Creampuff Revolution

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.

Creampuff's New Obsession

GOD, I love the internet. Because no matter what weird thing you're obsessed with - oddly shaped post-it notes, Swedish fist-fighting, rugby - there is a group of people out there who not only share your obsession, but have started a forum about it.

A few weeks ago, I went down the internet rabbit-hole reading about the phenomenon of Stay-At-Home Daughters.

The SAHD Coles Notes: these young ladies are fundamentalist Christians who choose to remain at home after completing their home school education rather than going off to college.

They spend their days learning the gentle arts of thrifty domesticity from their mothers, reading the bible and taking care of their (multitude of) younger siblings while cultivating "a servant's heart" in preparation for fulfilling their biblical roles as women - becoming heart surgeons. HAHAHAHAAA! Just kidding. They are training to become helpmeets to godly men.

These girls stay at home - as looooong as it takes - under the authority of their fathers - until they marry and their father transfers his authority to their new husband! For real - it's part of the wedding ceremony.

But here's the most awesome thing - a bunch of these stay-at-home daughters have blogs! I know! And despite their thrifty fundie ways, they all seem to have really excellent cameras with which to document the day-to-day minutiae of their at-home daughter existences. Typical stay-at-home daughter blogs have names like Aspiring Homemaker, the Unliberated Woman, The Father Knows Best, Courageous Womanhood and - my personal favourite SAHD blog - Striving to Serve at Home. 

Striving to Serve at Home is about Meredith, the eldest of six, whose family runs an organic, sustainable dairy and poultry farm in Virginia. Meredith got her real estate license at the age of 19 (studying from home) and enjoys flipping properties - but promises to give up real estate flipping if it "threatens her husband's financial leadership".

I don't need to shit on Meredith and her life choices - while they're not my life choices, I think she's a smart person with a strong work ethic who's a titch more live and let live than some of her fire and brimstone fundie brethren. To be honest, after reading her blog - all of it, since 2007 - I actually kind of love Meredith, even though she'd probably shit twice, die, block my IP address and take a Christian shower if I ever left a comment on her blog.

God love her, Meredith waited a long time for her Prince Charming - in a culture where most stay-at-home daughters are stay-at-home mothers before they're old enough to drink, Meredith was 23 before her guy Stephen showed up. And the only reason they met is that he stumbled upon her blog the same way I did: by Googling "stay at home daughter". Creepy! Yay love! They got married a month ago and he's spirited her off to Oxford, where he's studying classics. She's super excited.

I'm not sure why but I found Meredith's constant talk of "God's faithfulness in scripting her love story" strangely compelling. I guess it kind of reminded me of the "yearning for a simpler time" I would sometimes experience when I read old-fashioned books like Anne of Green Gables, where you rambled in the woods, married a nice local boy, pressed your own apple cider, popped out a lot of kids and didn't have to worry about anything, like voting or having rights.

I yapped to a lot of people about Meredith and her God-scripted, internet-enabled love story but I don't get out too much and soon everyone I interact with on a regular basis had heard about this new obsession of mine and I had no one left to talk to about it. Also, Meredith didn't update her blog during her honeymoon (presumably because she and Stephen were getting to know each other in the biblical sense - or "skronking for Jesus", as my friend Padu would say) and I was starting to get antsy.

So I googled "Meredith and Stephen" and that's when I found my new online home - a fundie-obsessed forum called Free Jinger (Jinger is one of the 19 children in the fundie Duggar family, in case you weren't familiar with the Duggars) with a discussion area called Quiverfull of Snark.

Everyone is there - liberals, homos, recovering fundies, current fundie-lites, people who actually know the Duggars in real life - basically people who are as crazy or crazier than me about these fundamentalists and their homespun ways. Some of my favourite recent topics include: 

• Picture of the Morton Ball coming out
• Sister Wives sighting!!!!!!!
• Can we discuss this Ladies Against Feminism article?
• I found wives for the Maxwell boys
• We Can All Breathe Now - Kirk Cameron Assures Us That the World is Not Ending
• Gospel Aerobics

I have spent more time than I care to admit lurking on Free Jinger. I cannot get enough. And it seems like every time I'm on there, I learn about a new fundie blog or website that threatens to eat my whole weekend.

I honestly don't know why I'm so fascinated by fundies and their radical beliefs and their extreme reproduction and their terrible clothes and their constant talk of God's faithfulness and their eyes shut, fingers in ears, "LALALALALALA"-ing to keep the rest of the world out. But I CAN'T LOOK AWAY.

As most of you know, I've always been enthralled by people of faith - witness my ten year Catholic iconography obsession - but there's something extra tangy about these wholesome girls baking bread for their 12 siblings and innocently fellating pickles and waiting for their dads to okay some dude to court them. Do I want to save them? Do I want to be them? Do I want to corrupt them by telling them what that pickle photo reminds me of? 

Or do I just want to keep tabs on them because they're having so many fucking children that they will soon be our overlords?

History will decide. And the Lord.

Maybe next year.

I was all excited to participate in NaBloPoMo in November! And I just right now realized that it’s now December.

My mind. Yeah, it’s like a steel trap.

The Ballad of McLean Drive

Hey hey!

Around the time of my last blog post, two things happened:

a) We felt so burnt out after the Olympics that we booked an epic two-week vacation to Mexico for the end of March; and

b) We got a call from our lovely mortgage broker, Chle. He told us that the mortgage rules were changing in April, making it a lot more difficult for small business owners like our fine selves to qualify for a mortgage. So, you know…if we wanted to buy a place, we’d better get the fuck on it! Wooo!

We’d been planning to glance around for a place starting after we got back from Mexico in April but that wasn’t going to cut it. And we can move pretty fast for creampuffs, when the motivation is sufficient. If you know what I mean.

So we hopped on the internet immediately and began searching through real estate porn like there was no tomorrow. We also engaged the realtor all our friends were using – the best realtor in all of Vancouver – because we wanted to be cool like them. We’ll call her “MJ” – because that is her name.

After many long nights of surfing real estate pron, our eyes were glazed over and our right hands hurt a lot. But we had a few places we liked and MJ found some more, then pulled together a crazy marathon house tour extravaganza and we found the place of our dreams and got into a bidding war and won it! By offering to close in two weeks, right before we were leaving for Mexico, we won! The place was ours, pending financing!! Pop the champagne and take off your pants! Woooo!

We didn’t think the financing part of the deal would be a problem. Sure, it would need to happen crazy quickly, but we had been pre-approved for a mortgage back in January, and we had a good 10% to put down. What could go wrong?

I am not going to bore you with the details of the ensuing clusterfuck, but if I were making an album of songs about our purchasing process, the titles would go something like this:

The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation Ripped My Heart Out, Sat on It and Cut One

We Will Never Own This or Any Other Home

Fuck This Shit, Let’s Move Back to Toronto Where At Least They Have Garbage Chutes

Drive-by Inspection

Genworth Mortgage Insurance, Can I Have Your Babies?

The “B” in “Form B” Stands for “Because You Can’t Have a Form B If There’s No Strata Council Yet, Dipshits”

It’s 9 PM on a Friday – Do You Know Where the Guy from ScotiaBank Is?

REJECTED (power ballad)

Far From Over (cover of original Frank Stallone song)

Our Car is Now an Asset, not a Debt (Math is Hard for the Bank)

Conflict of Interest

In My Legal Opinion, Your Developer is Screwing You Out of $30,000

I’m Calling My Dad

Caulk This

My Parents Launch Such a Crazy Plan to Ensure that We Don’t Lose our Deposit That Universe Finally Stops Fucking With Us

Cautiously Optimistic but Still Covering Our Privates in Case We Get Kicked in the Nuts One More Time Before We Sign This Thing

The Fridge Has an Ice-Maker!

What’s hilarious is that I WANTED to blog about this whole thing from start to finish, but I DIDN’T WANT TO JINX IT.

But hey – thanks to the heroic efforts of our real estate dynamic duo, MJ and Chle, it all worked out! We have a new place to call our own! Our office won’t be in the dining room anymore! It’s so awesome!

And then we still went to Mexico because we’d already paid for the trip. HA ha!

We move in less than two weeks and elves don’t seem to be packing. But in the meantime, here are some photos of the new place looking all pristine, before we move in and lower the tone.

Living room with classy staging furniture. We wanted to buy those green chairs
but they were $400 each. Not even with a handjob, Joe.

 
Dining room with classy staging furniture and large freaky fake plant on kitchen island.

The building is a three unit strata. We’re on the ground floor,
hiding behind the cedars. Because our pants are off.

Out the french doors to our little yard and patio.
Or, as Emmy refers to it, “the shitter". Stay classy, dog.

The kitchen, ladies and gentlemen. The kitchen.

Guest bathroom with beribboned toilet, folded towel in
questionable taste and comically large sink. Jealous??

There are two bedrooms and a teeny den as well, but all my photos of them sucked and they didn’t have any photos I could steal off the listing. But what happens in the bedrooms is private anyway, YOU PERVS.

My gay brother-in-law is coming to help us move – it’s gonna be like a musical over here! Stay tuned for further moving shenanigans!

p.s. Mexico was very nice. I didn’t take any good photos and the papayas tasted farty, but we enjoyed ourselves nonetheless.

Creampuff and Her Luge Suit Ready for 2010

I don’t know what it is about a new decade but as 2010 kicks off I feel like anything’s possible. Time to burnish the triumphs and slough off the failures of the Naughts and hurtle forward into a future we all hope will FINALLY include jet packs. I have my luge suit on and the sky’s the limit!

Of course, our internet’s not working right now, so it’s possible no one will ever read this.

I have to say that 2009 was a great year in many ways, but I’m still glad to see the back of it, particularly due to the high death rate. First we lost my uncle suddenly in August and then on December 27th, my grandma Bea passed as well.

Grandma was 87 and her final illness was relatively short, so you have to give it up for a long life well-lived.

I have a lot of great stories about my grandma Bea, but probably my favourite is when she met my grandpa Pat for the first time. They met at a dance. He told her his name was Michael O’Donnell – and she told him her name was Lee Gordon. Clearly they were meant to be together; but the fact that they’d given each other entirely fake names – like, not even close to their real names - the night they met made it extremely challenging for him to track her down. Lucky for their subsequent 7 children, 16 grandchildren and 8 great-grandchildren, he managed to find her. Way to go, Michael O’Donnell!

They were married for nearly 65 years and while Grandpa is handling the loss with his usual honesty and grace, I can’t imagine how lonely it must be to lose your partner of 65 years. So we are sending him lots of love.

The fam headed out to the frozen tundra of Calgary for the funeral on Wednesday and it was snowy and frosty and incredibly gorgeous. I had been pining for snow a little this time of year, as I am wont to do, so I have to thank Granny for that little taste of White Christmas. But, as one of my many aunts said when we got to the church, “We’ve got to stop meeting like this.”

I wasn’t keen on resolutions last year as I recall – in fact, I don’t think I made any on my blog at all – but after the death-fest that was 2009, I think my first resolution for 2010 is:

1. No death. Just…stop it, people.

2. Move. After 3.5 years of ambivalence, I think we’re finally starting to get the hang of Vancouver. But we’re STILL biznitching about our neighbourhood and how it’s not very neighbourhood-y and how I see a lot of penis in the neighbourhood because crackheads like to whip it out. So after the Olympics, we’re gonna be out of here faster than a crackhead’s wang! I hope.

3. Don’t learn to drive. Shhh – I’m trying reverse psychology. I’ll let you know how it turns out.

4. Finish Padu’s sweater and other outstanding knitting projects. I bought the yarn for Padu’s sweater in 2007 and started it in 2008. I finished the back around this time last year and I finished the front a couple of weeks ago. Just 2 sleeves and a collar to go. THIS IS THE YEAR! Also, I’d like to finish that poncho I started back in 2007. And the Embossed Leaves socks I started this summer.

5. Finish my stupid play that’s set in the Klondike. I finished a strong draft of my OTHER lesbonic historical fiction play earlier this year but only because the literary manager at the Shaw Festival said she’d read it (which reminds me, I haven’t heard back from her. HA ha! It’s been a few months…perhaps it’s time for some Happy New Year harassment). Anyway, I’ve been sitting on this half-finished Klondike thing for, like, three years. I think it might actually be a radio play, but I won’t know for sure unless I ACTUALLY FINISH IT. And I’d like to get it out of the way to make brain room for my latest brilliant idea which I’m convinced to SO brilliant that I can’t tell anyone else about it in case they steal it. All I’m going to say is plane crash, polar bears, Others and an impenetrable mythology that goes on for six crazy seasons. I KNOW! It’s going to be a winner. Shhhhhh.

I could go on, but that would cut down on my “reading your resolutions on your blog” time and no one wants that. I wish you all a healthy, frisky and fabulous 2010! Just keep your hands off my luge suit.

Creampuff Doesn't Give Sarah Waters An Excuse to Call the Cops

Katr surprised me with tickets to the Vancouver International Writers Festival last weekend and it was AWESOME. Because the talk she got us tickets for was Sarah Waters in conversation with Bill Richardson - two of my favourite gay authors in the SAME PLACE. JEALOUS?

I must confess that Sarah Waters' latest book, The Little Stranger, was not my bag, and not just because there were no lesbians in it. It had that air of inevitable tragedy about it that instantly makes me not care about anything that happens. Would I have cared more if there was muff-diving AND inevitable tragedy? I'd like to say "no" but let's not be coy. Muff-diving adds a lot to any work of fiction. That's why Stephen King writes so many lesbian books.

The Little Stranger was beautifully written and meticulously researched, like all of Sarah Waters work, and I enjoyed the moment-to-moment reading of it. But overall, it didn't really draw me in. And then, when it ended, I was like "Oh. Huh. Well, that's done then." - unlike when I finished Affinity, which was a totally brilliant yet totally devastating kick in the box.

But hey - that's clearly just me. Because The Little Stranger has gotten rave reviews and been nominated for fancy awards.

Back to the festival - Sarah Waters and Bill Richardson were an hilarious pair of gays. And it was really interesting to hear her discuss the inspiration behind the book and the gloomy, decaying house as a metaphor for the tectonic shifts of the class system after WWII and the decline of the great estates and I loved listening to her talk about it. Because I'm not a total hick you guys - even if I didn't like it, I could still appreciate it.

There was a book signing afterwards and I brought Fingersmith, because I have the sexy hardcover and I'm re-reading it right now anyway and it fit in my purse. (I thought it would be funny to bring a copy of Emma Donaghue's Life Mask instead, but ultimately decided that would only be funny to me.)

I always feel like a total nim-nong at book signings. I don't know that there's anything you can say to your literary idol in a 20 second encounter that won't make you sound like an idiot or encourage her call the police. Although I did tell Simon Callow at a book signing once that I was so excited to meet him I might barf. He seemed really charmed.

So anyway - I stood in line behind countless people who seemed to all be telling Sarah Waters their life story while she signed every book they owned. When it was my turn to meet Sarah Waters, I really just blushed and handed her my book and squeaked out my name and left. Because I'm a dork. But what I WANTED to tell her was this:

Back in the early part of the decade, I went to see Sarah Waters read the dirty bits from Fingersmith at Buddies with some friends. I remember that I was a little worried I'd get lost on the way there, as I was taking a new route and didn't know the neighbourhood at the time. Fortunately, as it turned out, all I had to do was follow the HUGE CROWD OF LESBIANS leaving the subway station and join them as they streamed across the parking lot and down the alley to the theatre.

One of the audience questions that night was "What are you reading these days?" I forget the name of the book, but I remember Sarah Waters saying that she hadn't finished the book yet because her girlfriend had given it to her on their first date and she was afraid that if she finished the book, then the relationship would somehow also be over. It was unbearably cute.

I was totally taken by this idea and thought that giving someone a book on the first date was a keen thing to do. So when I met Katr for our first date, I stole Sarah Waters' girlfriend's idea and brought Katr a copy of Waiting for Gertrude by ... Bill Richardson! The same Bill Richardson who interviewed Sarah Waters on Saturday afternoon!! DO YOU SEE THE CONNECTION? Isn't that AWESOME??

Anyway, Sarah Waters - that's the creepy fan story I wanted to tell you on Saturday. Now you know.

Creampuff's "Obscure Reference" Poll

Yesterday, during a script workshop, my dramaturge made me cut the "soylent green" joke in my piece because he said that only he and I would get it. The actor, an intelligent, well-read woman in her forties, had never heard of it.

I was shocked. Do we not all know about soylent green?? I must know!

I haven't decided if I'm going to cut it. It's my experience that when you make a more obscure joke, maybe 1/3 of the audience gets it - but that 1/3 of the audience immediately become rabid fans because they sense in you a fellow geek.

If you're curious about the outcome of this decision, drag your Easter Creme egg-filled guts down to Solo Flights on Monday, April 13 for a night of wine, cheese and monologues! It's pay-what-you-can and chocolate WILL be accepted. By me.

UPDATE: Well, I kept the joke in and the actor (Jan Derbyshire, who was hilarious and brilliant) ad-libbed something about Charlton Heston, which got a WAAAY bigger laugh than the original joke. I then went on to claim credit for the ad-lib, because I was the writer. So in the end, all were satisfied. Thanks to Solo Collective for the opportunity and thanks to everyone who came out!

Creampuffs Return to the Grind

6:00 a.m. is not the same as 9:00 a.m.

For one thing, it's a lot earlier. For another, I'm not really done sleeping. Thirdly, not only is it too dark to knit, but I no longer seem to have a full 8 hours a day to devote to that pursuit. I KNOW! Shitballs. This "back-to-work" stuff blows.

In other news, we have returned from fair Victoria, where we made out like bandits at Second Christmas! We felt quite spoiled by our books, dvds, extremely pricey face cream, and, of course, Santa's favourite stocking stuffer - the Clinique bonus. Among our gifts, I presented my father with the gift of several weeks of my slow slow knitting, resulting in - handknit socks!

He was kind enough to model them for me. Such a handsome foot!

We had a delightful time in Victoria, gorging on cheese and figs, watching the dog run free in the park and creating a new DC Comic series entitled Batman vs. The Widdler after Emmy Lou decided to take a big whiz in my parents' master suite. She was clearly exhausted after her crime.

We were a little concerned when we heard about all the snow happening in Vancouver and while she listened politely, I got the feeling my mom thought we were just being pussies. There was no snow in Victoria - surely we were exaggerating our piles of snowy troubles for effect (as she knows I am wont to do).

So when we hit some awesome blizzardation on the way home from the ferry last night, I was compelled to film it. It's almost as good as my seal oeuvre - ALMOST.

An Epoch in Creampuff's Life

Well, I didn't quite make it through NaBloPoMo. But you know...fuck it! HA ha!

So...Anne Made Me Gay: When Kindred Spirits Get Naked. I was going to stop Anne-ing it up on my poor beleaguered blog, but then I got the pictures back. So suck it, Anne-haters! Wooooo!

First of all, special thanks to ace photographer and all around fabulous guy Mondo Lulu, who captured the evening in such style. We had a photo booth where audience members could don Anne's red braids and pose. And they DID. Click through for photos! Do it! You know you want to.

Anne? Still? Ha ha! YES.

One more day, Anne-haters, and the Anne Made Me Gay hysteria will be over! But in case you're an Anne LOVER in Toronto, we're close to selling out. I would advise you to get your tickets NOW. Woooo!