Creampuff Revolution

Creampuff Recap Part 4 of ?: The Findening

Part 1 is here.

Part 2 is here.

Part 3 is here.

We both spent a lot of time looking at the real estate listings but I think it's fair to say that I HAUNTED the listings ALL DAY like it was my job while Katr did her actual job and then would look at the listings on her lunch break or after work or when I pestered her to look at something, because I had been obsessing over it for the whole 20 minutes she was on a conference call and had to talk about it RIGHT AWAY NOW TALK NOW PLEASE

Our real estate listing system let you "favourite" a property so you could obsess about it more efficiently or "delete" a property that you knew for sure you weren't interested in. We favourited several houses that we either liked but couldn't afford, or that we thought *might* work with a lot of renos that we couldn't afford to do unless they dropped the price, or that we were interested in seeing how much they eventually went for (since nearly every house was going for hundreds of thousands over asking, blaaaaaaaaaarg.)

When I first saw our house, I dismissed it almost immediately for the following reason:

We *had* expanded our search as far north as Sidney but mainly because the inventory in Victoria was SO LOW and we were dying to see MOAR LISTINGS, even if we knew we didn't want to live that far away from Victoria. The whole point of moving to the Island was to be closer to family. We certainly weren't going to entertain buying a place in Saanichton. I mean...but were we though? The layout is so great and the yard...

but no. NO. Too far away.

I didn't talk to Katr about it. I just deleted it.

But I kept thinking about it.

After another week of scant new listings and insane prices and rejected offers, I wanted to see the house again. I had memorized the address (weird). I figured out how to "undelete" it from our listings. It was still available (a miracle in that market). I took another look.

It was...kind of perfect. Rancher. 3 bed, 2.5 bath. Huge fenced yard. A *tiny* bit dated in certain areas but definitely move-in ready.

Nice floors. The formal living room could be our office...and the primary bedroom had enough room for this Game of Thrones-ass bed.

What a passion pit!

But no. NO IT WAS TOO FAR NO

I deleted it again.

A week later (and about a week before we had to move), I could not stop thinking about it. Its walkability score was pretty shitty, sure. But it was only 30 minute drive to my family...just 10 minutes over my requirement. And it WAS my requirement...Katr was more flexible about the location.

Was I rejecting the perfect house just because of an extra 10 minutes? Could this really be...THE ONE??

I undeleted it. It was STILL AVAILABLE (after nearly 3 weeks on the market? Why??)

"Katr," I said. "I keep coming back to this one."

Katr took a look and said, "I'm calling Jane."

Jane took us on the tour of the house via FaceTime. Everything about it seemed...fuckin' great. We waited until she was out in the backyard, away from the sellers' realtor, to get the full goods.

"Why is it still available, Jane?" I asked. "What's wrong with it?? Is there a smell? Is it next to a methamphetamine dispensary staffed by juggalos?"

"Well, no, the house is a gem," she said, "it has pretty much everything on your wish list and it's in great shape. It's just that it's...on East Saanich Road."

Aside: East Saanich Road is a two-lane road that sees a fair bit of traffic on week days. It's not a shipping route, so there aren't a lot of heavy trucks going by. But if you're looking for a "tranquil rural oasis", you would probably dismiss this area. Which means most people did.

"It's kind of a busy road," she says over FaceTime from the backyard, "a lot of people wouldn't even consider it. But you know, there's a huge laurel hedge in front, so it feels quite private. And back here in the yard, you don't really hear it."

"I'm sorry," I said, "We live in East Van. I can't hear you over the guy screaming WHORE! FUCKING WHORE! into his cellphone as the Skytrain screams by."

"Point taken. Are we...interested?"

Katr looked at me. I looked at Katr. Uh...YES.

The house had been on the market for 3 WHOLE WEEKS and there were no other offers. Obviously. Because it was our house. Thus, we found ourselves in the unexpected and delightful position of being able to...NEGOTIATE. Like a NORMAL SALE.

The sellers wanted a February move-out day and we wanted an earlier one, due to having to leave our Vancouver pad in less than a week. So we cleverly offered under asking, so that when they came back saying that they'd only take asking, we could say "Sure but then GET OUT by the end of January! And we want a house inspection!" "And a MOVE OUT CLEAN!" I shouted into the phone, really feeling myself.

They said yes to all of it and we closed on the house 2 days before the movers showed up to take the rest of our stuff. HA ha!! We bought a house!! Without ever actually seeing it in person, because that was the vibe in November of 2021!! Wooooo!!

But wait...where are we going to live for the next two months?

And now, a select 50x50 update:

Vegetarian meals: 3
Hours of knitting: 1
Books finished: 1 (embarrassing)
French tv episodes watched: 3
Walks that are not 5km but are at least 30 minutes and do not include the dog: 4

Creampuff Recap Part 3 of ?: The Panicking

Part 1 is here.

Part 2 is here.

So. We sold our townhouse. Half our stuff was in storage. We had 60 days before we legally had to vacate for the other lesbians. It was time for some high quality real estate pr0n.

The criteria for our new place included:

• Room for a 2-fat-person home office
• A big enough primary bedroom for two fat queens in a king bed
• A fenced yard, ideally with enough room to one day put in a pool
• A garage to park our 2006 Saturn Vue, Chloe (after 11 years of street parking, she deserved it)
• No more than a 20 minute drive from the fam
• Walkable to amenities, because I STILL DON'T DRIVE I KNOW I KNOW

Inventory was low, gang, and prices were high as fuck and time was ticking down to "homeless o'clock" real fast. We expanded the location. We upped our budget.

Every day we'd scour the listings, desperately trying to make fetch happen with any house that remotely fit our criteria and budget, even if the house was in the middle of the highway or had big boulders in the basement. (This isn't the one we saw but it was VERY SIMILAR.)

"It's near the grocery store!" we'd say "So what if there's a sinkhole in the yard, it'll be fun for Pumbaa!"

Work continued to be busy and actually going to Victoria to look at houses was tricky, timing-wise, but we finally booked a date with our realtor Jane to tour some contenders. The day before we were leaving, she called and said every house we'd planned to look at had already sold. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAA blaaaaaarg 60 days tho

Thank goodness Jane was happy to FaceTime us through several houses. We love online shopping but there's nothing like having an actual human there to get a real sense of a place. We learned a lot during this process, such as:

• If your realtor takes one step in and says "This place smells like old people," don't buy the house.
  
  
• If the owner took out a wall and put in a support beam HIMSELF, without a permit, don't buy the house.
  
  
• If your realtor opens a closet and there's unexplained ductwork made of cardboard in there, don't buy the house.
  
  
• If the shower is so small that when your slim realtor gets into it, she says "Oh shit" and has trouble getting out, don't buy the house.
  
  
• If there's already a pool (yay!) but the property also includes a huge, abandoned-looking machinist shop and your realtor asks "What's in there?" and the other realtor makes this face:

Don't buy the house.

We put an offer on one house (the house in the picture at the top of this post) but wanted a home inspection (this was the support beam house, but in our defence, the layout was great and it was close to a mall).

The realtor used our offer to get the other buyers to up THEIR offer and they didn't ask for a home inspection or any other conditions, so they got it (I creeped this house while I was writing this post and it was sold again less than a year later for about $100,000 less than our rival buyers paid for it so hahaha SUCK IT.)

After more weeks of surfing the listings, we fell HARD for another house. The realtor video is still up, if you want to feast your eyes on this house we didn't get.

This one was a reach for us. To have ANY chance to get this place, we'd have to stretch to the barfy-times tippy-top of our budget. "If you really want this house," said Jane, "You could write a letter."

Letter-writing isn't really a thing here. And the idea of writing a cringe-y "please sell me your house in my budget, I feel a deep connection with your sunken living room" letter mades me want to scream pantsless while setting things on fire but we really wanted this house.

So I turned to my BFF Padu, because he and his partner Macr had not only written such a letter (it's a more common practice in Ontario) but had received such a letter when they bought a new house and sold their old house the previous spring and he kindly supplied me with both. I synthesized the two letters, added some personal details and a pic of our one-eyed rescue sharpei ("She was in a shelter in Korea for 18 months! She'd be so happy in your beautiful yard! BAAAARF I HATE MYSELF") and we made the offer.

Our realtor called and said "They loved your letter. But they have another offer. They want to know if you can go any higher."

We DEEPLY could not. So we didn't get the house.

But we found out later that the other offer was OVER $100,000 MORE THAN OURS and they still checked with us before going with the other offer! That's the power of the letter, gang.

We were about two weeks away from our move-out date. It was already November. Jane suggested maybe finding somewhere to rent in the interim. "There will be more on the market in the spring," she said soothingly, "your perfect place just isn't ready for you yet."

But the thing is...it WAS. And I had actually already seen it.

And now, a select 50X50 update:

5km walks: 3
French lessons: 2
Air fryer uses: 0
Meditation sessions but not while in bed trying to fall asleep: 1
Blog posts: 4

Creampuff Recap Part 2 of ?: The Packening

Part 1 is here.

Once we'd decided to move, things happened very quickly. Like, within a few days. We called our realtor, MJ, who came over and told us what all we needed to put in storage for staging and it turns out, it was half the fucking house.

Work was very busy and having to spend all our spare time packing seemed overwhelming.

That's where Debbie and Richard came in.

Folks, I'm going to let you in on a little secret: there are people out there in the world who LIKE TO ORGANIZE THINGS. And you can PAY THEM to help you.

I like things to BE ORGANIZED but I don't care to DO the organizing myself, because I am impulsive and indecisive and lack confidence in my own judgement, qualities which make me QUITE A CATCH and which have also intensified during this hallowed time of perimenopause.

So Katr found Debbie and Richard to help us pack and organize our stuff for storage. They were like magical Energizer bunnies in masks, packing Frog Boxes full of our books and games and kitchen shit and art and putting aside stuff for donation.

If you'd been to our home in Vancouver, I don't think you would have called it overly cluttered. It's not like we were hoarders. But once we started packing up, that place was like a fucking clown car, shit coming out of cupboards and from under beds and behind appliances just endlessly.

This process took us collectively 3 full days. And we had to call FrogBox and have them deliver more boxes. (I told MJ she should take a picture of the boxes for the listing, just to prove how much storage this place had. She declined.)

Debbie was very efficient and sort of put up with our jokes but Richard's other job was as a drag butler. That's right. He's a butler who takes care of drag performers. So he was used to dealing with fussy queens and also had a pleasingly courtly manner while he waited for me to make a determination about, say, where my Grade 7 drama trophy should go. That man was truly doing god's work.

Movers came and took all the boxes and probably a quarter of our furniture and put it in storage. We had a few minor repairs done, and some painting touch-ups by Jason from Port City Painting, HIGHLY RECOMMEND HIM. And then...it was time.

The house went on the market near the end of September. Surprisingly, you can still see the listing here. The photography made it look VERY BRIGHT, in reality it had more a "cozy cave" vibe.

In times gone by, we might have been able to find a house we liked BEFORE closing the sale of our place and either make our buying conditional on our selling or do something called "bridge financing", but not in the hectic market of September 2021, when it was considered outré to ask for a home inspection and très gauche to merely offer "asking". So we had to fully sell our house before we could afford to buy a new place.

This fact did not stop us from looking at the listings constantly and then becoming heartbroken when something we liked was bought within 48 hours. So we were thrilled when, after less than a week on the market, we got a good offer on the townhouse. "They're lesbians," MJ told us, "and they've really tipped their negotiating hand because they told me that finding this place was FATE. Apparently the street address is the same as their wedding date!" Oh lesbians...never change.

The other lesbians agreed to a 60-day closing, which we were sure would be ample time to find a new place in Victoria. Right? That's two whole months! No problem.

And now, a select 50x50 update:

• 5km walks: 2
• French podcasts listened to: 3
• "No dessert" days: 2 (white-knuckling that shit, tbh)
• Hours of knitting: 0
• Board game plays: 1

Creampuff Recap Part 1 of ?: We decided to move

I hate moving. As I wrote in 2010, the last time we moved, moving involves the four things I hate the most:

THINKING

PLANNING

BENDING

DOING

When COVID hit, it wasn't a huge lifestyle change for us (aside from the stomach-churning anxiety, obvs). We'd been working from home and avoiding most people since 2007 anyway. It's like we'd been training for this. I had even (weirdly) stocked up on toilet paper in December because there was a huge sale on my favourite toilet paper (I HAVE A FAVOURITE TOILET PAPER) at Safeway and I made Drtr go through the checkout separately so we could both max out our bumwad allotments. I was so excited I TOOK A PHOTO.

So when IT BEGAN, we hunkered down, missed seeing our friends and family in person, told ourselves we were "helping small business" by ordering in food (and tipping extravagantly) and followed all the rules. It's fine. We're fine.

My family (my parents, my brother Jaro and his partner Trsm and my aunt Suki) all live in Victoria. Even though we lived just a ferry ride away, we were all pretty busy and only saw each other 3-4 times a year in the Before Times. But in the During Times, we didn't see them at ALL because we weren't supposed to non-essentially travel and we are rule followers who follow rules.

Pretty much since we moved to Vancouver, we've made noises about moving to Vancouver Island EVENTUALLY. And when the vaccines started rolling out in the spring of 2021, I hadn't seen my family in almost a year and a half and we started idly talking about whether we should move NOW. And we came to the conclusion that we... should not.

We were still comfortable our townhouse. Six months after losing Effie, we'd adopted a one-eyed warthog from Korea.

Real estate prices seemed insane, because EVERYONE was moving. We decided that instead, we'd focus on feathering our current nest.

We installed a very handsome fence to keep inquisitive Pumbaa from escaping our tiny yard. We had big talks about making the laundry closet more functional. We both felt relieved. We weren't going to move. Thank fucking god.

At the beginning of August, we were all vaxxed up and one weekend Jaro and Trsm were in Vancouver! And my folks were going to swing by a day or two later! And we were SO EXCITED to see them IN 3D!

Our visit with Jaro and Trsm reminded us of how much we had missed seeing them. Because they're awesome and fun. They mentioned that they had been thinking of moving to somewhere else in their general neighbourhood and we were all just chatting away about real estate and moving. And suddenly, I had this moment where I was like "Oh. Shit. We're fucking moving. Now, like it's going to start now."

I kept this knowledge to myself. I thought perhaps it would pass. Maybe this sudden urge to go through the shitty shitty process of moving had been brought on by the delirium of seeing two of my favourite people after so long! After Jaro and Trsm had left that evening, Katr and I didn't talk about it.

But at 4am the following morning, Pumbaa woke us up with a loud puke-fest (she was fine) and in the aftermath, Katr and I were laying in bed, staring up at the ceiling fan and I said:

"So...I guess we're moving to Victoria."

And Katr said "Yep."

TO BE CONTINUED. LIKE ENDLESSLY, I HAVE 48 POSTS TO WRITE. 

And now, a select 50x50 update:

• 5km walks: 1
• Vegetarian meals: 1
• Pillows touched: 16 
• French lessons: 1
• Blog posts: 2

Creampuff's Year of 50 x 50

Bless me Father, for I have sinned...it's been 1,180 days since my last blog post on December 9, 2020.

I could make a lot of excuses about why I've let this blog languish for 3 years but honestly, who gives a wet shit? Few things annoy me more than people who blog about their blogging. Suffice to say I'm back at it now. Because today, I turn 49!!

Honestly, I'm thrilled to be 49. A lot of people don't make it this far. But I confess that 50 feels a little...daunting.

I thought that coming up with fun, slightly-self-improving things I could accomplish before I turned 50 would make it feel like even more of an achievement. A levelling up. A sort of "gamifying ageing", if you will.

My initial plan was to make a list of 50 things that I would do 50 times this year but you know what's a lot of things?

50.

This 50x50 idea is supposed to be aspirational but also realistic and also fun.

As of now, I only have 18 things and one of those things is "touch 50 pillows". But another one of those things is "write 50 blog posts", so here we are. I STILL PAY MONEY FOR THIS BLOG. It's not like it's some free thing that I stopped doing. It's like a gym membership that I never use.

So get ready for a year's worth of posts on such scintillating topics such as:

• We moved to Vancouver Island in 2021!
• Our dog Pumbaa!
• Trying to re-learn French!
• Being afraid of my air fryer!
• We put in a pool!
• Cults!
• How many pillows I've touched so far (6)!

Looking forward to this year of stepping into my wisdom (and not into piles of horse shit, we moved to a rural area).