Creampuff Revolution

Creampuff Gets Her Wings - Part the Fourth

In which Jeba and her enormous coffee get their comeuppance (sort of), Roro finds the perfect Irish sweater (sort of) and then they meet some really cool old ladies in a pub.  Also, pictures of the beautiful scarf Roro made for Maja (see left).

If you've been following along, you may recall that when we last left . . . us, my travelling companion Jeba had consumed a gallon of coffee before getting on an hours-long toilet-less bus trip from Cork to Galway.  I told Jeba, when she asked in a tight voice an hour and a half into the trip, that the bus would be making one stop halfway through the trip, in Limerick. By the time we made the stop, she was white-knuckling the armrest in an attempt to not whiz everywhere.  As we pulled in, Jeba pushed old ladies out of the way and rocketed off the bus in search of facilities. I remained aboard to make sure we didn’t leave without her – because I know that nothing good happens when we are Left Behind.   

I was reading my book when I heard Jeba reboard the bus. "It cost 20 pence," she said as she sat back down next to me, her voice awash with relief, "I had to break a punt at the snack stand, I didn’t have any change."  "What didja get?" I asked, looking up from my book to see Jeba take a long pull from another enormous coffee. "Oh, relax," she said, clocking the disbelief on my haggard, dehydrated face, "It’s only another few hours to Galway."

As we travelled the glorious green countryside (it was this kind of green, actually, a tweedy green, 70% wool, 30% silk, the kind you might get from The Wool Mill at Danforth and Woodbine), I felt Jeba's smooth-ridin' coffee-drinkin' posture transition, yet again, from relaxed to rigid. There was leg bouncing. There was tuneless "pleeleeleeeleeleeleeleese don't let me peeyeeeyeeeyeeee in my pants" humming.  There was desperate scrutiny of road signs. When we finally arrived in the city, I was left to retrieve our bags solo while Jeba, knees clamped tightly together but feet flying, narrowly missed kicking the elderly bus driver's junk as she beetled off to find another loo.  I shook my head smugly as I gathered up our luggage and then nearly passed out from dehydration.

Our hostel in Galway was like a fancy YMCA and a real step up from our previous hostel, where everything smelled like sperm and lager. Jeba and I somehow ended up in different rooms and I found myself sharing with a group of very young, sweet, friendly Americans. They were so friendly, in fact, that I barely begrudged them the Canadian flags they all had stitched to their backpacks.

After we had said our hello's to each other and they'd watched me root around in MY Canadian flag- stitched backpack, one of the girls asked me, in a tone of awe, if I was from Ireland. You know, guys - because of that Irish accent I have.  I thought briefly about saying yes, but I knew I would eventually blow my cover. After a few choice phrases like “top of the marnin’ to yeh,” or “I’d like to smash yeh in the face with my shelale,” my "Irish" accent would descend into the same muddle as my other “accents” and I’d end up sounding "Cajun", but with a head injury and a hare lip.

Reluctantly, I told her I was from Canada. “Oh,” she said. “I didn’t know you had an accent up there in Canada!” “I like YOUR accent," I said to her, "Where are you from?” “South Carolina,” she drawled, in the kind of accent that makes "ice" sound like "ass", “Oh, but I don’t have an accent.” And then she told me a story about her youth pastor. Later, when she was in the bathroom, I clipped the maple leaf off her backpack.

It was in a mall in Galway where I finally found my ideal Irish sweater. Most of the other sweaters in the shop were well out of my price range, but one of them was on sale for cheap. Real cheap. Hmmm. I put it on. It was a nice fit, the yarn a lovely brown/grey/cream. It was a cardigan and the buttons were those kind of faux leather grandpa buttons, except these were REALLY faux, like plastic buttons made to LOOK like faux leather. I couldn’t figure out why it was so cheap. No big holes. Mostly symetrical. I decided not to look a gift sheep in the mouth. I bought the sweater, donned it and left the store, stuffing my hands jauntily into the pockets. And that’s when the cheapo sweater mystery was solved.

It hadn't occurred to me to really look at the pockets in the shop. I mean - they're pockets. I proceeded to check them out. Each of the pockets had a big, goofy-looking ram on it. A flocked brown ram. Like a poodle on a poodle skirt. Only a ram. On my sweater. With googly eyes and yellow horns and no visible way from removing it from the sweater without completely destroying the pockets. I checked my receipt. All sales were final. Godammit. "Oh well," I thought, as I wandered back into the hostel, "I didn't notice it in the shop - maybe no one else will either! Yeah!" I stopped to chat with Katherine, the desk clerk. She saw my new sweater and said "Oh! Well, isn't that a lovely - (pause as she clocked the pockets) oh. That's a bit of a 'mammy' sweater, innit?" I nodded. "Ah, well," she said, "perhaps they won't care about that over in Canada, so."

Jeba kindly did not mock the sweater - much.  She reminded me that the best way to get over a bad sweater purchase is to get under a guy with an accordion while drinking, so we went out on the town.  We were thrilled to finally find some somewhat traditional Irish music at a pub called An Pucan.  It was clearly a tourist destination, because we were surrounded by faux Canadians, but Tom Flaherty, his drum machine and his Accordion Guy with the Roving Eye did not disappoint. 

At some point in the night, four wee white-haired old ladies tottered into the pub and were plied with liquor by the elderly gentlemen with them. It turns out that two of the ladies were 75 year old twins. One of them was a NUN. And it was their birthday.  We all sang Happy Birthday for them, we clapped for them, we marvelled at them as they drank big men under the table. We could not look away from these women. And then, during a lively reel, these spry ancient ones rose to their feet and performed together what was surely one of the more challenging sections of Riverdance (sans leather pants and avec orthopedic shoes).  They pranced. They leapt. They twirled. They stomped. They held us in thrall. Surely they would get tired! Surely they would fall and break a hip! Never. They defied us all and danced faster and more furiously and always in unison until the song ended and their eyes flashed triumphantly around the room while we leapt to our feet, hollered ourselves hoarse and clapped our hands numb.

It was a good, good night.

Creampuff Runs Out of Time

You know how you're going on a trip? For, like, a week? And you think "Hey! I got lots of time! Time to pack! Time to prepare the fish for our absence! Time to do laundry! And lots of time to finish this scarf for Maja! So much time! Who cares if I'm knitting at, like, an inch an hour? So what if her birthday is tonight? It's like I've got time coming out my ears here! Feels good!"

Why do I lie to myself, people?  WHY??

I did finish the tweedy green scarf yesterday (pictures later - type now) and it looks divine.  Aside from a teeny tiny square of green action I knit on Christmas Day, it is my first "finished object" (soon, I will have a whole gallery!)  I nearly passed out with anticipation as Maja removed it from the gift bag. Keen that she should show proper appreciation, her gf Reol yelled from across the table "Roro knitted that!!" I blushed with pride as Maja oooh-ed and aaah-ed and put in on and admired its softness and tiny stitches. "I love a short scarf," enthused Maja as she draped it round her neck, "plus, it covers this whipped cream stain on my shirt from when the waiter tilted my head back and squeezed aerosol chocolate and regular whipped cream into my mouth right from the cans!" I resisted telling her that the scarf would have been longer if I'd taken the step of knitting in the ladies shitter, which I briefly considered doing. I quietly sipped my French Kiss martini instead. It was a good night.

In other hilarious news, my mom called to tell me that a letter addressed to me had arrived from Red Deer College, in Red Deer, Alberta (I'm from Edmonton, about 1.5 hours north of Red Deer). I asked her to open it, assuming that it was some kind of newsletter. It turned out to be a request from a Theatre Arts student there for the rights to produce one of my plays as part of their year-end one-act festival.  This is awesome for two reasons:

• The play was actually published as part of an anthology 6 years ago, but since then no one has ever actually produced it (besides me) and;

• The play is about a LESBIAN NUN.  College students in Red Deer want to do a LESBIAN NUN play for their graduating project.  Now, Alberta is not all about rednecks and cowboys shopping. Brokeback Mountain was filmed there, after all, and there are deep and delightful pockets of liberalism throughout the province. But I must confess, I teared up a little at the thought of college students in Red Deer groovin' on the lesbian nun play. Girl on girl action. A lot of cursing. Glow-in-the-dark-Pieta. Sniff. You go, college students. Rock on.

On that note, my better half was playing with a new flickr toy and made this. I have made it my new wallpaper. I suggest you do the same.

Creampuff Gets Her Wings - Part the Third

In which Creampuff realizes that most of you are watching the Winter Olympics, as you should, but she also realizes that in those precious moments of the commercial break, when you are not fetching snacks, visiting the ladies shitter or frantically knitting, you may need stuff to read.

And so Leg Two: Cork!

The city of a million pubs and no traditional music! I decided to perform my renowned "shy zipper doofus" act for my fellow bus riders when we arrived in Cork and I couldn't figure out how to re-attach my mini backpack to my maxi backpack.  I was also too shy to ask anyone for help, because I am a doofus. Fortunately, a Canadian we'll call Bonja, who had the same pack as I did, showed me the trick of re-attaching the pack (the trick is: get Bonja to do it) and we hoofed towards the hostel together. When we arrived at the check in and I told the clerk my name, Bonja turned to me in amazement.  "Wait a minute," she said, "are you from Edmonton?" "Yeeeah . . ." I answered cautiously, in case she was from Calgary and then we'd have to fight. "Is your mom [name of Roro's mom]?" "Yeeeeeah . . ." I answered, even more cautiously, in case my mom had slapped Bonja's mom for being from Calgary.  "I used to work with your mom! At [place where Roro's mom used to work]!" 

Thousands of miles from home and I end up sharing a room in a hostel in Cork, Ireland, with a chick who used to WORK WITH MY MOTHER. I know you seasoned travellers are used to this small world syndrome, but I nearly crapped on my mini-maxi pack.

Next on my schedule was a good lickin' of the Blarney Stone.  Bonja and I headed off to Blarney Castle on a shuttle bus.  Enroute, a couple of locals told us about how at night, Blarney Castle employees like to have a pint and then pee on the Blarney Stone.  They thought perhaps to dissuade us from pressing our mouths up against the Stone but their tales didn't phase me.  Worse things have passed these lips - I have, after all, eaten at McDonalds.  Also, I have it on good authority that counsellors at the camp I went to as a teen used to lick the snacks.

We climbed with other tourists up to the Stone.  In order to give it a good frenching, you have to lie on your back and grip those two poles with your hands. A guy grabs you around your waist and dips you back for some stone-cold lovin'. As you're kissing the Stone, another guy takes a photo that shows you kissing the Stone and a sign that says "Kissing the Blarney Stone".  After you leave the castle, you can buy that photo for a mere $25 Cdn (and no handjob. I asked.) OR you can give your camera to Bonja and get HER to take a photo for FREE (sadly, also no handjob).  Bonja was an excellent photographer.  After kissing the Stone, the note in my travel journal reads thus: 

Well, I kissed it.  It was hard and wet and cold and
there was a guy holding me by the waist while I did it
and it was the most action I've had all year.

Jeba arrived in Cork after the Blarney adventure and she, Bonja and I went off to check out historic Cork City Gaol, which was real depressing and freaky. Book your corporate events now!! Seriously, you can, it's . . . it's on their website.  Even freakier and more depressing, however, was the lack of traditional music in the pubs of Cork on Sunday night.  We consoled ourselves with ice cream, got lost and on the way back to the hostel, found a likely band playing in a packed and smoky pub.  There was not a jot of space inside and we'd spent our last punts on ice cream, so, taking our cue from the old folk nearby, we stood outside and clapped along and it was a good, good time.  And we're not geeks!  We're not!!

The next day, Jeba and I hopped a bus to Galway. "Be careful," I said to her as she sipped a trough of coffee before we left, "there's no toilet on the bus and it's a long ride." She rolled her eyes as I moistened my mouth with a moist towellette.  "They call me 'The Dehydrator'," I told her. "Well, I call you an idiot," she replied, downing the last of her java.  Was I the idiot?  OR WAS SHE? History will decide.

Creampuff is a Carnie

A whole carnival of creampuffs! Man, I would kill for a candy apple right now . . .

The first Big Fat Carnival is up and running at Alas, a Blog and I'm totally thrilled that my Creampuff Bares Her Belly post is part of the line-up over there.  It's a short piece about that time I made a bunch of you guys touch my stomach.  You were good friends to me, people.  Good, good friends and I am grateful.

Lots of great writing, interesting articles, a little science, a little feminism, a little theory, a little rage, a little personal anecdote - the Big Fat Carnival has got it all!  I highly recommend you grab yourself a coffee n' cruller and check it out.  I'll meet you over there - I'm just waiting for these mini-donuts and I can't . . . find . . .my . . .TOONIE . . .

Creampuff Gets Her Wings - Part the Second

In which Creampuff travels to the Emerald Isle in a plane barely larger than her own ass. 

I knew when I agreed to go to Ireland for Jecr’s wedding that a) I would HAVE to go for at least three weeks and travel around (I’d never been off my own continent before) and b) the trip would be, how you say, “debt-financed”.  They say “if you don’t have it, don’t spend it.” I say “Aw, shut it!” And then I try to grab their wallet, ‘cause they probably have money.  I had a few savings and a pitifully small amount of credit.  After committing some mild fraud involving posing as a student, I had all the credit I needed and the planning began.

The plan was Toronto to Dublin (shitty charter), Dublin to Cork (bus), Cork to Galway (bus), Galway to Belfast (catch ride with Jecr’s future brother-in-law Anch), WEDDING!!.  Then Belfast to Glasgow (ferry/bus), Glasgow to Edinburgh (bus), Edinburgh to London (train), London to Paris (chunnel train), Paris to London (ditto), London to Toronto (shitty charter).

The other Canadian bridesmaid, Caho, was traveling with her beau. We’ll call him Barty.  They wouldn’t be meeting up with me until 2 days before the wedding in Belfast. My good friend Jeba, whose sister lives in London, agreed to meet up with me in Cork and we’d do the rest of the trip together.  She turned out to be a great choice for a traveling companion, as she is a relaxed, resourceful creampuff who likes to walk and sit and eat when I do and was poor like me at the time. I found out recently that Jeba doesn’t read blogs unless she’s mentioned in them, so Jeba – enjoy, man.

And so, Leg One:  Dublin!

The city that never sleeps!  Or stops drinking!  Ever.  Even at 3 a.m. when Roro, who hasn't slept in nearly 46 hours, is curled up under the dodgiest top bunk in the Republic, hoping and praying that the Scottish boys who had a "pint of breakfast" won't vomit on her carefully scrubbed sandals.

While Dublin, as a city, was rife with history and ancient relics, like the Book of Kells at Trinity College and my tour guide, the hostel experience was less than stellar.  The staff were surly like my knitting instructor and complicated questions like “Hi!” were greeted with cold stares and vague gestures. When I asked one of the desk staff a question about how the phone card he'd just sold me worked, he looked at me like I'd taken a dump on the counter and rubbed it around. I made the executive decision to wait 'til Cork to use a phone, dumped my bag in the "secure area" and wandered out on O'Connell Street.

I loved my tour of the city and spent some quiet time next to a flatteringly thin statue of Oscar Wilde in a park that’s only open to the public on one day a year - Bloomsday, June 16.  I didn't know what Bloomsday was at the time, because I am a hick and never read Joyce.  All I know is that people were wearing their clothes backwards and pints were cheap.  By 6 p.m., the pubs were so full that people were spilling out onto the street and drinking their Guinness on the sidewalk.  Local dogs lapped up the spilled foam and joyfully humped newly attractive lamposts and my sandals.  It was a real party atmosphere and had I not been so sleep-deprived due to my overnight flight on Air Shitty (Where Every Seat is First Class!!) I might have joined in more of the revels with Denise and Michelle, the glittery girls from Manchester.  Thanks to Ada, Janie and Tara from Newcastle and their Scottish boyfriends, however, I got Bloomsday revels up the ass at 3 a.m. and felt that really, I had missed nothing.

Saturday morning, I hied myself to the bus station and bought a sandwich for breakfast. The label said “bacon sandwich”, but I assumed there would be something else in the sandwich also. Like some L. or T. to go with the B. But this sandwich was basically bread, an inch of delicious, crispy bacon and more bread. The Irish – they don’t mess around with fancy fixin’s. And I appreciate that.

My habit of dehydrating myself before long journeys stood me in good stead when I got on the Bus Earinn conveyance to Cork and realized there was no shitter, ladies’ or otherwise, on the bus.  The bus did, however, smell faintly of urine, which led me to conclude that the back of the bus had been the site of some clandestine whizzing, possibly into a bottle.

I congratulated myself on eschewing a morning coffee and settled in for the ride.  As the bus pulled out of the station, I applied my chapstick.  I was only a few hours away from kissing the Blarney Stone, people. I wanted to be ready.

Creampuff Gets Her Wings - Part the First

Katr, ever the hep cat, got us tickets to newmindspace’s streetcar party a couple of weeks ago.  She likes to experience new things. It turned out that most of the people attending were young, nubile raver types in outfits that revealed their ass cheeks, so were we glad we brought our cameras! 

The theme of the party was "fairy tale magic" and, oddly, I had no issues over what to wear.  Because, of course, I have these wings:

I got the wings nearly 6 years ago when I went to be a bridesmaid for my lovely friend Jecr (or, Jech, if you use her married name), in Belfast, Northern Ireland, where she and the hubs still live and love, with many cats.  She was the first of our group of junior high/high school friends to get hitched (the only one, now that I think of it) and my friend Caho and I agreed to wear wings for the wedding at Belfast City Hall if Jecr promised not to sew her own (hooded, druid-priestess) wedding dress. 

Jecr has a passion for crafts and handiwork. The gigantic, 40-foot-long scarf she made me in high school, into which she knitted the maple leaf, the names of all our favourite UK actors ("Emma Thompson! Hugh Laurie! Kenneth Branagh! Stephen Rea!") and quotes from Blackadder, remains one of my most hilarious and deeply cherished possessions. (Note to self - do photo essay on scarf).  However, her "passion" tended not to translate to "precision" in certain instances and Caho and I feared for the "Stonehenge Special".  Fortunately, Jecr managed to find a fantastic dress which, sadly sans hood, did show off her fantastic rack.

Jecr is probably the most eccentric person I know.  In junior high school, when every other young girl was deciding which Jordan Knight t-shirt to wear to the New Kids on the Block fan club meeting, Jecr had a t-shirt made with a photo of New Democratic Party leader Ed Broadbent on it.  The shirt also sported Jecr's favourite greeting: "Hi! I'm Ed Broadbent. Defender of Justice and the Canadian Way." Lest you non-Canadians think Ed was the political devotee's equivalent to a New Kid on the Block, I include this photo:

I, for one, was jealous of Jecr's unaffected and effortless weirdness.  Our little circle of friends all prided ourselves on not being NKOTB fans; we heartily resisted typical teen-ism and tried to cultivate more obscure, unpopular interests.  But we all did this fairly consciously.  Not Jecr.  Aside from her slavish devotion to U2 and film classic Dirty Dancing, she marched to her own tune, often the tune she played on the euphonium in band. When her room burned down in high school and the insurance company let her choose any 30 books she wanted from the best bookstore in town, she chose fully a third of her books from the Monsieur Pamplemousse gastronomic detective series, which none of us Edmonton hicks had ever heard of.

Naturally, as the weirdest of us, Jecr was the first to find a life partner who was completely and utterly smitten with her (even though he knows that given the opportunity, she might drop his ass for Stephen Rea, who's probably the reason she went to Ireland in the first place).  Jecr's hubby Roch is funny, thoughtful, romantic, intelligent, a little weird himself and he called my father "sir" without irony one time, which my dad still brings up in a tone of awe.  When Jecr wrote that they were getting married in the summer of 2000 and asked if I'd come over and bridesmaid, I was totally thrilled and assured her I'd be there with bells on.  Little did I know that this wasn't a figure of speech.  Turns out the wings? Have bells on them. 

I started writing the saga of my trip to Ireland and Jecr's wedding and it's longish.  So I've decided to post it in chunks.  I'll admit, the serial format was partly inspired by Curly's beautiful, heart-breaking, multi-part series about her first lesbian romance and the girl who ripped her heart out, sat on it and cut one.  No one gets their heart broken in my story.  Although I do choke on a Snickers while drunk.

And so - to be continued . . .