Creampuff Revolution

Creampuff's Cold Shoulder

As I've gotten older, I've become an increasingly delicate flower and let me tell you, it's a drag.

My latest physical complaint is that I have a repetitive stress injury in my right shoulder, presumably from using my right shoulder repetitively, and it BLOWS.

I've had it for so long now that I actually taught myself to use my computer mouse with my left hand and now at least once a quarter, Katr has to listen to my story about my grandfather and how he was ambidextrous and how clearly I have inherited his gift but only for mousing and using a knife at the dinner table.

I saw a physiotherapist years ago in Toronto, when the issue was more about my neck, and he gave me some helpful exercises to do, which I still occasionally do and my neck is still good. But the shoulder has flared up on and off for years. Generally, if I stretch regularly and don't spend too much time playing games on my devices, I could still write and work and knit and do yoga fatly, so I thought it was okay.  

This summer, though, I somehow crossed into a shoulder danger zone that I didn't even know existed and one morning I woke up and was just super fucked. I couldn't raise my right arm above the shoulder. It was like someone had slid a hot knife in there and then left it. And I fuckin' couldn't take an ibuprofen because my stomach is still super special. Naturally, I used my left arm a lot more, to compensate and then THAT shoulder started to betray me too and I felt like I was in that episode of The Tick where some villain removes everyone's arms and it's very hard to accomplish things.

As The Tick says at the end of that episode, "When evil is afoot and you don't have any arms, you've gotta use your head." So I did a lot of gentle stretching and minimal typing and hot packs and after a few days, my basic shoulder functions returned.

"Dang," I thought, "I should probably find a physiotherapist so that I learn some strategies to avoid this happening again!"

And then I waited for four months until things got rilly bad again and today I finally went to see a physiotherapist.

I picked the physiotherapist practice based on two main criteria: I could walk there and they had consistently good reviews on Google. I hadn't seen a lot of pictures of the place, though, and when I got there, I was a little taken aback. The office is just one big room. There was a little reception area. There was a little exercise area where an elderly lady was being coached through some squats. And then there were "treatment rooms", which were just very small curtained off areas with a chair and a massage table in them, like you were going to get a massage in the emergency room.

The receptionist led me into a "treatment room" and handed me a gown. As I sat there, in my sassy open-backed gown, listening to an elderly gentleman moan through his ultrasound treatment through the curtain about a foot away from me, I felt the lack of privacy might be too much for spoiled Roro. My last physiotherapist had a whole office to himself, with doors on it and everything. "Oh shit," I thought, starting to panic, "AM I TOO BOURGEOIS FOR THIS PHYSIOTHERAPIST'S OFFICE?"

And then Gina walked in and everything became okay.

Gina didn't mess around. I told her what the deal was. She poked my shoulder and said "Whoa. Okay. Let's start with...THE MACHINES." I kinda thought we'd chat and come up with a plan but fuck that shit. Gina IMMEDIATELY had a whole series of things happening and I forgot that I was 12 inches away from touching Mr. Morello as I got ultrasounded and lasered and hot packed and vibrated and massaged and instructed in some exercises with an elastic band. It was serious business. 

As I was leaving, exhausted and with the back of my head greasy with mineral oil because I didn't think to bring a hair tie, Gina printed out the exercises for me and showed me the one on the last page:

"See how, in the picture, this lady is standing on the band and putting her arms up in a V? Not you. You're going to hold the band and shrug your shoulders up and down."

She looked at me sternly and said: "You're not ready for the V."

She demonstrated the shrugging again, "We call this 'I', okay, so you're going to do 'I,I,I' - it's allll about you." 

Apparently I'm not ready for the V, you guys. But Gina said maybe next week.

Creampuff's Right to Bare Arms

I made the totally rad decision to stop hating myself almost 16 years ago now and guys, it was a good call. Hating yourself is exhausting and time-consuming and also, just really fucking boring, honestly.

While I did go from being ashamed of my goddess-like behind to embracing it, I still tended to wear loose and flowy attire, because that's my preference, and I ALWAYS wore something with a sleeve. Unless I was in a bathing suit, drunk in Mexico where I didn't know anyone, my upper arms and, ideally, most of my lower arms were covered. Even in the summer.

I was self-conscious about my arms for two reasons:

1. I had somehow internalized the fact that it was unacceptable to reveal my arms unless they looked like Linda Hamilton's arms in Terminator 2. 

2. As I have mentioned in passing here before, I was SUPER into cutting in my twenties (most people do it in their teens, but I was a late bloomer) and sometimes the scars on my arms freak other people out. 

As a result, I haven't owned a tank top since I was twelve and I usually pass over them entirely when I'm shopping, so I don't know what it was about this pink polka dot tank top I saw last summer but I felt like I had to have it.

"Why?" I thought, "Sure it's cute and the little ruffle is adorable. But you'll never wear it without something over top of it. Just get a t-shirt."

"Maybe," a little voice said, "You COULD just say FUCK IT and wear whatever the hell you want to."

I put the shirt in my cart. And then, when it got hot, I put it on. And then, I WENT OUT IN PUBLIC. And NOTHING HAPPENED.

Here are some great things about not wearing sleeves:

1. It's cooler.

I am now the proud owner of FOUR tank tops and every time I put one on, I feel like Linda Hamilton's cute, chubby cousin who carried the snacks and a grenade launcher and it's awesome. Free the arms!!

Hilariously, I don't have a photo of me wearing one of them. Maybe next year.

Four-Eyed Creampuff

The first time I got glasses, I didn't think I needed them; I just thought it was gettin' REAL smoggy in Toronto and that's why I had trouble reading street signs a block away, or the number on an oncoming bus. Turns out I needed glasses for distance and once I got them, it was a WHOLE NEW WORLD, From Anna-style.

When it came to picking my glasses, however, I inexplicably chose these red wire frame ones, which were...fine, I guess? 

I wore these "homage to Sally Jessy Raphael" frames for at least seven years before upgrading to my current frames, seen here while I try to show off my cute hair and distract from my receding hairline (a post for another day).

I also have a pair of glasses with "transitions" lenses that make me look like a '70s pedophile, so unfortunately, there are no photos of those (although I do still wear them to walk the dog on sunny days and I do still get 'OMG IS THAT A 1970s PEDOPHILE?' looks from people on the street).

I've worn my current frames since 2011 and a couple of years ago, the last time I went in to get my eyes checked, the optometrist suggested that I might need bifocals. 

"Your current glasses are fine for distance but you might find that you need an adjustment to, say, look at your phone with your glasses," she said.

"Nah," I said, easily reading a text on my phone at the time, "I'm good. Not time for bifocals yet, GRANDMA."

Probably about a year later, I met up with my theatre school pals Gicl and Elca for sushi and when I was looking at the menu, Gicl caught me doing that thing where you hold the menu REAL far away from your face because you fuckin' need bifocals.

"Did you just do THIS??" Gicl said, imitating me with great gusto.

The decline had begun.

Of course, it took me WAAAAY longer than it should to get around to getting new glasses but yesterday, Katr and I went to the eye doctor and I got to try on ALL THE FRAMES.

I only tried on eight pairs and two of them might be the same, so I added in the dog.

I feel like the cutest picture of me does not contain the actual glasses I chose and I considered waiting until I got the glasses for a REVEAL post that only my mom would care about, but we may not get our new glasses until December and I didn't want you to wait until next November to see them, so I will let you know now - I chose the ones on the bottom right.

They are waaaay bigger than my current glasses AND they will contain Progressive lenses so that I can live the ultimate dream; watching TV and scrolling through Twitter AT THE SAME TIME.

As a side note, it was my first time seeing Katr's optometrist and she was lovely. My favourite moment was when she was doing the thing where you're looking at the letters and she's swapping out the lenses to see which are better or worse and at the end, she goes "Good job! You're such a good observer!" and I am 44 but I still glowed with praise. 

Later, I told Katr about it and she burst out laughing. "She said the same thing to me! And it FELT SO GOOD." Anyways, thanks Dr. Chow, for making us feel special. I can't wait for my giant old lady glasses!

 

Festive Creampuff

It's Christmas wreath season, motherfuckers! And as is our tradition at the end of November, we went out to the Wreath Sale at the UBC Botanical Garden to pick out a festive look for our front door.

As usual, there was a keen selection to choose from:

But in the end, it came down to this one:

Versus this one:

SCROLL TO THE END TO SEE WHICH ONE WE CHOSE #clickbait

We were also charmed by this little bird in the basket. Because if you want to get me to buy something, stick a bird on it.

On the way home, we also hit up Home Depot for our usual front door display. But I got sidetracked by this UNICORN ARMY OMG WTF

Safely at home, we got our front door looking suitably festive. I like the potted evergreens with the birch sticking out of them, because in previous years, they had a single birch log sticking out of it, with a bow on it, which kind of ended up looking like "Welcome to my Christmas dick!" This year, we kept it classy.

Next year, though, you'll be greeted at our door by this:

Creampuff Remembers That Last Election Day

We had a municipal election here in Vancouver on October 20. Katr and I are very diligent voters to begin with but a good friend of ours was running for city council, so we made sure to vote early and often. Hahaha just kidding, we just voted early, but we congratulated ourselves often (this is Katr's I Voted! sticker on the right - I put mine in my pocket and then found it after the election and it felt like it was too late to wear it on Oct 30).

The ballot for this year's election was very long. For example, there were 71 people running for city council and their names were not in alphabetical order on the ballot - the names on the ballot were in random order, so that Brinder Bains didn't have an advantage over Wei Qiao Zhang. But this made it tricky when you DID know who you wanted to vote for, because it was really fuckin' hard to find them.

Thanks to Plan Your Vote, and Katr, who actually did all the research and put the list together for me and sent it to my phone, I had my list of chosen candidates the mayoral, city council and school board races all ready to go when we got to the polls. I got my five foot long ballot from the volunteer and dragged it over to the "privacy booth" to begin the process. I filled in my choices for the mayoral, city council and park board candidates before getting to the school board candidates.

And that's when I saw it.

Mrs. Doubtfire was running for school board.

I had seen chalk graffiti on my morning walks saying "Mrs. Doubtfire scool board" and assumed it was just a joke. But apparently, it was NOT a joke. There was her name, right on the ballot.

And I REALLY REALLY wanted to vote for Mrs. Doubtfire.

A battle for my soul began in the voting booth. 

Devil: YOU HAVE TO. It's HILARIOUS.

Angel: Don't throw away your vote on a joke.

Devil: But come ONNNNN. It's for school boaaaaaard!! Who gives a shit about school board??? YOU DON'T EVEN HAVE KIDS.

Angel: I know people who have kids!

Devil: But it could be so crazy! Mrs. Doubtfire could really shake things up at the ol' VSB. It would be a non-stop thrill-ride of assaholic-ness! It would be like when Trump got el--- oh, wait, shit.

Angel: There it is.

Devil: Shut up.

It still took an Herculean effort to stick to my original list. But in the end, I cast my vote for an actual candidate with actual ideas about making the school board better blah blah blah BO-RING.

According to these election results, 5912 of my fellow Vancouverites couldn't resist voting for Mrs. Doubtfire - although she still finished last, unlike Rollergirl for mayor and Spike for city council, who both did pretty well.

After the election, I had a pang of regret - what if Mrs. Doubtfire wasn't a total joke? What if the candidate who ran as Mrs. Doubtfire actually had some great ideas but no money or name recognition and felt like running as Mrs. Doubtfire was their only way to stand out?

I did a little research and found a Q&A that the Georgia Straight did with all of the school board candidates. Here's a snippet:

Question 4: What’s your position on school closures?

MrsD: I have not ruled out shutting down schools. If we shut down some schools those buildings could be used for housing as incentives to attract and recruit human resources and otherwise combat the unaffordability underlying so many of the board's problems. It may not be the most popular answer to this question, but in the end which is more traumatic to students, teachers, and their families? In the last legal election, I was the only candidate to not promise not to shut down schools. Several of those candidates have now openly admitted that they were incompetent.

So no, I'm okay with my choice. Although I AM a little disappointed that I didn't vote for Sophia Cherryse Kaur Kaiser for mayor:

"I live in the utter udder bliss of my Milky Way Universal breast vortex. Pure bliss in the 13th vibration vibrating my quantum signature oom (11v) my genetics DNA Logos Word (10v) which becomes my consciousness (9v) of every breath I've ever breathed."

TOTES, amirite? 

Anyway, the last time there was a big election in the U.S., me, Katr and Drtr ate a lot of chocolate and drank a lot of booze as we watched shit get waaaaay too real. In the interim, we discovered pot brownies, so that happened first thing this morning, because we couldn't face a whole day of exit polls, voter suppression and stomach-churning anxiety unmedicated. 

America - we are thinking of you!! You can do this!

 

Creampuff Invites You to Join Her For The One Month Per Year That She Deigns to Blog

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA HI GUYS!!

Welp, it’s fucking November again and I have to say, I REALLY thought I was going to blog more this year and MORE THAN ONCE I was like “Ooo, I could blog about this event/photo/super deep thought I’m having” and did I? Fuck no.

Welcome to NaBloPoMo 2018!

Well-Hung Creampuff

My fellow NaBloPoMo participant and all-round excellent blogger Solitary Diner wrote a post recently about her de-cluttering efforts and I was so impressed that I vowed I would clean up my desk this week, because it's been cluttered for weeks and it's been killing me slowly with its song. Killing me softly with its song. Telling my whole life...with random cords and post-its. YEAH!!

So today, when Katr suggested that we finally hang the four birch tree paintings by local artist Heather Loa that we bought in September, I knew that today was the day.

Here is the "before" desk. Note the two birch paintings lounging against the wall and the Hello Kitty Chia pet we got Katr for her 2nd birthday month gift. Ch-ch-ch-CHIA, you guys!

 And here's the wall, all marked out with painter's tape so that the paintings would be laid out properly.

Here's an artsy close-up of the tools and Katr's intricate blueprint, just in case you weren't sure we were lesbians. Although I suppose I come clean about something here: Drtr did all of the actual taping, hammering and hanging.

Paintings! These pictures suck. But if you come over, we will show you in person, because they are really cool.

This one, winter, is my favourite and it's RIGHT NEXT TO MY MONITOR!! Score.

 
And here's my cleaner desk, with the new mini-tree I made Katr buy me from the Bay, because she wouldn't let me get a flocked and pine-coned full-size tree. Turns out Katr was fucking SMART, because that flocking is now EVERYWHERE.

GODDAMNIT, FLOCKING! Why can't I quit you?

Creampuff Does Not Hate the Player...But the Jury is Still Out on these Games

I don't know when exactly Katr's game addiction obsession boundless enthusiasm for boardgames began.

She's always enjoyed games and we had a few games around the house for the first few years we were together. And she would try to get me to play these games and I would resist, because I am secretly SO competitive and such a TOTALLY immature douche that I always want to flip the table and take a shit in the Monopoly box when I lose.

That's right. I'm a real catch.

Eventually, I fell in love with a gentle train-route-planning game called EuroRails, that allowed a style of play that I enjoy; making my own plans and carrying them out without interference from other "players". I have never ONCE won EuroRails, but I still love it...so to me, that's a great game.

Buoyed by her success with EuroRails, Katr bought a few other games that she thought I might be convinced to play, all centred around themes she knew I liked.

"Look! This one is set in the Stone Age! It's like Clan of the Cave Bear!"

"In this one, you make DRESSES for the the Sun King's court!"

"This one happens in SPACE! You love space!"

"There are a lot of swears in this one."

"This one is about magical islands!"

When we moved to Vancouver, we acquired a few friends who liked playing games and I found that in the context of "Game Night", I could let go of my Monopoly shitting rage and just enjoy the company (except for when we played a game called Therapy, which was the cause of Katr and my most spectacular post-game-night, in-the-car-going-home fight. Then we played it another time and THE SAME THING HAPPENED. Trust me...if you want to break up a couple, get them to play Therapy.)

Poor Katr wanted to play games more often than on our occasional game nights. And she wanted to try NEW games. But like the shrew I am, I often refused, or countered with an offer to play EuroRails again - OR ChinaRails, which is like EuroRails but...that's right, in CHINA! Sometimes, I would GRUDGINGLY agree to try a new game, but no one wants to feel like their spouse is saying "I love you, but I'd rather chew bees than learn this complicated game about magicians."

Still, Katr was very patient. She played me out like a trout, letting me thrash endlessly before slowly reeling me in to play games with pandas in them (so cute!) or Jane Austen-themed games (so Regency!) or games where you get to annihilate the world (disasters are fun!).

It finally dawned on me that playing games was a real passion for Katr. She had discovered the glory of backing cool new games on Kickstarter and the boardgame floodgates had been wrenched open. One year, I delighted her for her birthday by giving her a coupon book full of coupons she could use to get us to play new games or certain kinds of games. If you think the ol' "coupon book as a gift" is hackneyed, get stuffed, because Katr actually CRIED she was so happy. But I was still a little slow to agree to trying new games.

Then Drtr came to stay and he likes games and he and Katr would play games together and I didn't have to play! Woooo! Everyone's happy!

At first I enjoyed having some time to myself to watch all the weird things on Netflix that Katr doesn't want to watch. But after a while, I got JEALOUS. Because they were having so much FUN. But the only way to participate in the fun was to ALSO PLAY THE GAMES. Unnnnnnnnngh FINE FINE, I WILL PLAY TOO PLEASE.

I wouldn't say that I'm an AVID gamer yet - I still resist watching walk-throughs and will often make Katr and Drtr learn a game first before I commit to annoying them by making them teach it to me. But I am in general less opposed to games and on occasion, am actually EXCITED to try a new game, like when Katr got me the Firefly game for my birthday this year (it's so fun! And we haven't even tried the expansions yet!).

Anyway, this is the bookshelf in our office now:

Not shown: the pile of five boardgames on top of the filing cabinet. Now, it might LOOK to the gaming novice that there are 42 games on this shelf, but keep in mind that some of these boxes contain EXPANSIONS to the existing games, so there are actually only 39 games here. So.

Okay, now this is the bookshelf in the bedroom:

Not shown: the deluxe edition of Tokaido under the built-in drawers behind the bedroom door. As a side note, the garbage can is on the shelf because our dog likes to chow down on cotton pads and Q-tips. Because she's disgusting.

Anyway, here's the living room shelf. Yes, some of these are books, we're not animals:

Anyway, the whole point of this post was a lead-up to a post I was going to do about a game called Anachrony, but now I'm too hungry. So if you hate stories about boardgames, definitely skip tomorrow.

Creampuff is NaBloPoMo-ing Again Because She Can't Get It Together The Other 11 Months of the Year

It's that time of year again, when I feel silly for continuing to have a blog THAT I PAY ACTUAL MONEY FOR without using it, so I use it REAL HARD for a month. HA ha!

Last year, I successfully completed National Blog Post Month (NaBloPoMo) and thought "That was fun! I should, like, do this more often!" and then after bitching about the snow in January and bragging about my lumpy knitting in May, I fucked off. Will this year be any different? Probably not.

But this is an excellent time of year to be doing this, because  you'll get to see pictures of my annual Dickens Village, which I know is the HIGHLIGHT OF YOUR LIVES. Also, the dog is still pretty cute. 

NaBloPoMo - ACTIVATE!

Creampuff Meets a Very Important Deadline

My erstwhile roommate Skip LOVED Star Wars and when the newly remastered original trilogy came out in theatres, we went the first weekend. I was excited too but I didn't realize that Skip had NEVER seen Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back or Return of the Jedi in the theatre - she'd only seen them on VHS at home. 

"So wait," I said to her, "so you watched them all at once? Like, back to back?"

"Oh yeah," she said, "like a marathon!"

"So you're telling me that, unlike the rest of us, you didn't have to wait those agonizing three years between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi to see what happened to Han??"

"Oh, no way. I don't think I could have handled it! HOW DID YOU HANDLE IT?"

The answer was that I was 8, so I had a lot of other things on my mind, but I always felt like she'd cheated a little, watching all three movies at once without having to weather the fallow periods between like the rest of us did, wondering what happened to Captain Solo and growing your hair out so that you could do Cloud City Leia hair. I felt pretty superior in my suffering, is what I'm saying.

All this to say that I feel like a pretty big hypocrite, because last night, we finished the final season of the Gilmore Girls, literally the day before the new Netflix mini-series that TRUE Gilmore Girls fans have been waiting for since 2007. HA ha!

Sorry guys. And sorry, Skip.

As I mentioned in my earlier Gilmore Girls post, Katr did not get on the GG bandwagon with me. She felt that the characters got too yell-y about things that were dumb and that people on the show made stupid choices. So, for the first few seasons, I generally watched Gilmore Girls by myself. But as time went on and my ardour didn't fade, Katr would occasionally join me on the couch of a Sunday afternoon (doing stuff on her iPad, of course) and she would occasionally chuckle. Sometimes, when I had watched an episode without her, she would ask what had happened in Stars Hollow.

Sensing that she may eventually be drawn in to the charms of Stars Hollow, I played it cool, as one would with a skittish horse; never pushing my Gilmore Girls agenda too hard but suggesting it occasionally. And while she never truly LOVED the show as I did, she tolerated more and more episodes as the Netflix event drew nigh.

And then, last night, she (and Drtr) spent the entire last two episodes of the series quietly weeping. VINDICATED.

 After we finished the series and had our cry, we watched the trailers and a featurette about the new Gilmore Girls and I do not think I was the ONLY one on the couch who was excited.

We all had to work today and after making Katr and Drtr watch 6 episodes of GG in two days, I don't know if they're going to be down to clown in Stars Hollow tonight. But that's okay. I can wait. OR CAN I??

BE COOL, RORO. BE COOL.

In the meantime, I'm enjoying gentle, spoilery tidbits I'm seeing on the Twitter.

I loved Jess even when he was a little shit & everyone hated him. That he's grown up to become a voice of reason? Perfect. #GilmoreGirls

— kaitlin thomas (@thekaitling) November 25, 2016

What I am hearing you say is Logan is still around and Paris is still not gay?!???!!?

— Heather Hogan (@theheatherhogan) November 25, 2016

The most amazing thing about @GilmoreGirls is that Emily held on to one maid for a whole year. #GilmoreGirls #GilmoreGirlsRevival

— Giuliana Carr (@GiulsCarr) November 25, 2016

Have you guys watched it yet? Is it good? Just tell me if it's good! No spoilers!