When in doubt, just spray shit gold and other lessons I learned planning a wedding.

March 24, 2018 By Emma Gillies in Humour, Life, Toronto Tags: DIY, Humour, Life, Love, Relationships, Wedding, Wedding Planning, Writing Leave a comment

Guys, it happened. I.got.hitched…

… Not entirely by myself, Dan was there too but whatever, mere trivial details.

It’s been nearly a year since the partner and I decided to senselessly tie our lives together for all eternity, so that means we’ve had almost enough time to slowly collect the lost pieces of our souls and pay off those soaring Visa bills.

We’re also at least 80% recovered from that terrifying bout of wedding planning PTSD. I am happy to say that we can now look back on whole experience with warmth, a smile, and only the occasional shudder.

You learn a lot in the year leading up to your wedding – about yourself, your partner, your relationship, and just how long it takes until one of you completely and wholly implodes from the stress of it all.

So first things first: what did Dan and I learn about each other’s coping mechanisms?

We learned that Dan likes to internalize his stress, bury it deep in the far reserves of his psyche, plaster a smile on his face and act like everything is perfect, all the while suffering from bouts of dangerously high blood pressure.

I, on the other hand, I prefer to release stress slowly, over the course of many months in the form of passive aggressive comments and mature declarations like, “Why did you make me do this?!” and, “Fuck the fucking wedding industry and everyone associated with it.”

So now that I’ve made it clear how unqualified we are to offer advice, gather around and listen to all this advice!

Here’s a not-so brief compilation of the things we learned planning a wedding:

1. Smile and nod at everyone’s opinion and then completely ignore their advice and do whatever the hell you want to do.

I don’t know why a throwing a wedding is open-season for people to offer unsolicited advice on literally everything but OH IS IT EVER.

But guess what? None of those people are the two of you. If you’re signing up to get completely financially rinsed all in the name of one perfect day, then that day should reflect the two of you in exactly the way you want to be reflected. The day will not be made or broken by your entree choice or where you source your flowers.

Stand firm. Eat what you want to eat. Smell the goddamn flowers you want to smell.

Your grandmother had her time.

NO ONE WANTS POT ROAST ANYMORE NANNA.

2. No one cares about your décor but you.

Ok this may be a bit of an exaggeration. I have been to weddings where I’ve heard people critiquing the décor, but here’s a little secret: everyone really hates those people and how did they even get invited to your wedding in the first place?

I think if you surround yourself with good humans, they may remember that it looked “nice” or felt, “warm.”

BUT if anyone you know actually spends his or her time getting into the nitty gritty of your table arrangements or colour scheme, then those people are lame and shouldn’t get to go to fun parties.

I think what people remember most is the feeling in the room, and I guarantee that feeling is going to be a hell of a lot more positive if you didn’t just blow $5000 on candles.

Which leads me to my next 2 points:

3. If you think you’re above IKEA, you’re not. And closely related:

4. If you think you’re above Dollerama, you’re definitely not.

I made Dollerama, HomeSense, Michaels and IKEA my bitch on a regular basis leading up to the wedding.

If you took a gander at the absurd Visa statement I mentioned earlier it’s just those four stores, on repeat, for three months. I can’t imagine what our wedding tab would have looked like if I didn’t opt for the DIY ghetto-chic décor options. But again, no one cares if your candles are made by the wax of purebred bees, or if your linens are 7000 thread count.

And it begs repeating: those people who do care, really suck.

5. Things to cheap out on: midnight food. Things to not cheap out on: a photographer and a live band.

It’s very important to note for all future event expenses that drunk people will eat literally anything that’s put in front of them.

I’ve awoken the day after a night out to realize at 3am the night before I just poured Sriracha on plain rice crackers and went to town.

Cold corn straight from the can? Yep.

Makeshift nachos comprised of just goldfish crackers and melted cheese? Check.

So don’t spend your money on artisanal pizza or fancy midnight sliders, as I guarantee the same person dancing shirtless on the floor is not going to appreciate the tang of red pepper relish on their delightfully tiny burger.

HOWEVER, a solid live band or DJ is pivotal to success and good party vibes. Are people going to be soaking in sweat rocking out to Counting Crows or are they going to be sitting at the table rolling their eyes while that one Uncle dances the Macarena?

Is it actually fun to stay at the Y.M.C.A?

N.O.P.E.

Also, spend the extra dough on a good photographer/videographer. I’ve had friends spend so much time and energy and money planning their weddings only to be disappointed in their pictures.

That day is a goddamn whirlwind that has you spinning in circles, too over-stimulated to really absorb any one thing. I promise when you blackout for 7 hours and come to at 2am sitting on the floor of your hotel eating a bag of Doritos still in your wedding dress, (No? Just me?) you’re going to want to rest easy knowing someone properly recorded all your memories for you.

6. Make a budget. Then tear up that budget while cackling evilly like everyone else in the wedding industry who is just out to slowly and methodically castrate your bank account.

You know the rule for converting Celsius to Fahrenheit? No? Me either. But Google tells me you double the temperature then add 30.

…Yea, wedding budgets are a lot like that. It’s a daily punch in the vagina/nuts so just make sure to wrap your head around that before you dive in.

I don’t know if people in the wedding industry are assholes, geniuses, or some combination of both. All I know is at some point in the planning process you too will find yourself getting inexplicably attached to a certain type of stupidly adorable dessert or table runner, lose all sense of logic and pay triple what you should for it out of some completely misguided sense of “need.”

You think you won’t. You think you’re above it.

So did I.

But then I went and spent $120 on 24 of these because Pinterest told me I should:

No one is above it.

7. Outsource as much as you can.

I know this contradicts the part where I said the wedding industry is a sadistic motherfucker, but the only thing worse than getting help is taking it all on yourself.

Case in point: me.

I decided early on that to save money I would try to do as much as I possibly could on my own. This meant dealing with vendors and throwing linens on tables and yes, crouching on my balcony in 5-degree weather spraying everything I could find gold.

Beer bottles or vases? You tell me.

And I don’t know, maybe I saved some money, I couldn’t really tell you.

But I can tell you it made me a goddamn nightmare to be around.

Because if I’m being completely honest, taking the reigns had less to do with saving money and more to do with one of my more charming, delightful qualities: being a bit of a control freak who insists on doing everything herself, rejects all offers of help, and then complains she’s doing everything alone.

Remember that time someone shackled himself to me for the rest of his life?

What.a.sucker.

8. IF you relent and give the future husband a to-do list, include supporting photographs, a carefully laid out Google map, weblinks, a firm timeline and pre-programmed daily reminders.

Don’t get me wrong, I found myself one exceptionally good dude. It’s just that whereas my timeline is very much, “Now. Immediately. Today. This minute” his is much more, “As long as it’s done before we’re walking down the aisle, I have been tremendously successful.”

So perhaps I should have trusted that his to-do list would have gotten done without my near constant harassment and enraged/frustrated sighs…

…But we’ll never know.

Because I didn’t become a passive aggressive control freak over night, I’ve had years of practice perfecting it!

I’m also not sure he’s come to terms with the fact that even if the end result is flawless, if he doesn’t do it precisely my way I consider it a swift and mighty failure, so that’s also fun.

BUT to be fair, Dan has a tendency to be incredibly self-congratulatory and sort saunter around without an ounce of humility when he does accomplish the one small task I’ve been stalking him to do for three weeks, so I like to think we’re equally infuriating.

That’s why we’re married guys! A crippling fear that no one else could stand us.

9. Once the day starts, try to just roll with the chaos.

It really is the most tired of clichés but the whole day does just fly by. So look up once and awhile, and try to accept this day for what it is: literally the last time you will ever be one-half of the centre of attention ever again.

After this it’s usually kids and frankly once that happens no one will notice or care if you’re in the room ever again.

Breathe. Get a respectable amount of drunk. And enjoy the damn spotlight.

I became an #Instawriter and everyone thought I was screwing with them

September 30, 2017 By Emma Gillies in Humour, Life, Poetry Tags: Friendship, Humour, Instagram, Life, Love, Poetry, Relationships Leave a comment

Guys it’s been ages! It’s been way too long since I posted up in Jimmy’s Coffee and wrote something long enough to warrant the title “blog post.” Which is of course a TRAVESTY for all my loyal follower… singular.

But what can I say, when your blog doesn’t have any obvious theme, or direction, or consistent subject matter outside of sporadic tales of some city chick’s life, it doesn’t pay you da cash money. And when it doesn’t pay you, it unfortunately takes a back seat to the things that do.

So blah blah *insert stream of excuses here* – I’ve been getting my Real Estate license, yadda yadda, planned a wedding and it took over my entire human existence – YAWN.

If it’s two things I know for certain in this life it’s that:

Everyone is busy and,
No one cares how busy you are.

But I, like everyone else, am a slave to the September guilt, which for some reason, feels more like a new year than the actual new year.

Blame it on the fall foliage or pumpkin spiced everything, but that bratty little bitch in the back of my head has decided to resurface in a BIG way, being all, “hmmm, what form of regret can I torture you with today?”

So chalk full of that late-2017 guilt, here I am, typing away.

That being said, I have been writing… on Instagram that is.

I started up a little side project there almost a year ago that couldn’t be more the antithesis of everything I write on this bad boy.

In fact, one of my best friends, upon reading it for the first time, had this eloquent feedback to bestow upon me:

“Wait… are you fucking with us?”

As if I had gone to the trouble of creating an entirely separate writing portal solely for the purpose of mocking the whole #Instapoet phenomenon…

… Which, quite frankly, is definitely something I would do (so in retrospect I suppose her reaction was warranted).

Except I didn’t do it to mock, or to ironic. First time for everything folks!

Said Instagram account is super emotional, and vaguely poetry-esq if I thought I knew how to write poetry. In truth, I have always assumed poetry is just regular writing but pressing the Enter Key way more, so there’s that.

You should definitely follow me there if you like quote-of-the-day websites, and kittens, and cuddling in soft blankets while reading quotes and petting kittens.

Here she is:

@vodkataughtme

Click above to enter the flip-side of my brain, where I think things like this:

And this…

Oh ya, and this doozy…

Seriously, I’m barely recognizable.

Told you, my brain is one scary little muthaf*^ker.

So why did I do it you ask? Is it because I had always has a deep-seated want to become a super famous Instagram influencer, get sponsored by Tim Horton’s and have my writing compiled into a trendy book to sell at Urban Outfitters for $30?

Ummm, HELLS YES, that is the millennial dream after all.

Nah, I mean this is the first time I’m even mentioning its existence to the general public, so clearly I’m not in it for the followers or the free face masks.

I did it because I knew I wasn’t writing enough, and short little snippets of half-assed thoughts are easier to put on paper than these long-winded beasts I call blog posts.

It’s a good brain exercise and also allows me the opportunity to dig down into some of the deeper wells of what makes me tick.

All kidding aside, the truth is this:

I’ve always suffered under the premise of being “one thing,” or of having only one dimension to my personality (see: last photo).

Everyone who knows me knows that I have a tendency to hide my feelings under layers and layers of sarcasm and sass.

But here’s a secret: I’m also highly emotional. Strip away that last coat of sarcasm and you’ll come face to face with a human puddle. The girl who most recently found herself loudly crying to a Levi’s commercial (*sob* “They really ARE for everyone – young old, gay or straight” *sob*)

I find a lot of things beautiful in this world, and I also find a lot of thing wholly heartbreaking. On any given day I am bombarded by images of tragedy and hurt and of wonder and appreciation.

The nice thing about not having any semblance of a “brand” is that no one is telling me I can’t write about all of it.

I am a realistic romantic. A control freak who loves a good free fall. A highly organized mess.

And as you can imagine, a god damn RIOT to live with. Dan loves playing a good round of, “Which of Emma’s personalities do I get to be married to today?”

Sometimes what I find interesting involves a woman with zero self-awareness walking down the street pushing her dog in a stroller, and sometimes it’s sitting in a living room having a conversation with my girlfriends and being awestruck by the fact that I get to call these strong, intensely loyal, ambitious women my people.

Sometimes I want to scream at the top of my lungs at the absurdity and violence and cruelty in the world, and sometimes I watch people being so selflessly kind to one another that I think if we all stopped senselessly hating each other so much we might actually have a solid shot at this humanity thing.

So I do the only thing that makes sense to me: I write it all down.

The magic and the mess.

The hilarious and the painful.

To sum it up, I’m going to stick with doing both.

This blog will stay what it is, i.e.:

Advice no one asked for from someone who has no right to give it.
An intimate look at the inner workings of a relationship/marriage that my husband never gave me permission to write and only ever succeeds in making him extremely uncomfortable.
My continued blissful ignorance at the two points above.

In turn, my Instagram account will stay what it is:

Basically the word equivalent of the weeping emoji face.

But, like, still follow me I guess? Because how else am I supposed to get that prime Urban Outfitters shelf space next to Unicorn floaties and pineapple EVERYTHING?

K thanks team.

The Couple’s Travelling Rules

January 11, 2017 By Emma Gillies in Humour Tags: Adventure, Belize, Humour, Love, Relationships, Romance, Travel, Writing Leave a comment

Once upon a time I wrote the Couple’s Cohabitation Rules. Because you know, at that point Dan and I had lived together for a whole year, making me the obvious choice as expert on cohabitation, and like, relationships in general.

Just kidding, we’re literally flying by the seat of our pants every.single.day.

But, with 2.5 years of condo living under us, I do feel like we’ve got the living together down. A lot of our success can to attributed not to our personalities or deep maturity and superior conflict resolution but instead to:

Being on completely opposite schedules so we only really “live” together three days a week and,
Having four of Dan’s best friends live within a two-block radius which makes our 800 sq. ft. condo seem like a normal sized human living arrangement, not one built for tiny Toronto hobbits who are comfortable with zero personal space.

Point is, we’ve worked it out. We know each other’s ticks and buttons and only exploit and poke at these once every 8 to 10 days.

But travelling together? That, my friends is a WHOLE other ballgame.

And to be clear, I’m not talking about some all-inclusive resort vacation where a gentleman named José serves you your 7th mojito of the day while you lather on the SPF 80 and talk about how “dry” the heat is down south.

On these trips, you spend the bulk of your time discussing what a beautiful country Mexico is despite only seeing one stretch of private beach, and your only interaction with a local is knowing they make a really dope towel swan.

Get yourself a resort vacay, and the worst you’ll have to worry about is boredom, and what on earth you’re possibly going to have to talk about at your 3rd a la carte meal of the day.

If that’s your bag, all the power to you; I get the draw – it’s easy and you don’t have to plan/think about anything.

It’s just not my thing. Trips like that make me lazy, and prone to pick fights over stupid stuff that doesn’t matter, like where José is with my 8th goddamn mojito.

No, I’m talking travelling. The kind where you have to move from point-to-point, and therefore deal with planes and boats and delays and uncomfortable amounts of back sweat and an overall lack of Wi-Fi to distract you from each other.

Dan and I just got back from Belize, so again, that whole seven days of traipsing about together makes me the obvious choice as expert on couple’s travelling.

Man you guys are SO lucky I’m here.

So here I present to you, my guide:

THE COUPLE’S TRAVELLING RULES

AKA a step-by-step guide to avoid committing spousal murder in a foreign country

1. Force your significant other do things they hate so when you get in a fight at least you have an excuse.

Listen, Dan is very laid back, and there’s not much he doesn’t like. But HIGH on the short list of things that give him the heebie-jeebies are:

Planes
Sharks

So obviously on our trip to Belize I made sure we flew in a tiny 10-person plane and went snorkeling with sharks.

It’s very rare I get to see Dan freak out, and I find it extremely comedic when he does.

So for the 30-minutes we spent riding a baby plane over open water while he stared directly into the aisle and I soothed him with such calming, reassuring words as, “Dan, look out the window, look how high we are, look at how deep the water is, isn’t this plane SO SMALL?” I was extremely happy and amused.

Similarly, listening to your 6’4” significant other scream bloody murder into their snorkeling tube when their foot accidentally touches a stingray makes for some serious entertainment value.

Try it sometime, comedic gold I promise.

In turn, Dan made me… do absolutely nothing I hate. Because what is he INSANE?

Plus I don’t have any obvious fears other than organized sports so as long as he didn’t try to get me to join a Belizean softball team we probably would have been ok.

2. Don’t compare your current trip to places you’ve been without the other person as this makes you an obnoxious show-off.

Ya, about two days in I started to say “Oh man this road really reminds me of…” and Dan exasperatingly cut me off to exclaim, “Let me guess, Cayman?!” and I realized I was being THAT person.

So referring to the above point 1, I of course just kept doing it until he lost his mind.

No I didn’t!…

… But I thought about doing it, because if it’s one thing I think we can all agree on, it’s that sometimes I am an intentional asshole.

3. Get those #whitepeopleproblems out of the way REAL quick.

The beginning of our trip got off to a, “rough start.” And by this I mean,

We didn’t get to the airport early enough to get coffee, and
For approximately 13 seconds I thought WestJet was out of cheese trays.

As easy-going a unit as I like to think Dan and I are, if you wake us (me) up at 5am and deny us (me) of our (my) coffee and snacks and you would have thought our worlds (my world) was ending.

By the time you actually get to another country and have successfully changed into a bathing suit and flip-flops all those little things seem so silly and ridiculously dramatic.

… mostly because, as it turns out, the plane had both cheese AND coffee. Phew.

4. Invest in Air Conditioning.

There was a time in my life where I thought roughing it was fun, and that I could get by with just a mattress on a floor and a fan.

And I did! …Get by that is. Somehow all without contracting a flesh eating disease or bed bugs. I mean, when travelling abroad, I lived in some hovel-like conditions.

Very crack-den chic.

Turns out that’s all I need when travelling alone and only having my only personality to deal with in the morning. I mean, back then, who cared if I woke up haggard and hating everything? I could take as much time as I wanted to face the general population.

This is NOT what you want to do when you have to sleep next to another human.

Especially when said human is a giant, sweaty man-furnace who actually wants to interact with you within three hours of waking up.

We learned that lesson circa 2014 in Costa Rica when I made Dan stay in a very sketchy hostel that lacked many basic human amenities, like water pressure, linens, or any type of airflow.

Sleeping with a mattress spring jabbing him in the back the entire night was not the key to a successful romantic vacation.

Although again, did provide me with some serious amusement. It wasn’t my back after all.

5. Talk to other people.

Like, a lot. You’re on a trip together for sure, but I wouldn’t suggest going about it in a #nonewfriends kind of way.

I don’t care how in love with someone you are; 24-hours a day for seven days in a row with one other person is a lot. You need some human buffers. Mix it up, mingle, and take a two-hour break to lie alone in a dark, quiet hotel room so you don’t daydream about “accidentally” drowning each other on that sunset cruise you thought was a great idea when you booked it five weeks ago.

You know, the usual, healthy relationship kind of stuff.

6. Try not to feel that bizarre vacation relationship pressure to be completely different people.

It’s this weird idea we all have that trips are supposed to bring out the perfect versions of us. This relationship ideal that as soon as we cross international waters we immediately revert back to first date status – just a couple of horny teenagers experiencing moment after moment of unfiltered romantic bliss.

Like when we get home and people ask what we did on our trip we’re all supposed to sigh, smile and say, “Oh us, I can’t even remember the activities, we were just busy loving each other.”

Screwwwwwww that.

Yes, I absolutely agree that it’s easy to be happy and easygoing when you remove all of life’s everyday schedules and complications. But it’s not as though you get to another country, look around and think, “Ok…palm trees, check. Sun, check. Let’s just throw on some R-Kelly and slow dance for a week.”

Or I don’t know, maybe some people are exactly like that; I’m just not one of them.

I instead, really love to completely self-destruct under moments that feel like they “should be” romantic.

The night of New Years Eve in Belize, we were standing on the beach as fireworks went off. Dan put his arm around me for what must have amounted to a tenth of a second, and the whole thing just felt so overwhelmingly cheesy I immediately went into Robot-mode and had to disengage.

I always have these out-of-body experiences in those moments where I end up way too aware of just how much we must resemble a 1990’s Made-for-TV movie.

And why do I care you ask?

To that I say, I have absolutely no idea, but I’m sure my future therapist will have a TIME digging into that mess.

Throw me into a spontaneous situation where I say, watch my boyfriend attempt to hoist his large body onto a very small inner tube unsuccessfully for a 3-minutes, leaving me in a puddle of my own hysterics and BOOM! Instant romantic moment I will forever remember.

I love him so much in those moments it’s silly.

But should he try to lie beside me and stare at the stars while I don’t know, the ocean makes bloody ocean sounds around us, and I will go so inside my own head about how ridiculously, “A Walk to Remember” we look and definitely find a way to ruin that moment.

… In a mature, adult fashion of course – i.e., by loudly proclaiming “EWW!” and then barrel rolling away from him.

Really nice stuff here; Good luck to you, future doctor of my brain.

6. Drink Drink Drink Drink Drink Drink (set to Rihanna’s Work)

The only thing that ensures you’ll black out and fall asleep before you go and ruin romantic moments?

Cheap tequila.

After all, what’s more romantic than a slurring corpse?

On that pleasant note, happy romance and future travels together kids!

A Wedding-Phobic’s Guide to Weddings

September 27, 2016 By Emma Gillies in Humour Tags: Engagement, Humor, Humour, Random Thoughts, Relationships, Wedding, Wedding Planning Leave a comment

So in case you haven’t heard (which would be tough, because we’ve been all up in your social media faces about it) at the end of May the boyfriend and I got engaged. Which, thanks to the kindness of our friends, made for a bunch of congratulatory texts, calls and emails, making us feel incredibly lucky as well as very smug and accomplished for no reason.

Yet, all this love and support heading my way came with very specific undertones of “Wait WHATTTTTT?!” and, “Whoa…I can’t believe you said yes.”

And this is not because I don’t entirely dig my boyfriend. I’ve been calling my life partner since that first time he oh-so gently and romantically prevented me from diving into a dark lake while high on mushrooms.

He is the best of dudes and patiently accepts me in all of my crazy, and I in turn accept him in all of the conversations about how annoying his hair is today.

But marriage? Nah, it was never really for me.

Call it an extension of my overall paralyzing fear of routine, being the center of attention AND titles, but I had always just envisioned a very casual spending of life together. In my version of our future, we’d just wake up one day, roll over, be like, “Ok so we’re in this for good?” Seal in with a high-five and go back to sleep.

But then I went and fell in love with Daniel friggin’ Lynch.

Dan is the only guy you will ever meet who when told, “Actually, you know what, I don’t particularly need a $10,000 ring or $70,000 wedding” didn’t immediately stand up and start spinning about in a slow motion twirl to the song What a Wonderful World.

Nope. Instead he said, “Aww really, but why not?”

But hey, I’ll give it to him: – for a chick who prides herself of being pretty self-aware, I don’t actually know myself THAT well.

Fact is, when it comes down to it, this whole engagement thing hasn’t sucked.

Everything I thought would be the worst, most self-induced torturous experiences in this whole wedding planning thing have been some of the most fun.

And because it’s been a whopping 4 months and I’m basically a wedding expert now (kidding, I’m always about 30 seconds away from passing out from the pressure of it all), here I present you with Emma Gillies’ Wedding Planning Pros and Cons.

PRO: You get to do whatever you want.

CON: People don’t like that.

Here’s what I learned REAL quick. If you step even a little outside the carefully mapped-out, “Everyone’s Guide to Weddings” people assume you’re going to have a gothic themed day, sacrifice baby lambs as an appetizer, then rock out some vows and seal your marriage with the tears of orphaned children.

When all this engagement stuff went down and we decided to actually do this, my one stipulation was that we did it our way **AKA my way** AKA an informally structured night heavy on the booze and light on all the other mumbo-jumbo.

When people heard that however, suddenly I started getting questions like, “Are you wearing a dress?” and, “What colour will you be wearing” and,“Will there be keg stands and red solo cups?” and, “Is the venue someone’s garage?”

As if just by the very nature of trying to go a little off-script we were essentially lighting the entire wedding industry on fire and cackling evilly as it burned at our non-conformist feet.

We might as well have been planning to make our wedding a giant middle finger to all the other weddings that came before. I would wear a black pantsuit; we would release doves and then tenderly shoot them and their accompanying symbolism from the air with BB guns. Stare at the aghast, horrified faces of our friends and family and scream “Welcome to our celebration of love bitches!!”

Just a little FYI: no animals will be harmed in the making of our wedding, I’ll probably wear white, it will be in dress form, keg stands are a no but I assume at some point there will be a pink flamingo beer-funnel, and the only thing we plan on sacrificing is a tiny bit of everyone’s soul and pride via an 8-hour open bar.

PRO: You get to have a vision.

CON: You have to have a vision.

Related to the point above, a ton of wedding decision making depends on people have some predetermined “vision” of their perfect day that they would like to see come to fruition.

I had no such vision, and Dan even less so. The first time someone asked us (our photographer) I froze and panicked knowing she wanted to hear something like “city rustic” or “hipster glam” and all I could come up with is, “Uhhh… a party for our friends that we happen to get married at?”

This will of course be little help to me when it comes to trying to figure out what shade of peony looks best against a brick background. Regardless, it stuck. Now we go forth making all decisions based on a carefully balanced scale of “Will this increase or decrease the amount of fun had?”

PRO: You get to try on fancy dresses.

CON: None; go do this now.

I had assumed wedding dress shopping would leave me lying in the fetal position delicately clutching a pile and lace and tulle, regretting every carb ever consumed and swearing off the colour white for the rest of time.

However, what I failed to comprehend is that weddings- and especially women’s dresses- are a carefully contrived, booming fucking mega-industry and that all these dresses are manufactured specifically to make women feel like goddamn beautiful angels.

I might as well have been dressed by singing Disney forest animals who draped me in combinations of white lace and silk blessed by Tibetan monks for now nice everything looked. We’re talking about ALL the things being nipped and tucked into the right places.

It’s bonkers, and a ton of fun.

I highly recommend it to anyone, regardless of current relationship status. Having a bad Tuesday? Try on a wedding dress. Getting over a head cold? Pretty dresses are the cure. Didn’t like your latte this morning? Satin and Chiffon will help.

PRO: Pinterest is basically the answer to everything.

CON: I actually just typed the above sentence.

I don’t actually know how the world operated before Google. And I definitely don’t know how people planned parties before other way more talented people planned parties and posted pictures of them for you to completely rip-off.

Here are types of things I’ve Googled since May.

How do you make a mason jar look rustic?
How do you make a tablecloth look rustic?
How do you make a future husband look rustic?
How do you host a barn wedding but like, in downtown Toronto?
Are sumo wrestler suits an appropriate wedding activity?
What wedding dress styles make your arms look skinny?
What engagement photo poses make your arms look skinny?
Should I just workout my arms once and awhile?
Is it possible to have a bridal shower that doesn’t make people want to die a slow death?
Are there wedding DJ’s that aren’t overall terrible human beings?
Quotes about love and Whiskey
What are the best kind of whiskey shots?
What do you do if your boyfriend loves whiskey more than he loves you?

PRO: People expect you to use the word fiancée.

CON: This is an awful word that makes even the best of people sound like idiots. Let’s eradicate it from the human language.

I feel like this word was designed simply to set people in relationships apart from other people in relationships. What a strange, nonsensical divide.

There is no way of pronouncing this word that doesn’t make you sound like an asshole.

Please stop it now.

PRO: People will suddenly become very interested in that one part of your life and ask you a ton of questions about it.

CON: If you’re anything like me, you won’t have an answer to a single one of them.

Life is so weird man. Sometimes I think that if I laid all my pivotal life decision down like a series of dots every single one has been immediately followed by people asking, “Ok but what’s next?”

There’s no stopping it.

When you’re single everyone asks when you’re going to settle down. Find a partner and it’s when’s the engagement? The wedding? The babies?

Figure out one thing, what’s the next thing? You’re ok now, but you could be better and further along and more more MORE!.

When we got engaged I naively thought, “Boo yah! No one saw this coming, this will quiet down the masses for a second.” But then immediately it was “Have you booked a venue? When are you trying on dresses? WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU DON’T WANT AN ENGAGEMENT RING?”

Instead of taking a breath and just asking each other how life is right at this very moment, we’re all stuck chasing a future that for no reason is always deemed brighter and shinier and better than the present.

Everyone thinks I’m wholly naïve to think that I can bang out 90% of this wedding in the three months immediately preceding it, but here’s my rationale:

The hard part is over.

I found him.

We don’t all fight and cry our way through the relationships in our 20s in the pursuit of one day, or one party.

We do it so we can grow into someone worth spending life with. And then we go out and try to find someone worth spending life with.

It’s all so that one day someone will look at us and be like, “Hey, I like hanging out with you, would you like to hang out forever?”

The flowers and the dress and all those thousands of other small decisions will come. But I don’t want to spend so much time making those decisions that I miss the next year buried in piles of font and twine choices.

I’ll probably have a month’s worth of sleepless nights over appropriate tablecloth shades and string light bulb wattage. But 30 days is better than 365.

So maybe I’m inexperienced, and yes, maybe a little out of my league with all this planning but I do know this: When it’s all over, all I’ll remember is the people in the room and the person standing beside me.

Which brings me to the ultimate PRO: It’s your one excuse to get all the people you adore most in one space for one giant, ridiculous, intoxicated night of fun and horrendous dance moves. That’s what sold me on this whole wedding thing.

Plus, it’s life after the party that I’m pretty pumped for.

Homo6ixuality: Toronto Pride

July 4, 2016 By Emma Gillies in Toronto Tags: Gay Pride, LGBTQ, Love, Relationships, T.O., The 6ix, Toronto, Toronto Pride 1 Comment

Toronto, this weekend you proved why I speak so highly of you. I’ve been burnt out on you this summer, spending my weeks trying to find ways to spend my weekends away from you – at lakefront cottages, at homes close to cottages close to some body of water (at times I would have settled for a kiddie pool and a sippy cup full of alcohol if someone offered).

Anything to step momentarily outside the chaos and High Rises, the metal and ritualistic burning of money that accompanies summers here.

But then you go and have weekends like this one, so full of love and beauty and progress and pride that I wonder why I ever wanted to leave you.

Here’s the thing I’ve always known about you Toronto: you are not a city that is content on riding on the coattails of progress.

You define progress. You set precedent.

Toronto, you are only the multi-racial, multi-sexual city you are because you have not just accepted or accommodated differences, but have encouraged them. You have enveloped these people in all of their diversity warmly into your arms and whispered, “Welcome, you’re safe here. This is where you belong.”

And Toronto, you have PRIDE.

Yesterday you were beautiful. You were a city at its best, most enlightened self.

You were on fire.

Because Toronto, if it’s one thing I’ve always respected the fuck out of you for it’s this: you know love is hard enough to find and maintain without having to fight for the right to feel it.

You know that life can be cold and love is rare and when two people find it that should be celebrated for its rarity, not ridiculed for its existence.

You have understood, long before other cities, that the support of friends and family is important but so is the support of the larger community. That truly powerful cities, the ones with heart, will protect love in all its forms and allow it the possibility of thriving, rather than extinguishing it with declarations of, “That’s not the right kind of love.”

You are the city where my mother felt comfortable taking me to pride parades as a toddler. Where yes, I definitely have clear memories of naked old men marching and being beelined in the head with condoms being thrown from floats.

But I also have memories of beautiful women holding hands, and men of all shapes and sizes kissing each other tenderly, and hoards of people laughing and dancing and strutting in celebration.

And because of that, because you are a city that holds one of the Top 5 Pride Celebration attendance records IN THE WORLD, and because I was raised in the thick of it, I got to grow up thinking what everyone now seems to be realizing:

That love is love is love is love.

You are a city that is part of a larger country that finally elected a Prime Minister worthy of the respect of the gay community; a man who looks at the residents of his country in all their diversity and represents their rights. A man who marched in the parade yesterday so unabashedly giddy that people screamed triumphantly and wept uncontrollably (or was that just me?)

Toronto, yesterday you were host to a pivotal moment in Canadian history – The 1st Canadian PM to march in a Pride Parade – how fucking cool is that?!

And sure, you’ve set aside a section of your city to celebrating the rights of LGBTQ citizens, but expression of this sexuality is no longer confined to that space. More and more people are feeling free to express love and affection across your neighbourhoods.

It is not a city block that plays safe haven to this community; it is the city as a whole.

Toronto, after the shootings in Orlando you saw such a swift outcry from your residents, and the city ran deep with raw, visceral emotion. Empathy wasn’t a rare commodity and anger and sympathy ran across communities. We were not segmented that day but instead stood together in support.

And in an action meant to strike fear, we stood fearless. The overwhelming sentiment wasn’t panic that this could happen here but a firm belief that we would NEVER let it happen here.

We operated with the knowledge that Orlando may have been the actions of one man, but that one man was raised in a society that gave this ideologies legitimacy; that somewhere along the line he found support for this hate.

And Toronto, we knew you had to be better than that. You ARE better than that. You know that these beliefs cannot be fostered but must be squashed- by love, by proper education and by teaching support over anger at every turn.

And hopefully, Toronto, we will never have to deal with the emotional ramifications of a mass shooting because we will have built a city that declares that behaviour so intolerable, so outside the realm of possibility that no one would dare mess with the 6ix.

You are a city that knows one day these won’t even be conversations, or debates or arguments or fights. You know that if we continue on this path, by the time our kids are our age they too will feel proud to have been raised in a city that is trying to get the world to see sexuality for what it is: endlessly fluid; as a glorious spectrum rather than two opposing poles.

A city that knows one day “gay” or “lesbian” or “transgender” will simply be a characteristic, not define someone’s character; a city where if we raise our kids properly, we will welcome into the fold more tolerant group of individuals capable of choosing kindness over prejudice.

We will be a city that helps mould a country. We will mould it until we won’t require a rainbow flag anymore because a pride flag and Canadian flag will be synonymous.

Gay pride is Canadian pride.

And Toronto, yesterday you showed me your Pride and for that I am so endlessly proud.

Thank you.

My friend is raising twins and I can’t even find the remote control

April 2, 2016 By Emma Gillies in Life Tags: Humour, Knocked Up, Life, Pregnancy, Relationships, Toronto, Writing 2 Comments

I spent this past Easter Monday staring at the one-week-old faces of identical twin boys, incubated and birthed by one of my best friends Melanie.

That’s right. To all you young people out there currently considering having kids, let’s take a minute to really absorb that…

…You can have TWO of them. AT THE SAME TIME.

So I’m sitting there, watching these two tiny humans form neural connections and learn and develop before my very eyes and all I could think was:

All newborns really look like shrunken old men, and
Oh man, this is SUCH real life.

If you’ve read anything I’ve written in the past, you know I’ve spent a huge bulk of the last two years attending bridal showers, bachelorette parties and weddings.

So you’d think I would have already comprehended that this “real life” started long ago and that I’m sitting smack dab in the middle of it.

But although I love a good wedding (friends celebrating friend’s love and whatnot), unless all my friends find themselves immune to those, “Global Statistics” the unfortunate truth is, some of those relationships will last and some won’t.

And before you say anything, get off my back; I’m not being a pessimistic downer. Because for the MOST part (aside from a little emotional turmoil and the mass drinking of one’s problems away) people are capable of picking themselves up and moving on.

Marriages and the relationships that comprise them are as permanent as you actively choose and fight for them to be.

But now, the babies have started; those living, breathing, miniature mirrors into your own human abilities and inadequacies.

And babies are FOREVER.

The time has come for getting knocked up. When people get to sit back in their new-parent smugness only mildly haunted by that tiny voice in the back of their minds that they can REALLY screw these little people up.

Now don’t be fooled by my rejection of certain traditional life events – I want myself some babies.

I want them in that weird biological-clock-ticking-feel-it-in-my-gut-constantly-trying-to-hold-strangers-babies-on-the-street kind-of way I thought was completely made up by men and projected on women as a way to keep them from becoming CEOs and taking over the world.

However, the idea of someone’s entire emotional and physical existence being reliant on me? Me – the person who crumbles under the pressure of deciding between crunchy and smooth peanut butter?

That’s some scaryyyyyyy stuff.

Aside from paralyzing fear, here are some of my thoughts on having kids:

Pregnancy is SO WEIRD.

When I say this verbatim to friends, most of them laugh awkwardly and change the subject. Because you know, as mammals the process of being pregnant and giving birth has been firming ingrained in us as natural since the moment we stopped believing those stork stories.

So the fact that as a fairly educated woman who is not 5-years-old, I still can’t wrap my mind around the whole baby-making process is considered a little off-putting to some. BUT COME ON – we take 3/4’s of a year to grow another human in a giant sack full of fluid, letting it feed off our innards and then spend 20+ hours of excruciating pain excavating that now-grown bundle of cells from our bodies and BAM! – Instant life commitment.

That’s.friggin.weird.

2. Not all babies are created equally cute, but it’s amazing how if they are even vaguely related to you you’ll be signing up for baby model agencies before they’ve learned to control their neck.

My nieces are goddamn adorable, but both have gone through a definite “Rob Ford” phase (all chins and lesbian-chic blonde hair sticking in every direction), all of which we can look back and laugh at now, but one that not a single family member seemed to notice at the time.

Similarly, when I joke around about my extended awkward phase that lasted 11+ years my father STILL actively refuses to admit that this was a thing and continues to say I was always beautiful.

… I assure you when I was rocking inch-thick glasses and trimming my own bangs into sporadic projectiles from my head I definitely wasn’t landing any beauty pageants.

So what I’m saying is, if I have a weird looking kid, keep that shit to yourself. Hormones are going to trick me into thinking they’re cute as fuck and every kid deserves to have their parents look at them through rose-colored glasses.

My parent’s unrelenting belief in my beauty meant when I was called a four-eyed midget for two torturous years in junior high I was able to let it role off me rather than have it absorbed into my fragile pre-teen psyche. Kids need to grow up strong, and this strength comes first from their parent’s blind support and encouragement.

I plan on taking full advantage of the nine months I’m pregnant to be a full damn nightmare.

I spend most of my life trying to maintain a personality one can describe as “laid-back” or even “aloof.” But I still don’t understand why pregnant women don’t spend more time having full-fledged tantrums in the aisles of Loblaws if they don’t carry the exact right brand and flavor of ice cream.

For nine full months women have the ultimate excuse to shift between Zen and crazy-bitch and only have to utter a simple, “It’s for the baby”

Who needs to be passive-aggressive when you can just be aggressive?

No one wants to let you have a seat on the bus? Dump hot coffee on them. Restaurant accidentally puts bean sprouts in your Pad Thai? Launch a formal class action lawsuit. Your baby daddy doesn’t anticipate every want and desire at least 12 hours in advance? Have a suitcase constantly packed and ready by the door with threats of, “Never seeing his child again.”

SO MUCH FUN. Screw trying to be casual and low-maintenance in some attempt to not succumb to the crazy girl stereotype.

After all, it’s for the baby.

4. How do people plan for kids?

I’m a planner. Sure life demands a certain amount of spontaneity and if anyone wants to invite me on a private jet anywhere in the next 20 minutes SIGN ME UP.

But kids demand a certain amount of pre-thought. I need to understand what I’m getting myself into. The whole, “As human beings we are evolutionarily programmed to know how to raise a child” is a GIANT amount of horseshit.

Our ancestors never had to plan for death-by-peanut allergy or trying to save for college tuition in a city where affording a 12-pack of Timbits feels like a luxury.

I don’t think my human heritage means I’m innately prepared to know how to raise a kid in a high-rise condo. When our ancestors had to send their kids out to learn how to forage for food did they have to teach them how to take an elevator to the park?

No, they just had to worry about little things like dysentery, starvation and animal attacks. You know…the easy stuff.

At least the forest has great square footage.

5. Kids make everything immediately scary because you don’t want to be the first one to break your child.

Kids are going to fall down, and hit their heads, and end up with black eyes and bruises and lumps. I had a permanent soft spot on my forehead as a kid I ran into so many things (probably a clue I needed those inch-thick glasses early on).

But you always hope someone else is the first one to let your kid fall down, or drop him or her. You know, so you can sigh and act very superior and forgiving, all the while wholly relieved someone else got it out of the way first.

At my friend’s house Monday I was holding one of her sons and she went to walk down a set of stairs and I was like, “Nope, I’ll be staying put up here.” If she hadn’t been there to assist me I probably would have:

Remained on the second floor and lived off food scraps until someone more qualified to jointly manage breakable babies and stairs came along, or

Wrapped said baby in some impenetrable cocoon of pillows and blankets to ensure that should I slip and fall, he would be so fully encased in feathers he would bounce ever-so-gently to the first floor.

Similarly, my boyfriend recently caused a line at Starbucks to form behind him as he diligently examined the physics of pushing his niece in a stroller down ONE STAIR, assuming doing so would cause her to launch headfirst out of the stroller like a little human rocket (despite her being securely clipped and harnessed into said stroller).

When you have kids every crack in the sidewalk is a possible broken leg, every pebble means choking and every fruit fly and mosquito a transporter of death and disease.

On that pleasant note, if anyone wants to volunteer to babysit my future child really early on and scuff ‘em up a little so I can maintain that classic motherly moral superiority that would be fantastic.

Come on guys, it’s for the baby.

The Couple’s Cohabitation Rules

February 13, 2016 By Emma Gillies in Humour Tags: Cohabitation, Humour, Love, Moving in Together, Relationships, Toronto, Valentine's Day 3 Comments

Just in time for Valentine’s Day, I was looking through some old emails the other day and stumbled across a list I had complied for my boyfriend when he and I decided to move in together in July of 2014.

At the time, I considered myself a relatively lone-wolf kind of character, and I was terrified to the point of being non-functioning at the premise of living alongside another human that wasn’t my badass female roommate. So, I set about making a list of rules that I thought would be the keys to a successful shared-condo relationship.

For the most part, looking back on it, I think it’s clear that:

I’m oddly self-aware of my own insanity,
We’ve followed most of these, and goddammit, it’s worked!
This is my idea of Valentine’s Day-inspired romance.

So I present to you, my guide for successful cohabitation with a significant other, as written to my boyfriend Dan a year-and-a-half ago.

THE COUPLE’S COHABITATION RULES

AKA Dan and Emma’s step-by-step guide to not becoming a boring, emotionally-dependent couple with no lives

All the below will relate back to the main purpose of this list: as a young, relatively good-looking couple who have yet to sag and wrinkle in all the wrong places, we want to continue to want to see each other naked.

Here is how I see us avoiding being that couple whose only idea of date night involves an Italian shower, sweatpants and Netflix (please note use of the word “only” as sometimes HBO and a robe is what dreams are made of).

1.We will continue to have our own lives. Neither party ever has to feel obligated to invite the other out on his or her plans. Life will not end if I don’t experience a 4am hockey boy’s night where you drink out of lawn décor. Similarly, you don’t need to know the sordid details of my latest engaged friend’s wedding venue…and wedding song…and wedding dress.

2. Two words: Date night – Once a week. No excuses. New restaurants, bars and events are what runs this city and what fuels both of us. The moment we stop going out is the moment we stop being ourselves.

3. Don’t touch my laundry, as I’m never going to do yours. Towels and sheets are communal and will most often be done by you as you’re going to be astounded by the time I can survive between laundry sessions (a backpacker, hostel-dwelling attribute I haven’t yet shaken).

4. …I will try to do laundry more often.

5. We will never go to bed angry.

6. I will probably wake up angry a lot, and drop things, and spill things, and take 25 minutes to leave our place and still be pissed off because I’ll feel like you rushed me. But you knew all of this when you signed up…sucker.

7. Sex solves most arguments. Remind me of this when I’m being a cranky bitch.

8. Friends from out of town are always welcome to couch crash; I will even make them coffee in the morning and pretend their not interrupting my very delicate daily routine when I’m at my most emotionally vulnerable.

However, friends who live 5-minutes down the street but are just so liquored up that they think our place is a warm, inviting alternative at 4am? That’s only going to end with me making my morning shake in a blender about 6 inches from their face.

9. Give each other space. So, so, SO much space.

10. That being said, let’s try to find some activities to do together.

You’re probably never going to leap at the chance to hit up a Pilates class with me and I’m never going to want to join you and three of your guy friends while you spend a gym session complimenting each other on your bods instead of actually lifting weights.

But relationships are all about finding some common ground and shared interests. Like…I don’t know…ice cream, or seeing who can sit motionless in one place the longest.

11. Pre-drinks? Yes. After parties? Depends how much we value our furniture (aka, not a chance and I’ll kill you slowly).

12. Speaking of furniture, continue to pretend you give a shit about furniture. This décor-obsessed attitude is unlikely to subside for a solid 6 months (cue disgruntled sigh).

13. We will not, “let ourselves go.” It’s an attribute of those who take their significant others for granted and who are lazy depressed fucks. Are we lazy depressed fucks who take each other for granted? NOPE, DIDN’T THINK SO (roar).

14. Keep a little mystery – the naked human body is a magical, wonderful thing…that is not meant to be seen in harsh direct lighting, or bending over to pick up laundry, or slowly sauntering around at 2pm on a hungover Sunday afternoon in an attempt to be enticing.

15. If you stop manscaping I’m going to stop waxing. We’ll see who wins that battle.

16. We’re not using seeing each other every day as an excuse not to take trips. My travel itch will never fully subside and you have a lot of the world to see. Let’s make sure we save some time (and money) aside so we never stop exploring.

Pretty much I see it like this: we’re two fairly emotionally mature, funny muthafucka’s who it seems like most people enjoy being around. It’s a natural consequence that we like being around each other. It’s all about the energy you give out in the world so let’s make sure the energy we impart on one another is as positive as possible.

As I keep saying to those who ask, you’re an easy person to be around so if I can’t live with you I’m probably just fucked….

On that note, can’t wait to start this little social-experiment with you handsome. Aren’t you lucky!

_______________________________________________

Happy Valentine’s Day Everyone! May you all one day love someone enough to compile a completely obsessive compulsive list of do’s and don’t’s for your relationship.

Girl shows up late to the New Years Party

January 9, 2016 By Emma Gillies in Humour Tags: 2016, Happy New Year, Humour, New Years, Resolutions, Toronto, Writing Leave a comment

Ah the ol’ New Years post, she’s a popular little minx. Since we’re already more than a week into 2016, it’s clear I considered, opted out, and then reconsidered whether or not to write something.

But alas I think January 9^th still falls into the realm of, “New Year” so I’m going for it!

A new year brings with it many things – new beginnings, new ambitions, new dreams, new lessons to be learned, and new tired clichés of all of the former in script writing all over Instagram.

I’ve never been one for resolutions. And that’s not to say I don’t get why people do it. It’s easy to look back on the year prior and cringe at something you wish you didn’t do, or something you wish you had done better. You hurt someone or you ignored all the red flags and got dumped; you made all the mistakes and then ate your feelings. You continued to treat your treadmill with the kind of suspicion usually reserved for passing tall strangers in dark alleys.

So BAM! January 1^st hits at it’s all, “This is going to be MY year.” We’re all going to eat less chips and more spinach, drink more green juice and less wine. We’re going to climb a mountain, volunteer our time, run a marathon, save a gimpy 3-legged dog from a fire, learn the ancient language of Latin, and stop annoyingly re-posting Instagram photos from @thefatjewish because EVERYONE has already seen them and knows you’re unoriginal. We’re going to make more time for family and spend less time worrying about work.

Then January 15^th hits, we trade in the bottle of juice, pick up a bottle of wine, and we’re all left as failures, stewing in our self-created disappointment.

Until now, my resolutions- if I’ve bothered to make any- have always been very vague and, intentionally, rather easily achieved. Things like:

Don’t die this year
Try to occasionally act your age
Consume something green in color at least 4 times a week (apple Jolly Ranchers obviously count)
Stop making sweet sweet love to Pizza at 3am every.single.time.you.drink.

Sure, it makes it really easy to be successful (still alive and eating kale like a smug little champ), but it doesn’t give you much to measure this success against.

So this year, I’m going to Bucket List the shit out of 2016. And watch out kids, because things are about to get SPECIFIC.

1. Branch out and follow a recipe every once and awhile.

It is a known fact (because my parents told me so) that in elementary school I ate a white kaiser bun with cream cheese for lunch every day for an entire school year. I like a lot of different types of food, but I’ve always been able to eat the same thing on repeat for days at a time. So yes, now I don’t have the metabolism of an 8-year-old and have swapped bread and cheese for salad and tofu, but I can go weeks without switching up my lunch choices.

Also courtesy of my parents I have 26 recipe books lining my top shelf (You know, the shelf I intentionally can’t reach) all in MINT condition. Although none of them are my desired, “Recipes you can cook in 5 minutes or less using a maximum of 6 ingredients and one pot” I still plan on diversifying a little this year. To like…2 pots.

Talk about progress!

2. Take more photos

I love photos; sometimes I’m even an adult and throw them in trendy rustic wooden frames. But I also have to be in the right state of mind to actually want to be IN photos (see: slightly drunk with freshly washed hair). Not this year kids. Life moves fast and I’m starting to have a terrible damn memory, so photos it is, greasy hair and all.

3. Purchase new PJs

Sure I know my boyfriend likes me and still occasionally find me attractive, but I’m not doing myself any favors when I come to bed wearing my brother’s old 1987 t-shirt with a massive picture of Daffy Duck playing baseball on the back and XL sweat pants. No one wants to have sex with that. I’m never going to be some silk or lace girl, but I think I can definitely aim to sleep in something my size and from this decade.

4. Refrain from getting to know take-out delivery men on a first name basis

In 2016, I’m going to try and hold onto some of the deep-seeded shame I felt with the same Hurrier delivery guy came to my house twice over the course of 5 hours. I’m programmed to love people who give me food, but this year I need to remind myself that the 19-year-old delivering Mexican at 1am is not my best friend, even if I loudly and forcefully declare him to be.

5. Watch every 2016 Oscar nominated best movie

This is an easy one to bang out before the first quarter of the year is even done. I never get around to watching all the films, and there are always about 3 that I cast aside as being too bleak or too obscure. My movie brain needs some bells and whistles. So every year I watch the Oscars and say things like, “Helen Mirren was in HOW MANY movies this year?!” and “This show requires more Zac Efron.” Not this year folks! I’ve already sat through 3 hours of walking and grunting courtesy of Leo and The Revenant (which I can only assume will be nominated), so I’m on my way to Oscar gold!

6. Replace all of your glassware with copper mugs

No reason for this, it just bound to look fucking cool.

7. Buy some new workout gear

Sure, there’s something to be said for not looking like you care too much at the gym (i.e. Everyone on King West), but when my wardrobe consists of what would now be considered the LuLu Lemon Vintage line and Puma running shoes from whenever they actually still made Puma running shoes (I’m ball-parking somewhere around 2001), then something’s gotta change.

8. Stop feeling tempted to get into impassioned debates with people on the Internet

Good GOD there are some idiots out there, just trolling the internet, saying idiotic ignorant things, trying to pick fights. And sometimes I almost want to feed into it (The Starbucks red cup debate is one example of when I just couldn’t keep my mouth shut). But responding to these idiots actually gives their arguments more validity, and all they do is scream the same nonsense louder, most likely all in caps and with little proper punctuation or adherence to proper grammar..

So this year, I’m just going to chalk them up to the vocal minority and social media as the evil tooth that gives their ignorance a platform. I will remember that they are most likely inbred, enjoy the company of clowns, are cruel to small animals, ask their Yoda bobble heads for real life advice, and dress in Avatar outfits on Tuesday’s “just for fun.”

9. Taste things before you slather them entirely in hot sauce

I don’t think I know what food tastes like anymore, but I assume some foods have a flavor that can be described as something other than “heat” or “fire.”

10. Buy more mason jars

I already have a shit ton, so why not buy more. I’m going to put them everywhere. I’ll drink from some of them, paint others and use them as vases, use others to store my black Hipster soul, put string lights in others and BAM, homemade perma-candles. Mason jars are trendy, cheap ways to tell people “Welcome to my home, I like Pinterest, Urban Outfitters, man buns and wearing toques and scarves indoors.” Sorry guys, you’re going to be super jealous of my strong container game.

11. Live life offline once and awhile

For this new gig I’ve been working on at a tech company, I had to do some research on millennials and their relationship with technology. Blah blah yadda yadda, point is, in doing so I stumbled across an Entrepreneur article that stated that millennials check their phone on average, 43 times a day. And I remember first thinking, “Huh, that actually seems pretty low” and then thinking, “You have become a sick sick human Emma Gillies.”

We treat our phones like extensions of ourselves- like limbs- and I am no exception. So I’m not going to do anything too dramatic like delete Instagram or remove myself from Facebook (how would I ever find out when people’s birthday’s are?) but I do plan on making a valiant effort to not have checking my phone be the knee-jerk reaction every time I am bored or lonely. Like really Emma, put that thing away and chill.the.fuck,out.

12. Stop saying the following things to your boyfriend:

“You haven’t posted a photo of the two of us in like 3 weeks. Is something wrong?”

“Is that seriously how you chew?”

“I’m going to light that **insert novelty sweater, hat, tank top, ratty housecoat** on fire if you wear in one more time.”

“Those are definitely not the song lyrics. Literally not even a little bit close.”

“Are you watching Braveheart/The Bourne Identity AGAIN?”

13. Make more time for friends

I’d like to think my post on “Hopes for my friends” made is clear how much I love and value my friendships. But last year was a real lesson in self-improvement, then self-pity, then self-realization, a little more self-pity, then finally somewhere in there, self-satisfaction. The point is I spent a whole chunk of 2015 concentrating on me.

So friends, this year get ready for some intense smothering. I’m going to text you at all hours, send you Britney Spears wisdom gifs to keep you motivated, tell your significant others they don’t deserve you, crawl into your beds while you sleep so you can wake up to my smiling face, buy you kittens you don’t want but are forced to raise and house for 14 years, and surprise you while you’re in the shower with a Justin Bieber karaoke sing-along.

2016 is going to be so cute. BFFS4LIFE

14. Wherever you travel this year, find an infinity pool and take a picture in it

Sure I’m going to pretend to look out spontaneously over the horizon like I don’t know someone is taking a picture of my back, and you’re going to know I’m full of shit, but you’re going to like it anyway, because infinity pools are the copper mugs of water bodies – everyone just loves them.

15. Empty the recycling bin every once and awhile

I probably won’t actually succeed in doing this because for whatever reason my body seems to reject the movement of glass and cardboard from one location to another. But I can at least try to not overload the recycling bin and then break into long, loud boats of laughter when my boyfriend opens the cupboard and everything spills onto the floor.

Baby steps people.

Happy New Year everyone! Wishing you all a year of happiness, laughter, copper appliances and pools with wicked views. Cheers!

I Went to Bed a Skeptic and Woke Up a Belieber

December 1, 2015 By Emma Gillies in Humour Tags: Belieber, Justin Bieber Leave a comment

They say you can fall in love in a million different ways for a million different reasons.

They say you never fall in love with two people quite the same way.

And it’s true. I have fallen in love quickly and intensely, then slowly and with reservations. I’ve experienced teenage love and fallen in love with someone who barely even knew I was there.

But this is the first time I’ve fallen in love with someone I once hated.

I have fallen completely in love with Justin Bieber and I don’t even feel the need to keep it under raps.

Guilty pleasures be damned; I don’t feel vaguely guilty about this one.

Guys, I’m not sure if you’ve been informed, but the Biebs is COOL now. He’s gone and pulled off the ultimate Justin Timberlake, transitioning from a dismissed young pop singer to a legitimate performer. Of the top 5 Songs on Apple Music he occupies 3 spots.

Once strictly the stuff of female preteen fantasies- a little blonde personification of a teenage girl’s sexual awakening- it’s now become completely acceptable for people of all ages and genders to announce their adoration for him.

My history with Justin has been a long and torrid one. Previously, my feelings for him could only properly be described as “unrelenting detest.”

IF I listened to his music (which I admittedly did, you know, to fulfill research and curiosity purposes of course), it was done alone in a dark room at a low volume, much like a teenage male sifting through the contents of redtube.com for the first time.

I had a vague awareness that he was talented as fuck. I watched that “Never Say Never” documentary (once again alone in a dark room for research purposes), so I knew his talent wasn’t manufactured.

I understood that his songs were absurdly catchy. You know the kind you find yourself still humming 20 hours after you’ve heard them and silently hate yourself for it.

Five years ago I too found the song “Baby” playing on endless loop in my mind. But I didn’t welcome it, I fought it; I despised it. I hated his angelic, captivating little voice, his baby-faced good looks and his constipated-looking selfies. That hair swoop and high-pitched prepubescent twang so adorable to some was intolerable to me.

Because here’s the thing, although his talent wasn’t manufactured, he felt manufactured. He was molded and constructed and chipped away at by his record label, the music industry and the media until he seemed like this robotic wax sculpture of a teenager.

So it didn’t matter that he had the voice of an angel riding a unicorn through a field of gumdrops; I thought he was an absolute squid. It wasn’t important that his voice was undeniably good because his interview presence was atrocious. He was an entitled kid with a chip on his shoulder and I couldn’t see through that. Talented or not I had no desire to like him.

And it’s not that I blamed him. Outside of my general dislike for Bieber, there were undertones of something else: pity.

I felt sorry for him. I can only compare my feelings for Biebs as those I felt watching the documentary Blackfish about Orcas held in captivity at SeaWorld.

We raised Bieber. We put him in the spotlight and let our daughters and sisters and some of our sons and brothers swoon over him. We let people scream and faint in his presence. We put him in a fish tank, treated him like a God and then blamed him when he started believing his own hype. We expected him to be normal and approachable despite being raised under the most abnormal of circumstances.

We expected him to never have a bad day, a bad moment. We wanted wax sculpture robot Justin, not the human. We expected him to continuously welcome five years of relentless attention. We examined his personal relationships under a microscope and reveled in these personal relationships fell apart. We prodded through the first love of a 16-year-old and called it entertainment.

Then, in October, the paparazzi took a picture of him naked, put his dick on the Internet and we called it news.

We ogled low-grade, high-range photos of a 21-year-old’s penis. But hey, he’d better not be a prick about it (no pun intended). All’s fair in love and celebrity.

We mocked him in his youth and then we started sexualizing him the minute it became legally acceptable for us to do so. There is no normalcy in that.

So no I didn’t blame him. But I was also just tired of hearing about him.

But then, just when I had resigned myself to a lifetime of loathing the Biebs, came the Comedy Roast. The single best PR move I have witnessed this year, nay, this DECADE. And just like that, with one line:

“What do you get when you give a teenager two hundred million dollars? A bunch of has-beens calling you a lesbian for two hours”

…and Justin Bieber became likeable again.

He was funny and humble. A perfect mix of badass and emotional. His apology seemed sincere rather than contrived. In one fell swoop, Comedy Central and a panel of offside comedians made Justin Bieber human.

And in the span of two hours I went from hating him to walking around like the human version of the heart-eyed emoji, loudly declaring his merits.

His voice has stopped annoying me; I’ve started describing his hair as “flowing” rather than “lesbian-chic.”

Follow this up with music, where the kid has literally not made a wrong move. I think I’ve capped off at listening to the song “Sorry” eight times in a row in an hour and I’m still not sick of it. In the last couple of weeks alone he’s showed off his insane vocal range accompanied by nothing but an acoustic guitar on Ellen, and then got his white-boy groove on dancing in a bin of water at the AMAs.

And although I’m not heading off to Google naked, or even half-naked pictures of him anytime soon (ya I saw the Calvin Klein ad, it made me feel weird), I have started to notice there’s a certain Zac Morris quality to him that really lights the 10-year-old torch in me.

It took me 5 years of ups and downs to get here but I’ve finally arrived. We had a tumultuous beginning but now I’ve fallen headfirst into a pile of fangirl.

I’m drinking the Kool-Aid, I’m wearing the headband, I’m buying the t-shirt.

I’m a 30-year old Belieber and damn proud of it.

Top 10 Lists That Would ACTUALLY Help Me Get Through the Day

November 14, 2015 By Emma Gillies in Humour Tags: Brunch, Fitness, Instagram, Netflix, T.O., Top 10 Lists, Toronto, TTC Leave a comment

So aside from this little personal blog of mine, I have spent a notable portion of the last 6 months partaking in a little freelance side gig for the Toronto-based lifestyle blog Narcity. And if I could narrow my experience there down to one lesson about today’s readership, it’s this:

People LOVE lists.

I mean, it seems almost pointless to write anything these days that falls into the dreaded territory of “multiple paragraphs.” We’re talking single sentences; maybe a flashy picture or an animated gif and then you change it all to font size 20, tip your hat and consider it a job kind-of well done. Unless we commit ourselves to an actual book, our daily reading these days amounts more to the “skimming” or “browsing” of brief news articles, tweets and those ever so poignant Instagram poems.

And it makes THIS blog writing look like I’m trying to succeed in completing the online version of War and Peace.

But here’s the thing about lists. Sure, I too find myself delving into the, “Top 10 Free Date Spots in the City” or, “Top 15 Unique Toronto Brunches” and I enjoy a good search of excellent rooftop patios or a step-by-step guide to a DIY floral crown, but if someone could get on writing THESE lists I think it would make all our lives a little bit easier:

1.Top 10 tricks to acknowledge ONLY the people you know on the street and not accidentally enthusiastically greet that human you definitely only recognize through creeping their profile on Instagram.

2. Top 10 ways to tell if he/she is really that into you that only has one list item and it’s: 1) If you’re reading this, you already know the answer, now please stop with the Googling and go get your freak on with someone new (OK, consider this list complete).

3. Top 10 Apps you can download that will immediately de-friend anyone who uses the words “Bae” or “Fuckboy” off of all forms of social media.

4. Top 10 bars in Toronto that you never have to worry about running into your ex’s new significant other.

5. Top 10 grocery stores in your area that have line-ups of 72 people or less on a Sunday afternoon.

6. Top 10 things to eat drunk at 3am that will be as satisfying as pizza but won’t have you waking up feeling like you’ve had an incredibly active one-night stand with food.

7. Top 10 full meal recipes that use three bowls or less.

8. Top 10 tricks to make your body look normal in photos rather than like your arms and legs have simultaneously become pregnant with twin burritos.

9. Top 10 daily throw away lines you can use to make it seem like you definitely watched and paid close attention to last night’s football/basketball/baseball/hockey game.

10. Top 10 Netflix recommendation websites for couples so you and your significant other don’t have a FULL ON domestic an hour deep into trying to choose a movie.

11. Top 10 ways to tell if you really have to wash your hair day or if you can get away with not doing it until tomorrow.

12. Top 10 TTC routes that you’re least likely to find someone standing next to you loudly consuming a granola bar while that she-devil Katy Perry blasts on his or her earphones.

13. Top 10 places to work out where the clientele is good looking enough to be motivating but not so fit that you cower in the fitting rooms surrounded by abs with a single tear running down your cheek.

14. Top 10 Brunch spots that are still brunch prices and not that of an elaborate 11am steak dinner.

15. Top 10 cures for a weekend bender that don’t involve you getting out of bed, or moving, or breathing heavily, or lifting your arms.

16. Top 10 ways to kindly tell your boyfriend you’re going to have an aneurysm if he doesn’t start hanging the wet bathmat up after he’s showered in the morning so you don’t passive aggressively bury it in a Top 20 list 😉

17. Top 10 ways to save money (Yep, that’s a serious one. I need someone to tell me how because right now one of my savings accounts is a MASON JAR guys! WITHOUT A LID!)

18. The Top 10 things you suddenly and shockingly find yourself caring about when you become an adult because I’m tired of feeling alone in my sudden obsession with throw pillows, shoe racks and having all the coat hangers in my closet match.

19. The Top 10 items/dressings/sauces to put on your salad to mask the taste of salad.

20. Top 10 cures for the most real, highly contagious and debilitating disease of the 21st Century: FOMO

So if anyone wants to get on writing these, that would be exceptionally helpful to my overall existence. Anyone?….Bueller?