Creampuff Revolution

Creampuff Forced to Downsize

It happened at the butcher. I went to pull out my debit card and pay for my delicious grass-fed beef and...my wallet wouldn't unzip. It opened this far: 

But no more.

I struggled gamely with the zipper as the hipster at the till waited patiently for me to get my bourgeois shit together. Beads of sweat broke out on my forehead.

"Ha ha...I can't seem to get this unzipped! I never have this problem with my pants!" I joked to him. He did not laugh.

Desperate, I reached into the small opening left by the zipper and tried to jimmy my debit card out of the side. The hipster began to touch his sausages as I scrabbled and tore at my stupid fucking indestructible wallet. Finally, just as the babe in line behind me started to tap her Fluevogs impatiently, I managed to extract my debit card and pay for my meat. 

"Ha ha...maybe time to get a new wallet," said the guy behind the counter as he handed over my receipt. I wanted to grab his sausages and squeeze real hard, but instead I laughed as if that was funny because his beef is insanely good and I want to go back there.

I've had this wallet since 2005, when I stole it from another shopper at the College Park Winners. In December 2010, Katr bought me a new wallet, because she is thoughtful and also, was tired of how important receipts always seemed to disappear into my George Costanza wallet. I TRIED to switch to the new wallet, but couldn't. Because when it comes to wallets, I am a hoarder.

But, the other day at the butcher, like most hoarders, I hit rock bottom. And I had no choice. It was time to say goodbye to my old wallet.

Here's all the stuff that was in it:

It turns out I was carrying:

• Paper money
• 2 pounds of coinage, mostly pennies
• My expired learner's permit from Ontario that I still use as photo ID
• My BC health card
• My medical insurance card from two insurers ago
• My current medical insurance card
• My hospital card from Grey Nuns in Edmonton, which I have not been to since the 1990s, when I was 17 and I was with my brother and they thought I was my brother's mom. He was 14 at the time.
• My 4 debit cards
• 6 AirMiles coupons for 1L of dill pickles
• My friend Hildy's business card (from the night we photographed the skunk!)
• A "sorry we screwed the pooch" free drink coupon from Starbuck's that I've been hanging on to since 2006 - JUST IN CASE
• 15 very dog-eared gas station receipts, one of which was JUST FOR ICE CREAM, no gas. One of them was from 2009.

I also had a few loyalty cards. Just a few. These are just the plastic ones. (Loyalty card sidenote: The only loyalty card I DON'T have is a Shoppers Optimum card, which I REFUSE to get because the government is using it to spy on me when I buy Metamucil. But apparently I do trust Safeway, Air Miles or Petro-Points not to sell my information to the Feds.) I also had several cardboard punch cards for a yarn store that moved to Abbotsford last year (not somewhere I visit often):

These are what tripped me up the last time, honestly - because while the new wallet has room for SOME of my loyalty cards for American stores I only shop at once every three years, it doesn't have room for ALL of them. SEE? It's SO SLIM AND STREAMLINED!

AAAAAAAAAARGH!!!

It was a long, arduous process, trying to decide which cards deserved slots, which I could reasonably expect to not use in the course of every day shopping and which I always WISHED I had on me when I unexpectedly ended up at the fat girl store or a certain grocery store or the gas station.

Many agonizing minutes later, the exchange was complete. And I had a new wallet.

Here's the finished product:

Like the good hoarder shows, I promise I'll do a follow up post in a few months to see if my currently pristine wallet has been stuffed full of fluffy crap. I'm sure the Ativan will help.

Creampuff Reviews 'Whip Smart: Lola Montez Conquers the Spaniards' by Kit Brennan

I don't usually review books on my blog for two reasons:

1. When I read other people's book reviews on their blogs - like Eliza's Are You My Mother review on her blog This Wheel of Many Parts - I remember that I'm not that smart.

2. It's hard to be funny in a review unless you're reviewing Jean Auel's latest cave porn. 

But when a nice publicist name Lauren offered me a free copy of Whip Smart: Lola Montez Conquers the Spaniards by Kit Brennan in exchange for...well, whatever I wanted to write about it, I found I could not refuse. Because just look at the cover!!! YES, HELLO. HELLO, LOLA MONTEZ.

Fortunately, I really enjoyed the book - it was the best kind of melodrama, full of danger, suspense, passion and interpretive dance.

Based on the real life of one of the 19th century's most outrageous women,Whip Smart aims to chronicle the mysterious "lost year" where young Eliza Rosanna Gilbert effected her transformation from aspiring Irish actress to fiery Spanish dancer Lola Montez. 

Fresh from a failed marriage and eager to avoid the ensuing divorce trial that would make her name mud in London, Eliza is willing to do anything it takes to make her dreams of stage fame come true - including accepting a shady paid trip to the Continent to continue her training as a dancer.

Once there, she is thrilled to discover she'll finally be treading the boards in a hit show ... and less thrilled to find out she'll be expected to act as a spy for exiled Spanish regent Maria Cristina (the previous spy had his ears sent back in a box, so...ha ha.) What follows is a pretty exciting series of intrigues, nail-biting border crossings, mysterious murders, risky plots, secret rendezvous, a torrid love affair and some really fabulous clothes.

Lola herself is hilarious - passionate, devil-may-care, intensely self-interested and above all, a survivor. Unbound by the sexual mores of the day (it's the 1840s), she knows her smoldering good looks will get her where she needs to go and she's unconcerned about using her wiles on whomever she meets. For all of her passion and artistic inclinations, she's refreshingly practical about how the world works and you just have to admire her chutzpah as she seduces everyone from generals to members of parliament to prime ministers, all while trying to unravel the mystery of the shadowy figure trying to murder her.

Basically, Whip Smart had everything I like: corsets, a strong female protagonist who doesn't do idiot things for love, a gripping plot and some sexy times, all set against a fascinating historical backdrop. I really appreciated Brennan's meticulous research into the Carlist wars and Spanish politics at the time, which was really interesting and all new to me.

Whip Smart is told as a flashback after Lola's first successful performance in London - kidnapped by unknown agents, she's forced to account for her year of adventure in Spain and lays it all out for the reader. It took me a little while to get into the story, but once she leaves England, it became a serious page-turner. I was so into it, in fact, that I found the book's ending a little abrupt - but as Brennan's currently penning a sequel, I suppose she just wanted to leave us wanting more.

Honestly, the ONLY thing lacking for me was context for Lola's outrageous voice and impetuous choices. If I didn't already know she was to become a flamboyant historical figure, her voice would have come off as a titch implausible.

As most of you know, I'm an historical fiction nerd and I'd never heard of Lola Montez before reading Whip Smart - not really knowing who she was to become made it a little harder to appreciate this chronicle of her transformative year(s). I would personally recommend a brief Wikipedia entry on Lola Montez pre-read  in order to truly appreciate the crazy life she led - and to appreciate how well Kit Brennan seems to have captured Lola's indomitable spirit.

The book is available on Amazon and at Barnes & Noble - if you're a corset-lovin' history nerd like me,  you can't go wrong! I'm looking forward to the next one (fingers crossed there'll be lesbians in it! A girl can dream...)

Creampuffs Have Been Watching a Lot of TNG

All of Star Trek: TNG is now on Netflix and Katr and I cannot stop.

Every night, we're like: "What should we watch?" and then we pretend like we're going to watch something other than TNG but then we totally fucking watching TNG.

We're already on Season 4. A lot of my dreams lately have involved unitards, turtlenecks (the clothes of the FUTURE) and Guinan giving me life advice.

I have a lot of things to say about TNG, but they may have to take up a whole n'other post, because this is about how, when watching an episode in Season 2, I was reminded of the time my father totally ruined Star Trek: TNG for me.

When I was a young teen, all of my other friends were fawning over the hunky, grown up movie stars of the day (I'm old, so we're talking Christian Slater, Tom Cruise before he was creepy, maybe Harrison Ford if you had daddy issues). I, on the other hand, took care to point my ardour at young Hollywood. I reasoned that it was ridiculous to have a crush on an older gentleman, because by the time I was old enough for courting, he would be too old for me.

Because our age difference was surely the only thing that was keeping Christian Slater from showing up at my door.

Also, I was gay, so while I still picked boys to crush on, they were young, pretty boys who kinda looked like girls. You can only imagine my confusion when I saw Mary Stuart Masterson in Some Kind of Wonderful, who was a girl who looked like a pretty boy. MIND. FUCKING. BLOWN.

Anyway, all this to say that yes, SHUT UP, I liked Wesley on Star Trek: TNG. He was smart...he was respectful...he had a slim, girlish figure in his unitard. I now know that Wesley was greatly maligned by certain factions of the fandom, but I do feel a little justified in my crush now that the actor who portrayed Wesley, Wil Wheaton, has turned out to be such a funny, likeable, internet geek-god.

So anyway. I LOVED Wesley and in Season 2, Episode 10: The Dauphin, Wesley falls in love for the first time with the young soon-to-be leader of another world, Salia. Their flirtation begins over Wesley showing Salia how to use the food replicator to create a delicious Thalian chocolate mousse, which she delicately tries with a finger and then leaves the rest. RUDE. She doesn't DESERVE that mousse!

My father joined me on the couch as I watched Wesley experience the sturm und drang of first love; going to older crew members for lurve advice; discovering that Salia had a secret (spoiler alert: she's a shape-shifter!); feeling betrayed by her deception; acting like a douche when she comes to say goodbye.

I totally understood where he was coming from. One minute she's a girl - the next, she's a screaming hairy beast - BETRAYED. But naturally, Wesley, being Wesley, has a change of heart and does the right thing.

At the end, just as Salia is leaving to rule her warring world, sure that Wesley will stay mad at her forever, Wesley shows up in the transporter room! With a cut glass dish of Thalian chocolate mousse! My heart leapt; my lip quivered. I thrilled to the moment, young love recognizing young love.

Wesley holds out the mound of chocolate mousse and says something to Salia like "I brought you something." And my dad says "A giant turd?"

FURIOUS.

I recounted this anecdote to my father over the phone a few weeks ago and once again, he died laughing at his own joke. Philistine.