Creampuff Revolution

Seeking Simone Ep 2.5: Leslie is live!

For those of you whom I did not hassle endlessly yesterday, we hit an exciting Simone milestone when we held the last episode of Season 2 hostage until we got to 1000 Facebook fans.

I was worried that this would blow up in my face, but people were super nice and now we have 1023 fans and the episode is up! Woooo! It is called "Leslie".

This episode was especially fun to film because a few of my favourite Toronto gals - Jeba, Berin, Lex, Sura - showed up to be the extras at the restaurant during Simone's date. Thanks for keeping the rambunctiousness to a minimum, ladies - you are all class!!!

Creampuffs in the Pool

Back in November, Katr and I went to an all inclusive resort in Mexico called Excellence Playa Mujeres. While we were there, we had some thoughts and took some pictures. These are those thoughts and pictures.

DUM-DUM!

I know, right?? Awesome.

The first time we went to Excellence Playa Mujeres was right on the heels of the crazy rollercoaster goat rodeo that was buying our home (literally, we got on the plane the day after the deal closed). So we spent the first few days there staring straight ahead or weeping, spending many evenings in our room instead of going out and taking only two photos the whole time we were there - one of some papayas that tasted like farts and one of a particularly nice hibiscus. 

THIS time, it was a totally different story. We were bright eyed! Bushy tailed!  Super drunk! We went to the spa (that's a whole other post)! We got in the pool even though it was freezing! We went out to dinner all the time! We talked to people! That, as it turns out, was a mistake, but otherwise it was a pretty great time. 

Cuban show. Hubba hubba.

Highlights included:

Lesbians

I always get excited when I see other lesbians at the resort. I immediately want to shout "LESBIANS!" at them while clapping my hands like a seal, but I realize that shouting "lesbians" at random lesbians in Mexico might be perceived incorrectly. So then I spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to signal to them that Katr and I are not just fat sisters who like to grab-ass in the pool. To what end? I don't know.

I honestly don't know what I hope the outcome will be when the other lesbians realize that they are not the only muffdivers in the Lazy River. As Katr pointed out when I plunked our things down very close to one of the suspected lesbians on the second day, what if they are idiots? Just because they also do not care for the dick doesn't mean that we will totally get along.

I dared to share a few twinkly glances with the butchest of the lesbians there nonetheless - although later, when I saw her engage one of the servers in a lively conversation about her favourite beer and why the resort should carry it and how disappointed she was that the resort didn't have her favourite Australian beer, I wondered if perhaps Katr wasn't correct to advise a cautious approach.

In the end, we never actually had a chat with any of the lesbians, but it did give me a frisson of excitement to see a few of my own kind on the beach in another country.

Emmanuel at the Lazy River

We staked out our favourite spot at our favourite pool pretty early every day - like REALLY early, like 6:30 or 7 a.m. - because we really like that spot and also because we really liked Emmanuel, the hardest working man at the resort. 

This was the only time I saw Emmanuel stop moving the whole time we were there. Photo by Katr.

I make a lot of jokes about being drunk in general, but the fact is that I rarely drink and when I do, it's ONE drink and it's usually about a tablespoon of Amaretto in a pint of diet gingerale. Emmanuel was not having any of this.

From the moment we sat down around 9 or 10 in the morning (you stake out your chairs, see, then go back to bed, get dressed, have breakfast and then go back to your chair and laugh at the nimrods who thought they could show up at the lazy river at 9 a.m. and just FIND SEATS HAHAHAHAAHAHAAAA you're so naive!!) Emmanuel was ON us.

Once he'd figured out our drink for the day, he would just keep bringing them - the minute your straw made that slurping sound against the ice, he was there with a fresh drink and a smile. And we DRANK THEM.

That's my flabby white elbow on the left. JEALOUS?

It is entirely Emmanuel's fault that we spent one particularly raucous afternoon in the pool, laughing hysterically and riding the pool floats like they were ponies. I remember thinking, as I flailed around in the water, nearly blacking out with mirth, that THIS is how people drown in pools shallow enough to stand up in. Oh, good times.

Katr's Birthday

It was Katr's birthday while we were there! They put up some balloons in the room and brought us a little cake. Katr...you're my favourite and I love you the most!!

Katr's birthday shrine with flowers and cheesy photo I got from the resort photographer. 

People with No Boundaries

I don't know how it happened. We met a few folks from the Trip Advisor forums that we'd haunted for months before the trip, and that was lovely. But then, we met some other people who were also nice but HAD NO BOUNDARIES. 

The second week, we somehow ended up in a marathon yap session with two couples, one from Missouri (we'll call them Bhea and Bave) and one from Manchester (Braig and Bindsey), and ended up getting roped into having dinner with them later that night. We didn't really have conversations with these people so much as we provided a face for them to look at while they talked about themselves endlessly.

Where the swingers meet, according to Antonio who works at that bar on the left.

When they did stop to ask us a question about ourselves, it was only to find a new jumping off point to talk about them. They were super friendly and occasionally funny but after a few minutes, it just really exhausting and OMG I KNOW THINGS ABOUT THESE PEOPLE I SHOULDN'T KNOW, like:

• Medical problems, mainly involving the brain


• Crazy ex-boyfriend/ ex-girlfriend/ex-wife/3-dead-husbands stories


• The feeling you get in your nuts when you swim with dolphins


• That Bhea from Missouri thinks Obama was a secret Muslim (that's where Katr lost her cool)

We also met a gal from right here in Vancouver, who we'll call Beirdre. God love her, she accosted us in the pool one day to ask about where we were getting our poolside burgers (Emmanuel kept us fed as well as liquored).

I was a little drunk and wasn't wearing my glasses, so I kept staring at her as she sort of barked questions at us and as she reached up to rub her face I realized what it was that was off about her - SHE HAD NO FINGERS. On either hand. NO FINGERS, YOU GUYS. 

This poor woman had lost her fingers - AND toes - and a lot of her hearing - after contracting a mysterious bacterial infection and going from healthy to near death in two days.

We got to hear all about it and also, all about the other people she met who had similar horrible random things happen to them while she was physical therapy learning to walk again.  

Holy fucking shit, Beirdre. 

So, to recap, here's who we met at our resort.

Social analysis

I couldn't figure out how we'd become such freak bait this time around - our previous visits to the resort have yielded some pleasant, superficial conversations with other couples who were content to exchange a few words and waves.

Katr, however, being smart like she is, had some keen theories as to why we'd attracted these folks:

1. We're two women travelling together and neither of us looks particularly gay. Girlfriends on a "girlfriends" or "sisters" trip are always looking to gab! Their men aren't around and they love "connecting" with people! 

2. We're fat and therefore must be either jolly and friendly and/or lonely, because fat people are reviled! We are non-threatening and are probably very motherly and also, they might be doing us a favour, chatting with the poor fat ladies, we probably have a lot of cats, etc.

Next time, we're going to have to either bring another couple with us for protection...or just be a lot more rude. You know, either way.

More photos

Katr has some delightful shots up on Flickr and so do I. There is one in Katr's set of me drunk in the pool but I'm not posting it here because you're too young to see that.

 

Hahahaha - New Year!

Oh hey, guys! Happy New Year!! Yeah, how's it going? Good, good.

So it somehow became 2012 since the last time I was here!

I hope that you all enjoyed wonderful holidays with your families, chosen and/or biological. Katr, Emmy Lou and I experienced two weeks of debauched whimsy, full of really fantastic family, friends and food...oh, so much food. Emmy could barely fit into her Santa outfit!

I hate you fatties so hard right now.

I know a lot of folks out there are super against New Year's Resolutions because a lot of the time, our resolutions are grandiose and unspecific and therefore unrealizable. And to those folks, I say FUCK YOU, LET ME HAVE MY DREAMS.

As one must, I reviewed my resolutions from last year. Here are the results.

1. No family deaths in 2011! YEAH!! 

2. Finish my stupid play that's set in the Yukon. COMPLETE.

3. Weekly blogging. HAHAHAHAA!! Okay, in my defense...yeah, I have nothing. I came out pretty strong at the beginning of the year though and I look forward to doing the same this year - blogging weekly until about...April? Then slowly slacking off until the end of the year when my only motivation to blog becomes my friend Jeba leaving real pushy comments.

4. Word of the Day writing project. NO. This was supposed to be a good way for me to noodle around for 15 minutes a day, you know, so that I could really force myself to write even when I didn't feel like it, leading to literary GOLD. You know what I found out? I'm kind of a wanker.  I managed to do this for about three months and deleted it all in disgust and decided to spent my 15 minutes more productively, by doing laundry or playing Plants Vs. Zombies on my iPhone.

5. Watch less TV. YES. This year, my best friend Padu and I started a weekly phone date. We chat in the evenings, when I would ordinarily watch TV. So thanks to Padu, I now watch at least one hour less of TV per week. Baby steps, people. Baby ste-- wait, shut up, Sister Wives is back on.

6. Smell fantastic. YES. Katr's crazy pile of philosophy products for Solstice last year kept me smelling like food pretty much up until right before this year's Solstice, where the only bodywash I had left was Candy Cane and I spent the last couple of weeks before the holidays smelling like a minty foot. Fortunately, Santa once again gifted me truly insane amounts of deliciousness this year, so I'm back to smelling like gingerbread, eggnog and cherry crisp. JEALOUS?

7. Reduce the stash. NO. This was going fairly well until Sundara Yarn brought out Water Lily in the spring. And then Porcini in the fall. And then Monet's Basilica and Grand Canal of Venice in the winter. I'M A HUMAN WITH EYES. I HAD to buy these. But hey - I DID do some good knitting this year, which I will feature in a later post, so get ready.

Photo credit: countingstitches, whose stash is epic

That's it for last year - and obviously "Weekly Blogging", "Smell Fantastic" and "Reduce the Stash" are all rolling over into this year - but what about this year's grandiose goals of unattainability? Here's what I came up with:

1. Bi-weekly Yoga. By that I meant yoga twice a week, not weekly bisexual yoga. As I mentioned in my yoga post, I was pretty sure I'd hate yoga but our teacher is adorable and we are digging the namaste. Ideally, we'd do yoga MORE than twice a week, but right now, twice a week is the number of times Jane shows up and makes us do yoga. 

2. Sugar cleanse. I'm generally against cleanses, because they make you unfun and also I suck at them. But I think that cutting out sugar for a defined period of time (say, a week) would be a helpful exercise, if only to find out how crazy I get. I will let you know how it goes, if I don't smash my computer and get arrested for trying to eat the gingerbread trim off the house down the street.

3. Become a yoga douchebag who doesn't eat sugar. Hahahaaa! Just kidding. But I know you were wondering. 

4. Brag about the iPad 2 Katr got me for Christmas, which she had engraved and everything so we'd know it was mine, even though SHE only has an iPad 1 and REALLY wants an iPad 2 but giving me fancier technology than she has is just another way she proves her love. COMPLETE. By the way, I named the iPad "Voldemort".

5. Pick something and fucking work on it. I'm not a very original person. I have many one project idea a year. And then, the year after, I have another project idea. Then I think about doing something about these ideas and have another idea. And then when I have time to DO something with these ideas, I can't decide which one to focus on. It's pretty ass and I don't get anything done.

So this year, I've winnowed it down to two ideas and I'm seconds away from deciding which one I'm going to throw all my energy into this year. Seconds away. Annnnnnnny second now.

Okay, that's what I got for now. I hope that 2012 brings all good things to all of you! Stay tuned for my weekly blog post! HA ha! For real this year, guys!

 

Creampuff Recap

Oh hi! I didn't see you there. Mainly because I haven't been here in a couple of months. HA ha!

I realize that while most of you are good kind people, you don't really give a shit where exactly I've been or what exactly I've been up to the last couple of months. But one of the great things about having a blog is that it operates as a handy record-keeping device for my rapidly failing memories! What follows is a brief, photo-heavy recap of what the hell has been going on.

1. My short play Anne and Diana Were TOTALLY DOING IT was published in Queering the Way: A Loud n' Queer Anthology! It's a real book - you can buy it and everything.

 They had a book launch here at Little Sister's. Thank you to our super awesome Vancouver friends who came to hear us authors read from the book and who then bought the book and then pretended it wasn't SUPER DORKY to let me autograph the book. I felt like a lesbian rock star.

Also, I got to meet Kim in real life for the first time!  I used to read her blog when she had a blog. She is delightful. It was a magical moment, caught on film. 

2. I got new glasses. See above.

3. We had my family over to eat turducken for Thanksgiving. Yes, that's right - a chicken stuffed in a duck stuffed in a turkey. Holy fuck was it ever good. Sadly, we didn't get any good photos of the unsliced turducken and once it's sliced open, it looks like an autopsy. But I DO have a cute photos of my brother Jaro and his girlfriend Trsm's dog, Jasper, hoping that a little turducken might fall his way.

As you can see, he and Emmy Lou were thick as thieves, if by "thick" you mean "avoided" and by "thieves" you mean "each other assiduously."

Jaro also brought Emmy a new toy. Thanks, Jaro. Really great.

4. I knit! Most of my knitting is SUPER SECRET HOLIDAY KNITTING but this little sweater has already been sent off to its tiny recipient, Charlotte.

5. Roadtrip! Right after Thanksgiving, Katr and I and Emmy Lou drove down to Monterey, CA, where Katr was speaking at a conference. We stopped in Portland, Grant's Pass and Fortuna on the way down and Eureka and back to Portland on the way home. I drove the whole way. With my mind. Katr did what she calls the "actual driving". I have to applaud her efforts, particularly when we visited Crater Lake, now officially the most terrifying, guard-rail free, shoulder-free, sheer-40-foot-drop-on-either-side-of-the-one-lane-road drive of my entire life.

Even though we were both sick the first part of the trip, it was still pretty fun and hilarious, mainly because of the dog.

Emmy Lou was in dog HEAVEN. Car rides! New places to crap! Back in the car! New places to crap! A lake in a crater! The mountains! The sea! The beach! The laundromat! The wharf! The lobby! Every day was a smorgasboard of doggy delight.

Crater Lake (not shown - dog)

Dog on the public beach in Monterey

Dog discovers pelicans on Fisherman's Wharft (not shown - many pelicans)

Dog peering into other people's hotel rooms at the Portola Plaza

Dog exhausted at the Vintage Plaza in Portland

6. Edmonton! After six years of sending pieces off to be performed there, I finally got to actually attend the 20th Annual Loud n' Queer Cabaret, where all of my Anne of Green Gables dreams came true!! My adorable parents came and brought their friends and it was super lovely to see some of my favourite queers in action. Sadly, there are no photos. Like Anne, you will just have to imagine it!

7. Skunk. I finally got a grainy, Lock Ness monster-style photo of the skunk from the safety of my friend Hildy's rental car one night. Look at the SIZE of that thing! It continues to terrorize the neighbourhood.

8. Anniversary! I kinda can't believe that our big gay wedding was four years ago this month. FOUR YEARS! My brother Jaro remembers it like it was yesterday...

We didn't get each other gifts this year - we opted instead to revisit our honeymoon. Stay tuned for photos of me drunk in the pool like this one:

 

 

Creampuff on the Lamb

Just noodling around the Facebook, as you do, and this ad column came up. The third ad down caught my eye:

What the - WHAT DOES FACEBOOK HAVE ON ME?? I knew this would come back to haunt me.

Creampuff Begins the Journey of Yoga

A long time ago, I had very good workout habits. I swam, I lifted weights, I elliptercized. Lately, my workout habits include dragging our 40lb dog around the neighbourhood once a day (mild cardio, strength-training) and occasionally doing a Billy Blanks Tae Bo video. And by "doing", I mean "marvelling at how sweaty the people on the video are getting while I sit on the couch and eat ice cream" (biceps). 

Katr and I felt like it was time to step it up, but our attempts at self-directed exercise have been poor in the past (see above re: Billy Blanks) and we decided that we needed a person trainer type to actually come to our house to gently nudge us into shape. Because otherwise, we totally wouldn't go.

I also decided our personal trainer would be named Travis.

Not sure where to start, I asked our hilarious friend Elisa, who runs Vancouver studio Kerrisdale Yoga, if she knew any personal trainers named Travis. She did - but she suggested that we should do yoga instead!

I'm not going to lie to you, guys. I was hesitant. Partly because yoga is slow (which I hate) and hard (which I also hate) but also, I know that yoga is taken very seriously by purveyors of yoga and when *I* think about practising yoga, I mainly think about this:

But Katr thought yoga sounded keen and none of Elisa's other contacts were actually named Travis, so she hooked us up with ... Jane. And thus our journey of yoga began.

I knew Jane was the right teacher for us when she did NOT end her "nice to meet you" email with "Namaste". She also didn't seem phased when I told her that we were enthusiastic students but that working with us would be like "teaching yoga to fat rocks". She just brought a lot of foam blocks. 

I was prepared for the slowness and hardness of yoga - but the one thing I was unprepared for was the amount of touching involved. I don't usually enjoy people touching me - but Jane gets right in there, adjusting here, gently pushing there, and occasionally just climbing on our backs in the hopes that her meagre 88lbs will help us actually get down in that dog. If our living room was the National Geographic channel, every Monday and Thursday evening there would be an hour-long show about a tiny monkey climbing all over some hippos.

We love her so much. She is awesome. So awesome that I won't reveal her last name because she's OUR yoga teacher, OURS and you can't have her!

We've only had about five lessons and so far, we're up to The "Smell Your Pits" pose - but I'm sure it's only a matter of time before she has us doing this:

I need to point out that this isn't some random awesome photo of some babe doing yoga. I ACTUALLY KNOW THIS PERSON - it's the lovely Michelle Girouard and I stole this photo off Michelle Girouard's website (or maybe her Facebook, I'm too tired from Foot Penis Pose to go and check right now).

 

Creampuff Is One of Them

I believe I've mentioned my fascination with Hoarders here numerous times. There are times I don't enjoy watching it - like, while I'm eating - but I always return to it at some point, often while I'm engaged in some industrious domestic task, like folding laundry or thinking about folding laundry. 

I'm not sure exactly why I can't look away. I suppose that, like watching a horror film, the attraction is that it's not happening to me. I mean, I know I'd never BE that prom queen getting killed with a blowtorch BECAUSE I'M NOT BLOND. That's just science. And because I don't have multiple cats or a severe, debilitating psychological disorder that prevents me from throwing things out, I could never actually be a hoarder. OR COULD I?

For Christmas this year, Katr bought me a new wallet. If you've been reading my blog for six years, you may recall the story of how I snatched my current wallet from some babe at Winners - my current wallet was hard-won and I have grown to love it, even as the zipper threatens to give way and the material is shredding ever so slightly around the coin purse area. And part of what I love about my wallet is that I can fit a lot of things into it.

A lot. Of things.

As a side note, I come by my large wallet naturally - my mother also harbored a wallet so heavy it could kill a man throughout my childhood and young adulthood. I don't know if she still does, because I haven't sneaked into her purse lately. Not that I ever did that as a kid, really - because even if her wallet was filled with the entire Library of Congress, my mom would still always know EXACTLY WHAT WAS IN IT.

Katr and her chic card holder have often mocked my George Costanza wallet - particularly when I'm trying to locate a rarely used club card amid my several extremely important 7-11 Slurpee receipts from 2006. At first, she was patient with my frequent "Fuckity fuck fuck!" outbursts with the zipper split under the weight of too many subway tokens for a city we no longer live in - but clearly, this Christmas, she decided enough was enough. She bought me this slim beauty:

Note: This is a photo from the website, not the actual wallet I own. I'm on the rag and too full of Cadbury eggs to get up, walk to the bedroom, take a photo of the actual wallet, come back in here, get the card thingy out of my camera and into my computer and paw through my endless photos of yarn and the dog to get a real photo.

I love this new wallet and was just waiting for the right time to make the transfer from my old faithful to this pert princess. I knew I'd have to eliminate some of the bulk - the Princess would not tolerate $25 in loonies or a wad of soy-sauce stained Canadian Tire dollars - but I felt ready to make the transition. So last week, I sat down at the dining room table to make it happen.

I took all of my cards out of my old wallet and went to put them into my new wallet. There were not enough card slots.

"Okay," I thought, reasoning with myself, "your old wallet didn't technically have enough card slots either. You keep your cards in a wad in a zippered area clearly meant for a mini address book. You don't need all of those cards. Just lose a card or two."

I couldn't.

So instead, I decided to go through and discard some of the loyalty cards for places I never really go, like Carlton Cards and Jamba Juice. But then I thought "What if I go to Monterey, California again some day and I hit the Jamba Juice and I DON'T HAVE MY CARD??" and I couldn't get rid of those either.

And then the panic hit. There was too much stuff in my wallet, sure, but it was ALL REALLY IMPORTANT!

"Holy shit!" I thought, as my blood pressure rose and I looked around for some Baileys, "This must be what hoarders feel like when someone tried to get them to get rid of that perfectly good rotting pumpkin on their living room floor!"

I won't lie to you - when I watch Hoarders and the people flip out half way through the clean up, I always think "Get it together, you nim-nong!" NEVER AGAIN.

Now that I've had a tiny taste of what they must be going through, I have nothing but respect and sympathy for those poor fuckers. And the next time I watch the show, I will go through the fire with them...as I finally clean out my wallet.

 

Shhh...

 

Can't blog. Reading The Hunger Games.

Creampuff Loses her Religion

Okay. I've been spending a little too much time reading fundie blogs and hanging out on Free Jinger. And I'm embarrassed to admit that when my gateway fundie, Meredith, wrapped up her blog last week, I was REALLY UPSET. Like, "end of Buffy Season 5" upset.

Thank god for Free Jinger, where I and others of my fundie-obsessed ilk can discuss the finer points of Meredith's marriage and how "get off your duff and wash your wife with the Word!" is my new favourite phrase. 

All of this talk of religion got me thinking about my own religious evolution.

I didn't ask a lot of questions as a kid. I had an inquiring mind - just not an inquiring mouth. I preferred to keep my own counsel and "figure things out" on my own rather than actually get the answers from my parents, teachers or friends. I don't know if I didn't want to look stupid - if I didn't want to bother anyone - or if I really just enjoyed puzzling things out for myself. Most of the time, this combination of observation, assumption and imagination worked out just fine for me but sometimes...it didn't. And that's probably why I thought we were Jewish until I was 10.

My mom was raised Catholic and I believe my dad was United but they were fairly non-committal when it came to religion. We attended the nearby Moravian Church sporadically, which was a pretty gentle Christian experience - correct me if I'm wrong, parents, but I think we attended more for the community aspect than the religion aspect - and all I learned about Christianity in Sunday School was that arrowroot cookies and apple juice are two great tastes that taste great together.

No, any real religious instruction in my childhood took place kind of peripherally and it happened in the same place I took swimming lessons and did day camp - the Jewish Community Centre. 

Of course not everyone there was Jewish...the JCC was basically our neighbourhood Y and everyone went there - but I assumed that since it was called the Jewish Community Centre and many people there WERE Jewish, that everyone who went there must also be Jewish, including me. And I thought that was cool. I braided the challah...I hung out with the giborim...I could sing Israel's national anthem in Hebrew. 

I figured that "church" and "synagogue" were just synonyms - I felt smart for knowing about synonyms - and I knew that some people took the Sabbath on Saturday and some on Sunday and assumed that when you were a grown up, you could pick whichever day of rest worked best for you. Sweetass!

I also thought that "Christmas" and "Hanukkah" were synonymous - and this idea was backed up by our yearly "Christmas" concerts at school, because the concert always included some kind of Hanukkah number (including one memorable year when some kid holding a lit menorah set our 6th grade Santa's cotton ball beard on fire and several dads leapt from their seats, batted the beard off the startled Santa and stomped it out on stage. Those dads were heroes.)

My final piece of evidence was that, at the Christmas Eve service at the Moravian Church, they were always talkin' about how Jesus was born the King of the Jews. Since we were worshipping Jesus...and Jesus was a Jew...then clearly we were also all Jewish like Jesus.

My reasoning was pretty airtight.

It wasn't until the Gideons showed up in my 5th grade music class and handed out their tiny new testaments that the sorry truth came out. 

I was very excited about the tiny red book (tiny! red! kid-sized! those sneaky Gideons). I took it home to my parents. The conversation that ensued covered the following points:

• What the hell were the fucking Gideons doing at your school?
• There are two testaments: Old and New
• The content of the Old Testament applies to both Judaism and Christianity
• The content of the New Testament is exclusive to Christians
• From an ethnographic perspective, our family is Christian
• You are not a Jew

Wait - WHAT THE FUCK??

I was super disappointed to discover that instead of being one of the Chosen People, I was just another run-of-the mill WASP. BO-ring.

I then went through a very religious period where I prayed a lot and went to other people's churches and wrote about the Lord in my diary and tried to read the New Testament several times but couldn't get past the lengthy "begat" section. (Actual quote from my diary: "All this "begetting" why can't they get to the "be-doing" ahahahahaha, sorry Lord.")

But I could never really get the religious fervour going again after the Gideons shattered my dream of being a Bubbie someday. And now, as you all know, my personal religion is pie.

Creampuff Doesn't Feel This is Appropriate for Kids

Can we talk about this?

This is the Daddle - the Saddle for Dads! You know - for those times your little buckeroo wants to put his feet in the stirrups and giddyap you in the balls.

I can't remember where I saw this recently - it wasn't the Tonight Show because Jay Leno sucks bag - and so my apologies if it was on your blog and I'm not giving you any credit. Although now I think about it, it might have been Regretsy, but I'm too lazy to go check.

Now, don't get me wrong - I'm all for fun times with Dad. My own excellent father was a keen ride giver and was an expert in rides of the airplane variety. I am grateful for the many sweet, giggling memories and innocent fun I had being tossed around as a child.

But I feel that even my fun-loving, ride-giving dad might have thought it was weird if I'd pulled out the Daddle and said: "Hold on, Dad - let's make this pony ride MORE REAL."

Seriously - at some point doesn't any dad strapping on a Daddle think "Waaaaait a minute here..."

I mean, one minute you're tightening those Daddle knee pads to give your kids a pony ride and the next minute, this is happening:

I have nothing against pony play - I just think kids should discover it through internet porn like normal people.