bunny

HAPPY EASTER INTERNETS

ff

oh yes. it is friday. it seems like saturday cause it is warm out and also i went for a walk with sarah in the outdoors on the queen west where all the hipsters were. so i would swear it is saturday, except that it isn't.

that is to say i PLAAAANNNNNNED on reading this article and then talking about it. but didn't get around to it, cause, confusing week. so here's the piece. let's all read it together, yeah?

* why gender equality will make you rich and popular (sounds pretttttttty great, right?!)

okay, great job. i'm going to go see a movie about girls robbing stuff and so on. bubble gum and guns. super, byeeeeeeee.

monies

first of all. big time hoorays and celebrations because as of the end of last month ONE of my student loans is paid in full! WOOOOO! crazy.

meanwhile. i am constantly trying to find ways to efficiently track my monies. the cash-only method is nice i guess, but has never worked for me because cash reminds me of being a waitress and doesn't seem real somehow... it is way easier for me to burn cash than it is to spend on my cards. so. cards. (also cards get you points for things. so. cards!)

about two months ago i started a sticky-note system. I wrote out the balance of monies on each card and then tracked as i spent. so i'd always know exactly how much was left in chequings, or how big the balance on my amex was...

it was a good idea. having that number be RIGHT THERE every time i pulled out a card. but hard to maintain. finicky and wasteful... all these little sticky notes. i wasn't keeping up.

but then, yay! rachel over at heart of light posted about her 2013 budget plan. (you may remember rachel from last year when i tried out the purchase-posts. like me, she didn't manage to keep that going long.) she and her husband made these awesome little tracking cards where they'd tick off amounts as they spent them. brilliant. now my own budgetting is a little more loosey-goosey when it comes to categories. there's my food and margene's food, and various other areas of spending, that are all a bit unpredictable and thus hard to allocate THIS MUCH to each month. (sometimes margene needs to go to the vet! or i only need to buy foor for her every month and a half... etc.) so i've mixed up the idea a little and made little tracker-cards of my own! i just have to write down each purchase or deposit as i go and i know exactly how much monies i've got. (and after a few months of this i can get a decently clear picture of what i spend where, tra la la. i'm a grown up.)

just like that! so far it is working really well. feel free to steal this great idea (seeing as it is already stolen once). (and also, let's talk about why kids aren't taught how to manage finances in, like, 3rd grade. because it is ridiculous that i was NEVER taught any such skills in all my years of gettin' educated. crazy talk. but that's for another time. that conversation. super.)

thanks mom & dad

it is after midnight in toronto, which means it is TIME. y'all better have a good day in my honour. i expect you to consume sparkling wine and gummy candies. and to celebrate, all gifs all day over chez the tumblr.

saved my life

megan says grimes is probs my soulmate and i just don't know it yet. i believe she is probs right about that. because i have been scared, for some unknown reason, to get into grimes. i know. weird. but the time has come. sparkle-hoodie pastel-braids.



happy BIRTHDAY WEEK monday. carrot cake for breakfast.

reflections

is there an opposite post to the saved my life posts? can i do that? i am. doing it. this hit me right through where it hurts and dug in and stayed there. what the fuck, justin. weeping. justin you're a total asshole.



(best jewellery ad ever made. heart destroyed. and then so strange and so absurd.)

ff

oh hey, i wrote this post a whiiiile ago and it got lost in my drafts somewhere. anyways. a little late off the presses, but one-hundo-percent relevant. and besides, mostly this week has been all about steubenville and the worse than worst coverage and eeewwwwwww rape culture i don't wanna. so. fashion instead.

* this is a GREAT PIECE! about fashion and feminism!

bam! blamo! probably my favourite part is where she calls marc jacobs out for the dickbag he is. yaaay! he's groooooooss and i'm glad she says as much.

but also. so much good stuff covered. like:

 and like:

and issues of cost and sustainability/toxicity. all of the things! how wonderful to have someone who loves fashion for the parts that are worth loving, but remains critical. i am so glad that there are women really engaging in this kind of thinking around fashion. because so often it feels like feminism and fashion cannot mix... like when a young-man friend of mine said to me 'erin, i don't get you. i mean. you like all this girly, shallow, fashion stuff... but, like, you're smart and stuff. like. not girly at all!' because it is too much to think of fashion as anything but shallow. and it is too much to put 'girly' and 'smart' in the same world... as if they're opposites. (i am totes girly, too. fyi. and i am PROUD of that. ugh.) and maybe just maybe, the more people who aren't 'shallowgirlydumb' show that they care about the world of fashion, the more there will be a widespread demand for change that the industry won't be able to ignore - because it is no longer coming from outside.

happy friday, people-sized people!

when you love your home, it can be hard to go anywhere else

{i for sure stole this from jenn's instagram}

i wrote about it before. the extension room. and i've mentioned it here and there. but. i just want to say to the whole wide internetsworld how much i love that space.

the last year has been all kinds of ups and downs and busies and not... and through it all jenn and the extension room have been a safe warm happy healthy wonderful space for me.

i love working there. i love the energy and attitudes that people bring through those doors. i love how easily everyone smiles there. i love that the volunteers and owner and teachers and staff alike leave notes with hearts and happy faces for each other. i love the kindness and resolve and passion and joy.

today was a rocky day that went back and forth between desperate sadness and grateful relief and when i was at the most back-and-forth and about to get on a streetcar and either go home or go to class, i thought about how much like home that studio is. and if i am teetering, then that is a place that will bring me down on the right side. so i went. and had my ass kicked by an awesome class. and after i cried to jenn and i came home. and i am sitting here crying, smiling, crying, smiling, and wanting to send the studio some kind of giant thank you that won't fit into a text. so i'm putting it here.

if before i had any doubt, extension room makes toronto feel like home. like the right place.

battu

{damn straight i'm mudder ready}

so excited i might die. (also. i might just die.) i am signing up, along with a bunch of sickly-fit babes, for the tough mudder spring event. shit is gonna be cray. our team of ballerinas will destroy the obstacles like nobody's business, all the while wearing tutus. i'm pretty positive i'm the weakest link on our team... so i ran some stairs yesterday as soon as i heard we were taking this on. we are working out the registration and planning for a weekly training session. i'll introduce you to the team and let you know how things go as we pump ourselves up like whoa. blamo, biatches.

how does your body know to stop breathing?

 

it is the last one... girls on girls. and i will miss it so much.

and if anyone is wondering what i think (haha hi!) about the finale. well. i think the girls-on-girls crew missed something key in the epic rom-com finale.

they missed that we KNOW. we know how wrong all of it is. i don't think it is supposed to be beautiful or romantic, but sad and sadder-still. because most definitely marni and charlie will not survive. (or if they do they'll wither beside each other in a hateful, hurtful, blue-valentine kind of existence.) and adam and hannah are not good for each other. they're completely toxic. they are abusive and cruel and clumsy. and, sure, adam runs to save her and will always run to save her, but he also gave up his sobriety because of her. and she will always ask him to come running and - like snp notes - will never be the one to run to him. that ending wasn't triumphant. it was the sick cycle of dysfunction. only shoshanna is maybe okay. realizing who she is. i think she will be the one to survive. to become a whole human thing

(and, too, as snp says. so many of us want this. despite knowing what a lie it is. the montage. the music. we want the rescue and the grand gesture, while at the same time despising the rescue and the grand gesture. because of course we only want it when and how and with whom we want it and the chances of it coming our way in some other combination reeks of all the rom-com-non-consent-gender-essentialist bullshit we have pushed in our faces constantly. and it is a frustrating, awful, sad thing to both want and know.)

i hated that episode. but i'm pretty sure that was the point. just like we are not really supposed to like the characters very much very often... i don't think we were meant to actually enjoy that finale. because finales don't exist in real life and having everything wrap up nicely when you know there is a tomorrow to deal with... that is scary. the finale can't hold. and so i loved it.

saved my life (bonus)

BONUS BONUS BONUS!

my lovely sweet beautiful old friend sent me some very very helpful words last week. and with them a song for to listen to. and i have over and over. sister-voices! blood-harmony! tiny-humans! i love best when she makes a little chord change mistake, and they both lose their serious faces for just a tiny second and smile at eachother. sisters sisters.



and a teacup with earl grey infused vodka after ballet class. monday.

saved my life

it has been pointed out to me (very accurately) by a certain uncle, that i am perhaps listening to too much musical theatre. and i should be listening to blues.

obviously. how did i not think of that!?

i guess this is what happens when you put your children in theatre - they lose track of how to properly deal with a broken heart. well. here's a contemporary bluesy-man who i do tend to turn to when the sads get up into my bones. most definitely ray knows his way around being blue. so. lots. from this one.









if it is at all possible after hearing ray, happy monday.
('are you closer for the tears, or has the weight of all them years left you hollow?')
(and thanks, too, to peter for the crying bonnie.)

wendy

emma sent me a comic-thing (more on that one later) which reminded me about wendy. wendy is a mess, yo. she just can't get it together.

(wendy is a great cartoon character created by walter scott. wendy is one of those awful art-scene types with the partying and insecurities and the drugs and the drinking and oh man, what a disaster, wendy! wendy is brilliant. i have thought about making a cartoon-zine-project a few times... i'm still thinking on it. but oooof, it would have to be good. i need to decide what exactly i want to do and say in such a thing. and also get un-scared of raw-awful-things. i'd hate to make something lacking in any edge. anyways. thinking. on it. wendy, wendy.)

ff

this week in 'how will tavi gevinson save the world?' :

* rookie publishes this beautiful smart piece (on boys and control and the culture that allows for girls to be leered at and groped) by a trans man

{tyler talks about being on beoth sides of the male gaze}

what a fantastic perspective and voice! god i wish i knew of writting like this - and all the stuff rookie puts out - when i was a teenager. i'm so grateful that they exist now. there is hope, yo. for the future. 

happy friday my lovelies. tonight there will be henkell trocken.  

the broken pieces

SO WHAT IF I HAVE LISTENED TO THIS AT LEAST 32 TIMES TODAY?! YOU'RE NOT THE BOSS OF ME, MUSICALS. I CAN QUIT YOU ANYTIME I WANT! JUST CAUSE YOU'RE COMBINING MY LOVE OF MUSICALS AND MY LOVE OF TV? whatever. yes i know all of the harmony inside out. don't even worry 'bout it.



(or, but, if you must know, actually, i have been listening to the FULL version that wasn't on the show, cause then the guy sings a chorus alone so i can sing the harmony myself, duh. and probably you want to listen to it again, yeah? more? for longer? thought so.)



and, also, if you're wondering, yes, my neighbours more than likely want to kill me right about now. oooopssoooorrry.

off and back.

i spent years feeling unsettled... always working towards a something. i don't remember when it started exactly. university? just after? i am not sure. it seems like forever ago. there was always a something. tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow... forever waiting to be living completely.

(probably it is a 20s something. feeling like you are preparing for being a whole thing. (almost out of those. 20s...))

anyways. i wasn't, anymore, for a little while. just for a few months. all of the things stopped being somewhere else and were just being. i loved all of the things right here and right now. i was present and happy and good. job life home friends love city. it's not that before i was unhappy. just not there.

and then: there.

still looking forward and excited and wondering and nervous... but there. here... present.

and now. not, again. waiting. looking. and it is harder to go backwards. it turns out. than to feel behind in the first place. i am sick of looking forward. making choices for then instead of now. i would like to just be here.

i was very happy and very here.

silver, curtains, buttons, bread.

{zac posen fall 2013, photos by marcus tondo by way of style.com}

bees

{balenciaga fall 2013, photos by monica feudi by way of style.com} 

{balmain fall 2013, photos by monica feudi by way of style.com}

fever dream

it is only just just march 12th and it is already too hot to sleep. i have the window open all the way. i am tangled and sweaty in my duvet. all winter the heat didn't seem to work in my room, but now that it is spring...

saved my life

two things this week. both being the internets. one being words-on-the-internets...

{oh shosh...}

 

girls on girls is always always my favourite written-thing-on-the-internets these weeks. i love all of the girls. all. i love them even though i often don't agree. hooray and thank everything for these girls and their words (and, of course, for the girls-on-tv who inspire the words.)

and then. pictures. all of the pictures that go ping in my insides, and i collect them all together and there they are. or.

{a bit of the world i'm making}

 

 tumblr. fine, okay, fine, i love it. i didn't understand it for forever, but now i get it, at least i do as a tool for me and the pictures. endless and scrolling and looking and instant and easy.

cover

{ports 1961 fall 2013, photos by yannis vlamos by way of style.com}

happy cool love

{lanvin fall 2013, photos by marcus tondo by way of style.com}