Creampuff Revolution

Creampuff Recap, Part 6 of 6: The Unpackening

Okay, it's been a few weeks and we all thought this series was over, and it is, mostly. But after the packing and the selling and the buying and the moving, moving, moving, comes the unpacking.

The flatpack TV stand we ordered came without hardware but that didn't stop us from setting up the TV immediately, because priorities.

Work was crazy busy and as you may recall from earlier posts, we had a lot of stuff and a whole new house to put the stuff in and it all felt a little overwhelming.

Plus, we made the horrifying discovery that while our stuff was in storage with the moving company, there was some kind of water incident and several boxes of our things were ruined and moldy.

But it's okay, the moving company totally reimbursed us HAHAHAHAHAHAHA JUST KIDDING THEY BASICALLY SAID FUCK YOU AND YOUR IRREPLACEABLE PERSONAL ITEMS, LIKE THE BOOK YOU GAVE KATR ON YOUR FIRST DATE THAT YOU WROTE A CUTE NOTE IN, IT'S ALL LOST IN TIME LIKE TEARS IN RAIN

I LOVED the actual movers but due to the ruination of our things and no recourse, I do not recommend this moving company. I'm not going to say their name but it rhymes with "Berguson Boving & Borage".

I DO, however, recommend Hour Movers in Victoria, they did all our local moves and were AWESOME.

Anyway. So we had a lot of stuff to unpack and a bunch of moldy garbage. Then Katr found Barb and Alejandra from Victoria Organizers.

Like Debbie and Richard who helped us pack, Barb and Alejandra helped us unpack AND organized a lot of our shit AND took away the recycling and trash. And they made it look so easy.

They started with the kitchen.

And did some of their best work in the "hobby room", where Katr's enormous board game collection lives, if you don't count the 30 or so that are in our office.

The whole time they were here I felt like a hippo watching a couple of hummingbirds creating order out of chaos and I wanted to get in on the action, so I put myself in charge of organizing our giant walk-in closet.

I gathered all of our clothes and shoes and such and piled them on our bed, which turned out to be a genius move because otherwise, we would have been stepping over piles of clothes I would "get to, Jesus, get OFF my JOCK" for days.

I know this clothes pile looks like a lot of clothes and you know what, it IS, way more than I thought either of us have but keep in mind that creampuff clothes are also large and take up a lot of space.

And then, came the worst part of organizing: thinking, planning, bending and doing. Here's my side:

And Katr's side, this closet is HUGE, I actually do little workouts in here.

Did you think it would look sexier than this when it was done? Me too but whatever, I need to lie down.

I'm embarrassed to tell you this, but this took me almost six hours. Barb and Alejandra did most of the rest of the house -- AND THE SHED OUTDOORS -- in the same amount of time. Showboating.

I loved them. And if you live in the Greater Victoria area, you will too.

Now that we were all moved in, we could focus on some other home improvement projects. Here's a sneak peek at the biggest one.

And as a special treat, here is a video that Katr accidentally shot in slow motion of me pretending the Christmas tree box is a wang. It's over a minute long, you can pretty much get it from the first 15 seconds.

A long overdue 50x50 update:
Vegetarian meals: 17
5km walks: 10
Board game plays: 8
French lessons: 7
Blog posts: 7 (pitiful)

Creampuff Recap Part 5 of ?: The Movening

Part 1 is here.

Part 2 is here.

Part 3 is here.

Part 4 is here.

We had a house!!!! But we couldn't get into it until the end of January! And it was the end of November! That's a long time to live in a van down by the river. And Katr's brother Drtr was coming up for a month over the holidays for the first time since COVID began and we were excited to see him.

Also, while Katr and I work from home, we're not like those remote workers on stock photos who can perch on a barstool and peck at their laptop while sipping a macchiato and looking hot (unless by hot, you mean sweaty and mad). Katr and I both have pretty specific work needs, so wherever we were staying had to accommodate our work set up, i.e. our two big-ass office chairs and our dual screen monitor/laptop situation.

And it had to be pet-friendly, because, once again, fourth time in a row, we'd adopted an unkennel-able dog.

So when the movers came, they took *most* of our stuff, but I had conned my brother Jaro and father Biro into renting a U-Haul van in Victoria, bringing it over on the ferry, loading up our "interim stuff" and driving it back to Victoria. Because FAMILY. We stored a bunch of this stuff in my parents' walk-out basement and then headed over to invade my Aunt Suki's.

My very kind and generous Aunt Suki had offered to take us in for the two weeks until Drtr arrived and it was an EXTREMELY soft place to land. This woman completely rearranged her upstairs AND gave up her room so that we could set up our office and sleep in a glorious king bed (she moved down to her lovely guest suite, a sanctuary which Pumbaa immediately violated). She allowed Pumbaa to frolic in her awesome yard, seen here from our "office" window.

Suki introduced us to her many fabulous friends. She put up with our loud conference calls. And she wrote out a MENU and cooked us gourmet meals EVERY DAY. A truly five-star experience, HIGHLY RECOMMEND.

I don't have a photo of her during this time but this pic of her spice drawer should give you an idea of the kind of goddess Suki is.

When Drtr arrived, we reluctantly decamped from the luxury and pampering of Suki's for an Air BnB in Esquimalt that Drtr affectionately dubbed "the murder house".

I'm not 100% sure why Drtr called it the murder house but I AM 100% sure that it was DISGUSTING. The first night, I spilled some water on the carpeted stairs and when I paper-towelled up the spill, the paper towel was covered in HAIR. Pretty much any time you cooked or used the toaster, the smoke alarm would go off. Between the decor and the lack of cleanliness, it was like living at grandma's house but like...grandma's not doing too good.

It was a spacious two bedroom but in the primary bedroom bed had a rickety queen that was not safe for multiple creampuffs. So I spent the month sleeping on a pile of four foam mattresses I had borrowed from my parents. Let me tell you, nothing makes you feel more alive in your late forties than waking up having to whiz real bad and knowing that first, you have to roll fatly off your mattress-pile and push your way up onto your feet like a drunken toddler (the worst kind of toddler).

We had some lovely family togetherness time with Drtr and I have to say, the murder house was in a GREAT location, practically ocean-front, so Pumbaa and I had some epic walks, except for the week when it was frozen solid and so slippery that I woke everyone on the block screeching "Don't pull mummy! DON'T PULL MUMMY!" at Pumbaa whenever we crossed the street.

My fondest memory of the murder house is probably the evening the fire alarm went off. Not the smoke alarm, which, to be fair, did its actual job the day that we brought some groceries in and a bag got left on the glass cooktop and somehow the cooktop dial got turned on and I was in the other room like "Smells like something's burning" and I go back to the kitchen and there was a big ol' plastic bag and pints of ice cream fire, which I promptly left Katr and Drtr to deal with because of my smoke alarm noise issues HAHAHA I AM TAKEN, LADIES.

The smoke alarm was bad enough but it was nothing compared the *fire* alarm for the whole townhouse complex. It was loud like when a firetruck drives by you with the sirens blaring but then stops inside your fucking house. I had myself and the dog out the door in seconds and Drtr and Katr were kind enough not to point out later that I basically left them to die A SECOND TIME.

It was freezing and apparently the fire alarm system had frozen in the "on" position, so it was a couple of hours before the firefighters could get it to shut off. And they warned that it might come on again. HA ha!

It DID come on again, this time at about 1 a.m. But I was ready. I had taken a pot gummy, made some makeshift earplugs out of torn-apart, wadded-up tampons and was wearing my noise-canceling headphones, huddled on my mattress pile. This time, it was turned off much faster. But I basically never slept again until we moved out of that place a week later.

After Drtr left, we still had three weeks until move-in and I wanted my aunt to still love me, so we found a third rental. This place was much nicer and had a little fenced yard for Pumbaa, plus it was close to a beach featuring whatever the fuck this is:

And some great walks around UVic.

Once again, there was a rickety queen bed but this time, the bedroom was too small, so I slept on my mattress pile out in the hall, really regretting that we'd never gotten into dom/sub stuff because then at least sleeping on my pallet on the floor outside milady's door would be sexy.

And then, one glorious day, it was time. To move in. To our NEW HOUSE!!! Woooo!

To recap, in order to get to this point, we'd had to hire movers 6 times:
1. Moving stuff for staging
2. Moving our Vancouver stuff to storage
3. Moving our interim stuff from Vancouver to Victoria (this was the heroic U-Haul adventure)
4. Moving our interim stuff from Suki's to the murder house
5. Moving our interim stuff from the murder house to Octopus Beach house
6. Moving our interim stuff from OBH to our house
7. Moving the rest of our stuff from Vancouver storage to our house

All this to say...we are never moving again.

And now, a select 50x50 update:

• 5km walks: 6
• French lessons: 4
• Board game plays: 2
• Air fryer uses: 4
• Hours of knitting: 2

 

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 Bits Could be More Fit

Katr and I both got Jawbone Up bands a few years ago as a fun way to keep track of steps and sleep. And it was fun for awhile. But then all of our friends also got them and we became "friends" on the app with our Up band friends. I suppose the social aspect of these fitness trackers are meant to encourage healthy competition but I found myself mainly feeling hatred for everybody. Then I left my Up band at home when we went to Mexico one year and when I came home, it wouldn't recharge and I thought "Great!" and didn't get a new one.

Then last year we got the puppy and suddenly I was walking A LOT more than I did with non-walking Emmy, the non-wonder dog and I thought that since I was walking ANYWAY, I wanted to know how MUCH I was walking, just for my own amusement. So I ordered a FitBit One. This time, I kept my information allll to myself and it gives me a little thrill every day, especially on the days when I reach or exceed that 10,000 step goal. 

Last week, I was sick and Drtr did the lion's share of the dog walking, so my daily step average was in the 4,000 range. But on Friday I was back out on pei patrol with Effie and we ran a lot of errands and I got 10,438 steps.

On Saturday, we took Effie to the park and ran a lot of errands and I set up my village and got 10,322 steps.

Then, on Sunday, I walked Effie around the block once, was driven to dim sum, then sat at my computer and bragged about setting up my village and I got...11,252 steps.

Wait so...what?

Obviously, the FitBit is misreporting. Probably just a technical glitch. But then this morning, I woke up and my left lower eyelid was puffy and bruised-feeling, like someone punched me in the face and I'm starting to wonder if maybe I took a long walk and got into a fight IN MY SLEEP.

Aaaaaaaaand scene.

Creampuff in June

Summertiiiiiime! And it's hot as balls!!

This June has been a delight riiiiiight up until now, so I thought I would pass this uncomfortable Monday afternoon by remembering cooler times earlier in the month.

DRINKING

In honour of her mom Patr coming for a visit, Katr prepared an alcoholic beverage that has become THE drink of the summer: The Bourbon Slush. This is apparently quite a common drink down south (in the U.S., not in my vagina) but I had never heard of it. I *believe* Katr used this Bourbon Slush recipe but did NOT add the two cups of sugar, because that shit was plenty sweet without it. This is not a great photo of it but holy Jesus, was it good. A must try for you summer lushes out there!

A TRIP TO THE ISLAND

Katr's mom Patr came out for a visit at the beginning of the month and we thought it would be fun to take her and Princess Emmeline Louise over to Vancouver Island for some seaside respite. Emmy Lou has been working so hard, staring at people and successfully whizzing outdoors, that we figured she could use a getaway.

We rented a place in Saanich right close to the ferry, which we found on VRBO. It was called the Cleo Beachfront Cottage. In the descriptions, the owner promised that seals, otters, harbour porpoises, owls, hawks, ravens, bunnies, squirrels and "delightful quail" would all be frequent visitors to the area. 

On the first day, we saw none of these things. Tension was high.

The owner, J, stopped by the next day to water her glorious garden and so Patr was able to really put the screws to her about the lack of wildlife. Clearly shaken, J must have had a talk with the fauna, for the next day, eagles and otters began to appear and I saw a bunny taking a dust bath. Nicely played, J.

If you are looking for somewhere to stay on the Island, this place comes highly recommended by me. The property is lush and woodsy, the house is large and airy and the views are spectacular. The owner is also super nice. If you book it, tell J the fat lesbians with the ancient dog sent you.

WHALE WATCHING

We went whale watching and saw a pod of transient orcas! How many hours was the tour? Three and a half. How many pictures did I take? One. This one. Because this tour made us wear FULL BODY LIFE PRESERVERS and I thought it was HILARIOUS.

OCTOPUS

The owner of Cleo Cottage also worked at the Shaw Ocean Discovery Centre in Sidney and when she offered us free passes, we said yes! It was pretty cool. The octopus in particular.

BUTCHART GARDENS

The last time I went to Butchart Gardens was in March of 1990, on my Grade 9 band trip. I didn't give a shit about plants back then, so I don't remember much (my greatest memory of that trip, of course, is my friend Jech getting her ears pierced SECRETLY, against her mother's wishes, ZOMG crazyyyyy!!!). This time it was awesome, because Patr knew so many of the plants, so it was like having our own private horticultural tour guide.

Naturally, these were Katr's favourite:

Then, once we'd seen it all, we went for High Tea, where the classy servers pretended like we weren't real real sweaty.

Some highlights of this trip included:

1. This sexy boar looking sexy.

2. That Patr lost her credit card in the washroom and SOMEONE ACTUALLY RETURNED IT to Lost and Found.

3. I saw some art that made me weepy in the art gallery and Katr told me to buy it. It's called "133 Water St" and it's by Canadian artist Joanna Drummond. I seriously can't stop looking at it. I don't what it is about it that really gives me the feels but that's okay - that's the point of art. It's sneaky like that.

We were sad to leave the Island but that pesky "working for money" thing always pulls you back in. But what a lovely time.

HOMOSEXUALS GETTING MARRIED

So, the SCOTUS decision on same sex marriage came out on the SAME DAY that our dear dear lesbian friends Boka (coincidentally, an American) and Cawi were tying the knot! We were honoured to butt into their special day with all of our lesbian wedding ideas. The decor was lovely, the mood was festive, the BBQ was delicious and the brides were radiant. Congratulations, ladies!!!!! LoveWins!!!!!

RANDOM ITEM

What does this hedge remind you of? HAPPY PRIDE!

 

Creampuff Hopes You'll Show Up for the Anarchist Rally

I know I still have Part II of my birthday to brag about but you all know I'm slow as fuck and I have a bunch of photos I need to scan first and this braggy post is actually time-sensitive.

Back when I was in my 20s, Bradley Moss, the artistic director of Theatre Network in Edmonton, started a young person's theatre festival called the "Festival of the NeXt Generation". The big "X" was for "Generation X" OMG WE'RE ALL SO OLD YOU GUYS. I had shows in the festival for its first three years before I both moved to Toronto and aged out of it. Nextfest was a special treat for the keen theatre twenty-something, especially for a playwright used to wearing a lot of hats - director, designer, stage manager, marketing department. At Nextfest, I got to just be a playwright AND get paid!! BALLS THAT ARE AMAZING.

This year is marks 20th anniversary of that first Nextfest and the festival still going strong - it's a 10 day festival these days, filled with theatre, visual art, dance, music, film and more! To celebrate this momentous occasion, two hot young directors got to pull two scripts from the early days of Nextfest and one of them - a young fellow with excellent taste by the name of Andrew Ritchie - chose my lesbian angst comedy No One Showed Up for the Anarchist Rally.

I was pretty honoured that Anarchist Rally made the cut and was super jazzed to go see it. Then, in January, Theatre Network's home, the iconic Roxy Theatre, burned down, leaving the company sans venue for the rest of their season. Holy shitballs!

Of course, you can't keep a good theatre company down and the Edmonton arts community rallied to find venues for the remainder of the shows for this year. I was pretty sure that, of all of the events scheduled for this year, the Nextfest 20th Anniversary Showcase would be the one to be cancelled but I was thrilled to hear that they were going ahead with the show at the Mercury Theatre downtown! Fire shmire. There is THEATRE TO DO.

The show, playing in rep with Leah-Simone Bowen's disturbingly prescient Code Word: Time, opened this past weekend and, because Katr is awesome and offered to hold down the fort and the dog, I got to gallivant off to my homeland to relive my youth and reminisce about the old days with the other olds. It was magical.

Here is a photo of the set of Anarchist Rally, which looks so much like my undergrad apartment that I almost blacked out. Then again, didn't everyone's undergrad apartment look like this? Fortunately, they did not try to replicate the smell.

Here is a photo of the amazing cast. I particularly loved that they changed the original guitar-playing heartbroken lesbian into a ukelele-playing heartbroken lesbian. I seriously just bought a ukelele last month. LESBIANS LOVE UKELELE!! Good work, guys.

The brilliant cast of No One Showed Up for the Anarchist Rally -
(L to R) Paula Humby, Lianna Makuch and Marina Mair-Sanchez

Anarchist Rally was my third and final play to be produced at Nextfest.  I wrote it about me and my two weirdo roommates in our last year of university, during a magical time when social-activism-as-mating-ritual, deep lesbian heartbreak and severe eating disorders collided. Shit got real in that apartment. Real and hilarious.

I'm the first to admit that Anarchist Rally is not a perfectly written play but Andrew put together a pretty perfect production. The cast were all brilliant, the costumes were excellent, the set, as I mentioned, was disturbingly familiar and the whole thing is just tight and well done. It still made me laugh - REALLY hard - at all of my own jokes. Don't just take my word for it - the show got a couple of very nice reviews.

If you're in Edmonton and want to relive your angsty college youth, I highly recommend checking out the Nextfest 20th Anniversary Showcase. My show runs in rep with Leah Simone Bowen's Code Word: Time until May 17! 

Next time: Back to birthday bragging! Plus, probably additional theatre bragging! Then probably some complaining. But really all I do here is either brag or complain, so you're used to it.

Creampuff Misses a Week

In my defense, we were at a social media conference in Victoria last week and when we got back, I was too busy actually working to bore you with the minutae of my daily life. But I have a few minutes now and a few photos, so get ready.

1. This cat is named Big Balls. This grainy photo was taken from across the street. Big Balls has such big balls that he will not move from this spot, no matter how apeshit Emmy Lou goes two inches from his face. 

2. I took my first panorama shot at the Empress Hotel in Victoria, where we stayed for the conference. JEALOUS? It was a really huge room with this hilariously terrible layout. Talk about your first world problems.

3. This morning, I get to Skype in to a workshop reading of Padu's new theatre for young audiences play, Outside. I feel like I am dramaturging from outer space. Look! I'm being attacked by moisturizer!! Now I know how austronaut Chris Hadfield feels.