Creampuff Revolution

Creampuff Fears the Inking

Okay, I know I said I'd see you next November but this blew my tiny mind and I had to share.

It's about tattoos.

Katr got a tattoo not long after we met. It's a very cool rune based on her initials that an artist friend designed for her. It's about two inches square and it's on her shin. I love the colours, which are still remarkably vibrant after over a decade.

About 16 years ago, before Katr and I met, I was high on a surge of empowerment and decided I was going to implement a three-prong body-modification plan: an upper ear piercing, a nose piercing and a tattoo. 

This was just the FIRST stage, understand. I had plans for MANY more piercings and tattoos, but I wanted to complete this trio first.

I began with the upper ear piercing. The piercing itself went well, but the aftercare, where I had to awkwardly lie down to soak the ear in a tea tree oil solution every night for a month, was a bit of a pain. To this day, every time I smell tea tree oil, my hand goes to my right ear. Even after all this time, I have to be careful about sleeping on my right side in case my ear gets fussy. Why not just remove the ring from my ear, you say? Well, I do still like the way it looks but also, it's still the original jewelry from 2001 because I have NO IDEA how to get it off.

I got my nostril pierced in Calgary in 2002, while visiting my friend Glst. Again, the actual piercing went well but soon after, I developed a zit-like bump on my nose that would NOT go away. People would be like "Heeeey, nice nose pi---oh."

I thought about taking the stud out, but was paranoid that the hole would close over in the interim and I knew that I'd never be able to poke a fresh nose hole. Fortunately, a friend of mine at the time, Subr, told me that the same thing had happened to her when she got HER nose pierced and that it eventually went away. She was right...my giant growth finally receded and it's been fine ever since.

One of my favourite things about my nose piercing is that, even though I've had it for 15 years, every time I see my aunt Lisi, she asks me if it's new. EVERY. TIME. I SEE HER.

Aunt Lisi: Ooh, I like your (gestures to nose stud), is it new?

Me: Uh...Yes.

Aunt Lisi: Wow. Did it hurt?

Me: A little.

The thing is that my aunt Lisi is pretty deadpan and I honestly don't know if this is just a running joke for her and she kills herself laughing about it behind my back every time, or if she thinks I'm swapping out my nose studs for fancier nose studs or if she is legit delighted anew by my nose piercing every time we see each other, but you know, I don't want to know, because it's our special thing.

After my first two body-modification projects were so fraught, I waited on the tattoo until 2005, the eve of my 30th birthday. My friend Jeba's friend Spha had cool tattoos in white ink and that's what I wanted - just a simple, white ink tattoo of a spiral, because I was really feeling my goddess self. I wanted in on the fleshy part of my inner upper arm, next to one of my oldest and largest X-acto knife scars. Katr took me to the tattoo place.

Before getting my tattoo, I thought some things about myself:

1. I have a high pain threshold.
   
   
2.  I was at LEAST as butch as Katr, who got her multi-coloured tattoo without complaint.

It turns out that these two things are untrue. My high pain threshold only applies to me causing pain to MYSELF. When other people are doing it TO me, I DO NOT CARE FOR IT. And while Katr made it through a two hour session with only a grimace to indicate her discomfort, MY tattoo artist had to:

1. Stop not once, but TWICE during the 20 minute tattooing process to "give me a break".
   
   
2. Open the door at the back of the shop to let the cool night breeze in so that I didn't pass out.
   
   
3. Give me a lollypop. It was red.

All plans for further tattoos and piercings were abandoned that night. I think tattoos are hot and I'm SUPER JEALOUS of my friends' elaborate and gorgeous tattoos but I have accepted that I will never have Gina Torres in her Firefly outfit tattooed on my back because I can't, due to being a total wuss.

This all came rushing back to me last week when a friend of mine on Facebook (and I don't know which of you it was), was "interested" in an "event near me" and so I checked it out and it was this: a local tattoo shop, Rain City Tattoo, was having its annual Mystery Box event, where patrons pay $80, pull a random tattoo design out of a box and then HAVE IT TATTOOED ON THEIR BODY.

At first I thought "Oh, that's cool, a little tattoo, like a star or something!" but no. This is some serious shit. Here is a screenshot of one they did last year:

I am FASCINATED that this is a thing. If I did ever get another tattoo, it would take me AGES to decide on the design and the location. And these people are like "Fuck it, let's put this...(pulls from Mystery Box) BUZZARD on my body! Today!". 

I am in total awe of these folks. Kudos to them and their high pain thresholds and their available skin real estate and their trust in the Mystery Box. I hope you all got the pull of your dreams last weekend.

And hey, if I do ever face the needle again, I have a PRETTY good idea of what to get:

Creampuff Wraps Up Another NaBloPoMo

I did it! 30 days! 30 posts! And they were all GOLD. Hahahahahahaaa

Huge thanks goes to Katr, for inspiring me with her heroism and being patient every day as I complained that I didn't know what to write about.

It's Katr's birthday today and darling - my gift to you is to not be blogging every day. YOU ARE WELCOME MY LOVE

Some excellent things have come out of this month of blogging revitalization:

1. I got caught up with awesome blogger and fellow NaBloPoMo-er Solitary Diner, from whom I stole some post ideas.
   
   
2. I made friends with a Fiona the Baby Hippo fan as rabid as myself (Hi Jennifer!)
   
   
3. I learned that one of my childhood friends is now a GI nurse and so next time I have a stomach explosion, she said I could message HER on Facebook instead of my gastritis prayer group!
   
   
4. I discovered that a LOT of people get email for other people thanks to Gmail letting you register email addresses with periods or dashes and then not recognizing periods or dashes.
   
   
5. I found out that when you mention Duolingo in a post, Duolingo will email you about your "great article" and ask you to put a link to Duolingo in your post (you're welcome, Igor from Duolingo).
   
   
6. I showed up for things that I said I would attend and inspired at least one other person to show up for something they might otherwise have blown off. So yeah, I'm a thought leader. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

This afternoon, we completed our holiday decor with a wreath from the UBC Botanical Garden:

 

Then took the dog for a romp in the rain:

And tonight, we celebrate the miracle of Katr's birth with much drinking and merriment! And then we will come home drunk and watch the reunion special of this season's Project Runway, because OMG THE TWINS.

Thanks to everyone who came to read my blog this month and to everyone who stroked my ego by telling me I should do it more. My intentions are so good, you guys.

I love you all and we'll see you next November!

Creampuff Misses her Dumb Games

Many years ago, Katr introduced me to an online game called Neopets and I became addicted. Basically, you have a virtual pet and...you have to feed it. You could play a bunch of weird mini-games to earn points to buy food to feed your pets and you could change your pet's outfit and you could battle your pets against other pets and you could have your own shop and you could have a house and decorate it with stuff you bought from shops. There was a lot of other stuff you could do to, but those are the things I mostly did.

This is my pet on the right, AdelinaVenus the Elephante.

I always miss Neopets this time of year, because for the month of December, they had an Advent Calendar in the snowy area of Neopia and you could visit it every day and get stuff.

I realize that I am 42, but this kind of thing still delights me.

I stopped playing Neopets several years ago, because it had changed hands a couple of times and became very glitchy and also, I recognized that I was spending waaaay more time on it than a person should.

I was game-free for awhile, until our friend Elai sucked us into a Facebook game called Pet Society. 

Pet Society was like Neopets Lite. VERY lite. It was more about shopping and decorating and adorning your pet, which I loved. It was a very popular game and I had many "Pet Society friends" on Facebook and we would just used each other for daily bonuses and everyone was fine with that arrangement.

Eventually, the creators realized they weren't making much money and they started to monetize the game and I will not lie to you guys, I DID pay a small amount of actual money to get non-actual items. My taste was exquisite. BEHOLD.

Indiana Jones themed week - although nothing was licensed of course, so it was Bindiana Bones.

The Boyal Bedding. My hat was the best.

 Bight at the Buseum.

 Had I known that they were going to shutter Pet Society with so little fanfare, I have taken screenshots of my countless other rooms, like the Barry Botter room and the room where it always snowed. GOD, I loved Pet Society. But it's gone.

I was briefly drawn into Castleville, but that thing just got too crazy and it wasn't fun any more, so I quit that.

Then I got sucked into Tiny Tower on the iPhone...and its companion game, Tiny Death Star...but after awhile, those both started to feel more like work then fun, so I gave them up too.

It's been a few years since I really got into one of these dumb games and I miss them a little bit. Katr and Drtr both have a couple of games that they both enjoy but they both like more complicated things. I'm a simple bear. Who wants a simple game.

All this to say - if you have any suggestions for dumb games, I am ALL EARS. Like this tiny warthog.

Tiny warthog cooling off in a tiny mud puddle. pic.twitter.com/30bFK53UOS

— Surprising Nature (@suprisingnature) November 28, 2017

Creampuff Not a Pedorthist's Dream

It has not been a banner year for Creampuff's general physical well-being. And it all started in May. Inspired by the beautiful spring weather, I decided I would try to improve my general health by walking more.

I was walking Effie for about an hour, four or five days a week (don't freak out - Drtr, or one of her TWO SETS OF DOG WALKERS were walking her when I was not). I decided that I would try to work my way up to walking her 5km every time we went out and after a few weeks, we hit that goal and I was very proud of myself and felt great.

There was only one problem - my right foot hurt.

I've had plantar fasciitis on and off for years but it hadn't bothered me for ages and I'd somehow misplaced my old orthotics AND the boots they were in back in 2015. I tried stretching and did all the exercises they tell you to do and made sure I was wearing good shoes and occasionally took an ibuprofen, but I continued to walk and it continued to get worse, to the point where, every time I stood up, I would LURCH forward, like Frankenstein's monster, limping like an idiot and hanging on to furniture for dear life, until my foot warmed up enough for me to walk more normally.

After a few weeks of this, my left knee, tired of being lurched on to every time I tried to get up, said "FUCK YOU, FATTY" and also went out. So that put an end to my excellent 5km walks and also enabled me to shuffle sadly about for most of the summer. It was funny, because I had increased my endurance so much that I didn't get tired from walking but I could only do it real, real slow. 

I slowly healed, reduced my dog walking time and went and got a prescription for orthotics. And then my stomach said "FUCK YOU, FATTY" and I couldn't do much walking for almost a month because I would get dizzy from not eating. But you know what also happens when you're not eating? Your body starts to eat itself! Sure it fuckers up your metabolism, but it did lead to less pressure on my foot and I started to get excited about walking again. I just got back up to 5km per walk this week! But now my foot is hurting again.

So yesterday, I FINALLY got it together to go in for an orthotics appointment.

The last time I got orthotics, I put my feet in a box of foam at the chiropractor's and then, two weeks later, the orthotics arrived. THIS time, I had an hour long appointment with a professional pedorthist whose name rhymed with "Belson". 

Belson was so nice that I ended up not making a joke about how the first four letters in "pedorthist" are "pedo". He spent a lot of time looking at my feet on the floor, testing their range of motion on the exam table and repeatedly had to tell me to relax my feet, which was hard, because a) I don't like having my feet touched and b) I'm used to stretching my feet when they're touched, because that's what our yoga teachers always want us to do. 

"This big toe isn't as flexible as the left one," he noted.

"Oh yeah," I said, a memory surfacing like a magical porpoise, "I BROKE that toe doing a punch front off a springboard in 7th grade!"

Belson made a note.

"And there's a sort of bump here on the right side of the right foot."

"Holy shit," I said, as a memory narwhal joined the porpoise, "I BROKE that foot falling off a curb when I was 12! Man, you're like a palm reader. But for feet! A SOLE reader!"

Belson, to his credit, gave me an LOL.

After the foot exam, he wanted to watch me walk (because come on, who wouldn't?), so I paraded around the office as Belson analyzed my gait.

The results were not good.

"Well," he said, "I'm kind of surprised that it's your right foot that's hurting, because it's your left side that's really messed up. Your knees are a little hyperextended and then your heel...well, it's like every step, your heel slides out like - "

He did a move that looked like this: 

 I could NOT stop laughing. 

Belson 3D imaged my feet (THE FUTURE IS NOW) and I'm going to pick my orthotics in a couple of weeks. I am VERY excited at the prospect of being able to walk pain-free.

The dog is going to be EXHAUSTED.

 

Creampuff's Tanenbaum

I was so impressed with my fellow NaBloPoMo-er Solitary Diner, who got rid of her Christmas tree this year as part of her impressive decluttering efforts. Just as she was getting rid of her tree...we were buying a new one.

We can't have a real tree, much to Katr's chagrin, because I am a special snowflake who is allergic to nature. We bought our pre-lit faux tree back in 2003 and it served us well until the end of 2014, when it looked like this:

After attempts to relight this tree utterly failed, we gave it the old heave-ho and then, for two years, did not have a tree at all for two reasons, both of which appear conveniently in the following photo.

That's right - we had a little puppy and the house was stuffed with hundreds of shoeboxes. Last year, Effie probably could have handled the tree, but last year's Shoebox Project was the most successful yet and that meant that every inch of floor space was occupado. But, after five years of shoebox lurve, we're taking a break from it and that means we had room for a BRAND NEW TREE!! We decorated it yesterday.

It was so fun to see all of our ridiculous and pretty and super old ornaments come out of the boxes that Katr packed up so meticulously back in 2014. We have a lot of great ornaments from all stages of our lives, but probably my favourite is an ornament that I made in kindergarten, which my parents gifted to me when they moved and decided to go treeless.

It is made of pasta, beans and glue and it basically looks like a pool of vomit encased in a green ribbon. FEAST YOUR EYES.

I love that some crafty teacher put these materials together and thought "These are what memories are made of." And almost 40 years laters, that teacher was right.

Anyway, I thought there was going to be a point to this post, but I think it's just me bragging about having the time and space this year to put up a tree. SO FESTIVE!!

Question for the tree-having members of the class - what's the weirdest ornament on your tree this year?

Creampuff's Top Gift Suggestion for This Year

Back in 2012, I bought Katr a five year journal for Christmas. A five year journal is a little book with five years' worth of space to record a line or two about your day. I got Katr the Happiness Project Five Year Journal, because she'd enjoyed the book.

While she found the daily quotes about happiness kind of relentless and oppressive, ("QUIT TELLING ME HOW TO FEEL, BOOK!!") Katr still managed to write a little something in there every day and I thought "This is so COOL. I want one of these!"

So in 2013, I bought one for myself - the Jane-A-Day Five Year Journal. And every night, I write something in there.

Here's what a page from the journal looks like, if you're interested. You should all get one, they're super fun.

I have always wanted to keep a regular journal, but I'm obviously too lazy to blog regularly, I hate writing long hand and most of my digital journals just end up turning into wank fests (the angsty kind, not the kind you want to wank to). So the five year journal is PERFECT - I can record a few salient details about events or feelings or weird dreams or funny shit I might otherwise forget, and it takes me 2 minutes a day.

But the BEST part of the Five Year Journal is being able to look back over the previous years and see how things have changed, how things have totally NOT changed and the unconscious patterns you've developed in your life. It's sobering to see how much you obsess over the same things, year after year. It's fun to remember the little details of days from three years ago, when you tried a new recipe or had a really good phone conversation with your best friend. And it's hilarious when we make random plans with our friends and I'll notice the day before we get together that we'd gotten together on the same weekend the year before, or played the same game, or gone out to the same place, or bitched about the same things. 

It's also a great way to keep track of your first eggnog latte of the season every year. Because I do that. This year, for example, my first eggnog latte of the season was today.

I'm a little sad because I am on the last year of my Jane-a-Day Journal and I have to START FRESH next year. While it's kind of delightful to face a blank page, I'll miss re-reading the previous year's entries before recording the day's events. So here are a very few of my favourite five year journal things that I will have to start anew in 2018:

BEST COINCIDENCES:

July 26, 2013 - I happened to be in Calgary for a family reunion and my oldest childhood friend Chma came by and picked me up and I spent a lovely morning with her and her awesome kids at a splash park, drinking lattes. 

July 26, 2017 - The same date, FOUR YEARS LATER - Chma and her family happened to be in Vancouver, so I got to meet up with them and have lattes! I hadn't seen them in the intervening four years.

Oct 15, 2014 - I starting writing my play The Good Bride!

Oct 15, 2015 - Was the first preview of The Good Bride at Northern Light Theatre!

REFERENCES I WAS SURE I WOULD REMEMBER THE FOLLOWING YEAR BUT NOW HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THEY MEANT

Feb 29, 2014 (not a date that actually occurred): "How I long for the clamour of the chestnut man."

Mar 21, 2015: "Thank you for your patience, fucky!"

May 28, 2015: "It is better to have a dead person in your house than someone from Pisa."

BEST ONE LINE ENTRIES

Jan 21, 2015: Tanya tied me to a chair during savasana today.

Oct 26, 2013: Stole neighbour's zucchini and lied about it HAVE NEVER FELT MORE ALIVE.

Nov 12, 2013: Clafoutis.

Jan 11, 2014: There's a wind warning in Vancouver - and another wind warning IN MY PANTS.

I have tried to foist the five year journal on a few folks over the years and I don't think any of them EVER used them. So many this idea is delightful only to me. But if you think it sounds fun, they're not too pricey and make a great stocking stuffer! YOU'RE WELCOME. And thank you for your patience, fucky.

 

Creampuff's Final Shar Pei Saturday...FOR NOW

If I go through the photos on my phone, 98% of them are from the dog. Even when we went to Mexico and I took a million photos of the amazing towel art Housekeeping left in our room every day, I still have a TON of photos of the dog on my phone from Drtr, who was dog/housesitting while we were away.

I love all the photos of the dog - derpy, tongue-out, foamy-faced, staring intently at her prey - but I have a special place in my heart for pictures where she's awake but has her eyes closed.

I love it because it looks like she's meditating.

Taking deep yoga breaths...

Or SMELLING THE SEA...

Naturally, being so zen is exhausting.

Good dog.