes’s love of gossip, and she was incensed when she learned that Mercedes told Cecil Beaton about her doings, which he then used in writing about her.

Mercedes and Salka didn’t like each other, which isn’t surprising. Mercedes didn’t attend Salka’s salons; she formed one of her own, which may have been a continuation of Alla Nazimova’s “sewing circle.” She also had an affair with Marlene Dietrich, Garbo’s major Hollywood rival. Garbo eventually forgave her this breach of faith; free-love principles permitted it and forbade jealousy. And Mercedes was lavish in spending on Garbo; she once had an elaborate gate built overnight around her mansion when Garbo mentioned a need for it.

Mercedes’s husband divorced her in 1935 and married his mistress, but he didn’t cut off his large stipend to Mercedes for years. It was her major source of income, financing the mansions she rented and her largesse to Garbo. But she was indomitable. When the stipend ended, she managed to find jobs editing and writing for small magazines, moving between New York and Paris. She became friends with John Lennon and Yoko Ono and was often a guest at their Christmas celebrations. But when she died in 1968, she was destitute.

Garbo didn’t permanently break with Mercedes until her autobiography was published in 1960. Even though Mercedes hid their affair in a cloud of circumlocutions in the memoir, she included a photo she had taken of a topless Garbo on the island in the High Sierras. And her description of her research methods for the autobiography must have alarmed the perfectionist and secretive Garbo. Mercedes’s major source, she stated, was her memory. She had kept neither a diary nor a datebook, and when she wrote her appointments down on scraps of paper, she promptly lost them. She did keep letters written to her and other memorabilia; they are in her collection in the Rosenbach Museum in Philadelphia. The biographer can figure out a lot about their relationship from that collection, but far from all of it.

From IDEAL BEAUTY: The Life and Times of Greta Garbo by Dr. Lois W. Banner. Copyright © 2023 by Dr. Lois W. Banner. Excerpted by permission of Rutgers University Press.

[teejaystumbles]

thank you for tagging me, @landwriter :)

Rules: Tag 10 (or less) people you want to get to know better

relationship status: married! I'm one of those weird people that didn't date their whole youth and were miserable about it and then found a guy at university who would give them the moon and stuck with him :) together for 16 years now <3<3

favourite colour: green! every shade, I love spring!! also black, and gold, and dark blue. and teal rose pink, I love a lot of colours

song stuck in my head: Bloody Valentine by Machine Gun Kelly because yesterday it came on my random playlist and it IS very sticky and now I feel like 19 again lol

three favourite foods: sunflower seed bread, cheese in almost any form, nuts

last song I listened to: Chanterai Por Mon Corage (because I was writing, FtMt playlist) - love love love discovering medieval love songs and having dreamling thoughts ToT

dream trip: Chichén Itzá or a hike around Mont Blanc for which I am woefully much too unfit ;_; also Yellow Stone, or the Grand Canyon

last thing(s) i googled: kinnporsche - (lol, I watched the first episodes and then decided, Nope, I don't need this, this is bad and full of consent issues and such a stereotypical yaoi manga story and I've read more than enough of those that this feels like regressing...NOPE sry to all fans)

tagging: @valeriianz @watercubebee @amielot @fulcrvm @honeyseller @rexwrendraws @violetequus8 @delta-pavonis @dsudis @pellaaearien and everyone who wants!

[travelwithcrush35]

Romantic Escapes: Unforgettable Things to Do in Arizona for Couples

Discover the most enchanting activities and destinations for couples in Arizona. From breathtaking hikes in the Grand Canyon to stargazing in Sedona's red rock landscapes, Arizona offers a plethora of romantic experiences.

Indulge in luxurious desert resorts, embark on thrilling hot air balloon rides, or unwind with a soothing couples' spa treatment. Immerse yourselves in the vibrant arts scene of Phoenix or embark on a scenic road trip along the iconic Route 66. Whether you're seeking adventure or relaxation, Arizona has it all for couples looking to create lasting memories together.

Article link: Best Things to Do in Arizona for Couples

[munstysmind]

Last Line Tag

Tagged by @themaradaniels

Tagging: @chickensarentcheap @pixie88 @secretaryunpaid and anyone else who wants to play

Letting out a deep groan, Steve stretches his entire body out before relaxing back into the bed and letting out a long sigh, grateful he doesn’t have to work today.

The last month has been rough, really rough. Harper’s suspension and subsequent investigation, now her father… she needs a break, they both do.

He really needs to talk to Danny about filling in for him for a week or two so he can take Harper away on a proper trip.

In the 18 months they’ve been together, they’ve been away a grand total of three times. Twice for work and the other time was a weekend camping trip a few months ago, when he proposed.

A smile spreads across his face as he remembers that morning. They’d woken up before dawn and hiked up to the top of Waimea Canyon to watch the sun rise before he got down on one knee and asked her to marry him.

He was so nervous that he stumbled over his words, completely messing up the speech he’d been rehearsing for weeks.

Not that it mattered, she dropped to her knees and threw her arms around him, tears welling in her eyes, as soon as she saw the ring box in his hand.

[aestheticvoyage2022]

Day 266: Friday September 23, 2022 - “700 club″

For the second Friday night in a row, I was fully entrenched in baseball theatrics - history on display.   Judge didn’t hit his 60th, as we seem to tune in for every at bat, but our guy Albert came through in a dramatic way.  My buddy Chad was at the game with his family and I so enjoyed chatting with him throughout as if we were sitting there together in Cardinal Red.  It enhances the experience to be able to fill him in on all the tidbits I can see on my big screen from the Great Room.  In his second at bat of the night he took a hung curve way out to left field - a no doubter that left me hooting and hollering.  699 was a beast.   Tonight could be the night.   And 27 minutes later, he was back up to bat - the Dodgers went to the bullpen, brought in a righty and when another curve got hung, slap - and it was driven out to the first row in left field.  Everyone erupted, including myself alone but feeling as if I was there, as he soared around the bases sky high with a huge smile on his face.  Crossed homeplate a member of the elite 700 club and I wondered how many of those I had witnessed, heard, and cheered.  He hugged Yadi, and high fived Beltre, and took a curtain call in Dodger Stadium, where he tried on this role last year.   It gave me chills. This was a really big deal.  I was glad that I saw it live.

 I first came to St Louis in the summer of 2006 - a young Pujols was the face of the franchise; their star led them to World Series championship that year and again in 2011.  Id got to games, and score those $5 grabbag seats that would put me up the third base line where Id use my first “nice camera” to zoom in on him batting, trying to capture that perfect swing as the ball left the bat out to Big Mac Land.  He was a machine. This is when I first became a Cardinals fan.  And after years of begrudgingly watching Bonds, McGwire, and Sosa swat steroid fueled big-flies, here he was doing it totally clean and never a question - how could you question that beautiful swing?  And I’ll always remember how that 2011 Game Six went - but I’ll also remember that it may never had happened if not for Pujols’ 5 for 5 game with three home runs as my Mom and I watched from Arizona after hiking the Grand Canyon - perhaps the best World Series performance of all time (if not, it would only be behind David Freese’s Game 6 show).  It was a sad day when our hometown hero, took the money and left town after that year. I had left town too and went out West.  But over those ten years, the stats kept stacking, and he kept going, and following the chills in 2019 when he made his first appearance back in Busch, Chad and I would chatter about how cool it would be if he could come back and finish his career with the Redbirds.  When the crowd pulled for a curtain call after he hit a Home Run, no one remember the big contract he took - just that he was loved, and he was a hero so many times over.  It reminded me of the old Sparky Anderson quote - “The great thing about baseball is when you’re done, you’ll only tell your grandchildren the good things.  If they ask me about 1989, I'll tell them I had amnesia.”   How cool would it be if we could just forget those 11 years he was gone and get a little bit of St Louis Summer back.  And when the DH rule came to the National League this year, it was all the baseball Gods needed to make this a reality. We saw him go 0-fer in Fenway this year, and get a single in Arizona - but after the all star break where he participated in the Home Run Derby as a legacy selection to the team, he got on a fire and a late season power surge in a hot Cardinals first place lineup, he belted 20+ home runs to make history after committing whole heartedly that he was done, no matter what.  He had made it - he had gone the distance.  With just 10 games to go, he cemented his place in an elite milestone.  An inner circle Hall of Famer, with the likes of Aaron and Ruth.  And I can say I spent many a summer night, and fall evening, emotionally involved in it.   Tonight, over text with my buddy Chad, projecting the game on the big screen, it gave me the little bit of joy I needed at exactly the right time.  Just another reason to love this game so much!   Baseball immortality.  Next stop - jersey retirement, red jackets on opening day, Cooperstown.

Song: Bill Conti - Going The Distance

Quote: “The tragedy in a man’s life is what dies inside of him while he lives.”― Albert Schweitzer