Author Archives: Emma Gillies

“I hate the way you fill ice cube trays,” and other adorable things you find yourself saying when you live with a significant other

January 25, 2015 By in Uncategorized Tags: , , , 4 Comments

It was back in July 2014 when my boyfriend and I decided to embark on the ultimate young people’s social experiment. After a mere year of dating, we made the leap to move in together.

I wish I could say this decision was made purely from a place of deep romance and poignancy; that we were so enraptured by one another we immediately dumped our roommates out of a desperate, passionate need to share a bathroom.

But alas, we were the dumpees.

My beautiful and spunky former roommate decided she would prefer to live every day accompanied by above-zero winters and an ocean view and moved to Vancouver to live with her boyfriend.

She now wakes up to cartoon birds and mice that enchant her with high-pitched songs as they dress her in only a jean jacket because apparently that’s all you need to survive a west-coast winter.

Traitor.

Similarly, the boyfriend’s roommates decided they both wanted to become fully functioning adult males and live in their own places with bizarre home décor contraptions like doors…and curtains.

I tell you all of this because it is important to note that when it comes to relationships, I am more of a wade veryyyyy slowly into the water, turn and bolt out, skulk along the shoreline and then finally begrudgingly dip a toe in, than I am a dive-right-in sort of gal.

Another less delicate way to put this is that I only make important decisions on relationship commitment and progress when forced into a corner, and then kept in that corner for an extended period of time with a gun to my head.

In this case, the gun came in the form of…gulp… LIVING WITH A BOY.

To prepare myself for this dramatic change in my life I made a lot of both mental and physical lists. Things like, “Worst case scenarios” and “Ways that I am more mentally prepared for the zombie apocalypse than for living with my boyfriend” and finally, “The pros and cons of keeping a completely full ready-to-go storage locker in case I have to quietly slip away into the night.”

It has always been the case with me that I operate better in situations when I prepare myself for the worst possible outcome, and then anything that differs from that outcome is deemed a pleasant surprise.

SPOILER ALERT: It’s all been one GIANT pleasant surprise. I mean, pleasant in that way that’s it’s almost been TOO easy a transition, and that most days I have more difficulty choosing between light or regular cream cheese than I have living with him.

That being said, let’s be honest, no one really wants to hear about some perfect couple made of rainbows and honey that falls asleep every night holding hands on a bed of clouds. Life isn’t like that; I would never want it to be.

The most beautiful part of life lies in its imperfections, and in caring about someone enough to continually enter the battlefield together.

And oh how we’ve battled.

Living with someone is the equivalent of placing all your worst habits, insecurities and characteristics on a platter and then offering them to another human to accept. And not only do we expect them to be accepted, we are somehow insane enough to believe that this other human should them endearing. Like we should all just be walking around uttering a continual stream of, “Oh babe, I think it’s cute you’re the spawn of Satan first thing in the morning, and that pizza box that’s been sitting by our front door for the last 3 days is friggin adorable. Awww, is that a recently clipped toenail on the floor? How charming!”

All the pretense of dating, the ability to be the best version of yourself when you’re out with them, all of that disappears. There is no acting; that other person is going to see you for all the sides of your personality, and from unfortunate angles you’ve probably never even seen yourself.

On that note, word of advice for both sexes: if you want to keep the fire alive, never put on socks naked if the other person happens to be sitting directly behind you.

So naturally, this dropping of the curtain can cause some pretty ridiculous friction. I mean think of all the absurd things you couldn’t possibly imagine having a disagreement on (e.g. cracker brands, toilet paper costs, what temperature the room is set at).

Yep, you’ll argue about all of them.

Take for example the below nonsensical differences of opinion we’ve engaged in:

  1. Why I am the only human who’s ever deemed the microwave an appropriate place to bake a potato. (I’ll tell you why – 3 minutes BEGINNING TO END people. It takes 20 minutes just to heat up an oven. I would much rather spend the extra 17 minutes trying to find just one pair of matching socks in my closet. It’s called PRODUCTIVITY)
  1. His remarkable ability to make the bed in the exact wrong way on a daily basis. You’d think with 2 throw pillows and 1 quilt there would be a maximum of 5 ways to screw it up but no, I’ve been the witness approximately 62.
  1. My refusal to walk 10 feet to the recycling chute of our building. I prefer to create an elaborate Jenga-esq pile of boxes and tin cans under our sink. The taller it gets, the easier I am able to detach myself emotionally from its existence.
  1. His use of our communal bath towels to shower with after hockey. Have you ever smelled post-hockey hands? I feel like it’s a serious issue that probably comes up often in marriage counseling sessions, and the smell rubs off on EVERYTHING. I’d rather host a condo bonfire than have to get close enough to wash them.
  1. My general inhuman behavior before I’ve had coffee in the morning. This is less an argument in itself as it is the trigger of almost all of the above arguments.
  1. A mutual dissatisfaction with each others’ inability to refill the water jug in the fridge. This isn’t even some fancy Britta-type situation where you have time to conceive and birth a child while the water trickles through a filter. No, we have a dollar store jug that we fill with tap water to keep it cold. Yet neither of us has developed the aptitude to complete the two-sstep process of turning slightly to the left and turning the tap on to keep it constantly refilled.

Now who wants to come over to our party pad and enjoy a baked potato and some room temperature H2O?!

And yet, here is what I can tell you in short: Sharing an 800 sq ft condo with a significant other has been one of the best experiences of my life. And it’s been so fantastic not in spite of the above arguments, but because of them.

Because if you can’t stand the way someone makes the bed, the way they leave every door in the house ajar, and the way they chew food like they are sound checking for Madison Square Gardens; if you hate all that and you still want to stick around to see what new annoying habit they develop next…well, that’s love baby.

And I haven’t even come close to using that storage locker.

 

E.

I fought the lime and the lime won

January 17, 2015 By in Uncategorized 3 Comments

In my previous post I alluded to a D-list celebrity-style mental meltdown that I had following a lengthy year of living in debt and working my way into the ground. Now I shall present the details to you, in all their ridiculous glory:

It was a Sunday; the only difference from this day and other people’s standard Sundays was that I hadn’t had a day off in 18 days and was on my way to a friend’s wedding shower instead of zipped into a onesie, barrel rolled in a duvet, watching some sort of brainless trash TV like, “Taxidermy Wives” and eating my way through a deep dish pizza.

It’s never one grandiose thing that makes you crack when you’re burnt out; it’s just a series of small meaningless things. Insignificant events that would be otherwise inconsequential expect they build and build until your boyfriend just has to buy you the wrong type of Greek yogurt and you absolutely freak out into a tirade of, “I said 2%!! Honey NOT Vanilla! What is this Nazi Germany? Are you trying to starve me with this O% Yogurt travesty!”

Not that I’ve ever had that exact outburst or anything.

To give you some context, here are some of the small things that happened that day.

  1. I dropped my phone instead of my coffee cup into a garbage can on the way to aforementioned wedding shower, smashing the screen (hashtag first world problems)
  1. I had to be at a wedding shower. Decorating fake treasure chests with hearts and playing “What’s in Your Purse” is alone enough cause me to slowly slither beneath a carefully decorated cupcake table and remain in the fetal position with my ears plugged until someone hands me a bottle of wine and a straw.
  1. I had to go to Loblaws to buy groceries immediately after said wedding shower. Sunday evening grocery shopping is a lot like rush hour traffic; except everyone stuck in traffic is hungry, has low blood sugar and is fighting over sale pistachios. It’s the closest I have come to playing adult bumper cars and it stresses me out on a good day. This was already not a good day
  1. I had to pay for groceries at Loblaws and spending $80 on avocados and goldfish crackers is a weekly punch to the vagina.

But the real breakdown happened a mere hour later, when at home, I set about juicing limes for the only salad dressing I know how to make.

Let me set the scene for you: I am standing at the island in the middle of my kitchen, having worked 18 days in a row, emotionally on edge, hungry as fuck, hating weddings and everything related to weddings, staring at my broken phone, juicing limes so expensive they should be made from PURE GOLD, when the juicer slips out of my hands and four-limes worth of juice goes flying across the room and all over the floor.

Like I said, it’s never the grandiose things that break you…just a series of small things.

Staring down at the floor and the front of my shirt, now covered in lime juice, this is about the second that I started crying.

And I didn’t stop.

For 2 hours.

Bless my boyfriend’s little heart, he just stared at me, wide-eyed, having no idea what to do with the broken shell of a woman I had become, and set about fixing it in the only way he knew how…

By saying, “I’ll go get more limes” and immediately flying out of our house.

Now you don’t have to tell me that melting into a puddle of my own self-pity over a ruined salad dressing is not normal human behavior. And I say this having spent my life crying uncontrollably over some pretty ridiculous things: My childhood turtles suicidal tendencies, the movie Armageddon, Japanese Insurance commercials and those videos of dogs reacting to their solider-owners returning from tours abroad.

But never did I fathom that I could be brought down by a fruit mishap.

It was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back life I had been leading. I had traded in a work hard play hard mentality for just work, ALL of the time. And it took me a battle with a juicer for me to realize that I had run myself into the ground for not one, but two jobs that I didn’t gain any emotional or professional satisfaction from.

My post-University carefree life of travel had been replaced with a 9 – 5pm job in corporate communications at an investment firm and in the end, rather than feel like I was progressing, I felt like I was moving horizontally, further and further away from the person I wanted to be. In short, I felt completely misaligned.

It was only when I was sitting on my couch, hours later, with fresh limes in hand courtesy of my still-flabbergasted boyfriend who I had long since banished to the bedroom that I whispered to myself, “You have to quit your job”

And I stopped crying…instantly.

Call it a sign, call it temporary insanity, but I took the thought and ran with it. So here I am, three months later, having traded in my desk for a coffee shop and my computer for one of those cheesy inspirational journals that reads, “Make Way For the New” on the cover, and I am finally starting to feel like myself again.

Some people thrive on routine, and enjoy steadiness and predictability. I have always felt most at home in the chaos of the unknown. I figure life felt like an out of control mess when I had the routine, so I might as well take the mess back under my own control.

I mean after all, isn’t that what life is supposed to feel like? Like we are all perpetually walking a fine line between beauty and certain disaster, hoping that the scale tips in our favor more often than not, and where surprises are not just possible but welcomed?

I have thrown all my cards in the air, and much of what the next year has in store for me is one big fat question mark, but I am sure of one thing: I have liked myself more in the last month that I have in the previous two years.

Let the scales tip where they may. Today I’m balancing at about 50% certain disaster and it feels fucking fantastic.

Nothing like starting over (Ya it’s a Hunter Hayes’ song, GET USED TO IT)

January 16, 2015 By in Uncategorized Leave a comment

So I’ve tried to get this off the ground a few times, this “starting a blog” thing. The last time I got anywhere with it was this time last year. I had been working a marketing/communications job at an investment job and realized that nothing I was writing sounded like me. It’s hard to be sassy or sarcastic when you’re writing about mutual funds. My life felt creativity confined within a very small box and I was left feeling very stifled.

To keep my creative brain cells from slowly withering, I made the decision to start writing about topics I wanted to in my free time. A work colleague at the time gave me the wise advice that if I wanted to expand my horizons past the enthralling world of stocks and bonds, I should write about something that is already intrinsic to my life. “Think about what you spend the most money on, outside of rent and groceries, and write about that,” he said. The answer was easy: live music.

Every obsession starts somewhere. For me, I’m told, my love for live music started in 1987 when as a toddler my parents took me to a live Everly Brother’s performance. Even now that doesn’t surprise me. If you want to put me in a good mood, let me hear the first few chords of, “When Will I Be Loved?” It’s in my blood.

I was raised on a steady stream of eclectic music that I believe was due in large part to being the child of two hippy parents – my mom of who would always break out into spontaneous dance while washing the dishes to Roy Orbison; my dad, a University DJ and the drummer of what I hear was your average terrible University band The Lotus Eaters. A musically talented family we are not, but appreciators of the art form? Hell yes.

So I started a blog paying homage to live bands and to Toronto, a city full of unrelenting musical talent.

And then, because life is never one to avoid giving you a firm kick in the balls, one month into embarking into the blogosphere I was hit with an income tax bill comparable to a year-long colonoscopy. I was immediately resigned to working seven days a week to get myself out of the deeply dug hole the Canadian Government had dug for me.

I zombied my way through 2014; all signs of creativity were back shelved. Operating with the knowledge that I was at times working 15 days straight, the idea of setting out at 10pm on a Tuesday to see a band play became torturous rather than enjoyable.

If you think this is a completely impossible routine to sustain, and that 7 months of expending energy only outward and leaving no time for myself might cause me to spontaneously combust into a grey cloud of girlish tears, you’re not wrong.

October 2014 brought the the inevitable crack; the epic breakdown now known simply as: The Peanut Lime Vinaigrette Reckoning.

And because I’m only one blog post in and already a smug writer, I am going to leave that long-winded tale for the next entry. Cue overly dramatic black and white mystery film music. Dum dum dummmmmmm….

OK YOU DON’T CARE I GET IT….

….please keep reading?