Creampuff Revolution

Things Creampuff Misses (and Doesn't Miss) About Vancouver

Taking a break from long form content this week because we're live-streaming TED and my brain is full, here are some lists:

Things Creampuff Misses About Vancouver

• Our hilarious, awesome friends
• The neighbourhood characters, especially the twins, Dwayne and Dwight, who borrowed and returned $20 every month
• All fabulous dog walkers who've put up with our crazy shar peis (particularly the good folks at Bronte Pet Services)
• Pizza Pzazz 
• The Skytrain
• Not having to bag your compost
• The Licorice Parlour on Commercial
• Sidewalks
• Our Little Free Library
• Swiss Chalet (apparently it's gone now, probably because we left)
• Trout Lake
• Granville Island Market
• Walkability
• Seeing the mountains every day (they have 'em here, I just see them a lot less often)
• Ogenki Sushi

Things Creampuff Doesn't Miss About Vancouver (or rather, living in *our* place in Vancouver, most of these aren't Vancouver's fault)

• Skunks
• Being part of a strata
• Cleaning human turds off the rock in front of our Little Free Library
• Finding a jug of hydrochloric acid tucked into our cedars
• Driving downtown (that's Katr, as you all know, I drive only with my mind)
• People stealing our geraniums/basil/rosemary, like, just ripping the whole plants out of the planters
• The guy who moved in after our upstairs neighbour Sivo sold her place and his roommates who partied until 3am all the time
• Having to get up at the crack of dawn's ass to take the ferry to Victoria

And now, a select 50x50 update:

• French podcasts listened to: 7
• Vegetarian meals: 6
• Books finished: 4
• New recipes tried: 1
• Pillows touched: still 16, I haven't been to anyone else's house in weeks

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 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).

Creampuff's 2020 Christmas Village

I'm not going to lie to you, folks - it was a challenge to get it up to get my village up for 2020.

Our sassy little wrinkle dog dying of a sudden illness in October and then a beloved member of my extended family passing away just this weekend were truly the thick layer of grief fondant on the layer cake of ass that was this year. But my village brings me joy and Katr cleared the bookshelves off for me and gave me a cool new background, so I put my urban planning hat on (it's a cloche) and got my shit together.

I kept the village small this year, gang - only one location. And it's mainly Department 56 Harry Potter village items. There's a theme this year and it's pretty subtle, so I hope you're able to pick up on it.

Gringott's Bank offers the two things we're all looking for in a bank - it protects your Galleons and believes in your basic human rights. We all roll our eyes a little when they have a float in the Pride Parade (fucking corporate rainbow washing) but still. 

"I. EAT. TERFS!!!!!"

Here we have Albus and Severus explaining how She Who Must Not Be Named just kept doubling down on her bullshit transphobic "logic" this year, just over and over, just digging herself deeper and deeper into a TERF-y hole and how she used her huge platform to say things that materially endangered the well being of trans people, and also about the plot of her latest book. Minerva, who is not on Twitter, is FUCKING APPALLED. Look at her WTF face. Masterful work by Department 56 here.

Lydia the Tea Monger serves the best tea in town. Be prepared for her to talk to you about her deep crush on Elliot Page. Mr. and Mrs. Barnes have been standing there for well nigh an hour.

Whether you're willow with a heart of unicorn hair or elm with a core of dragon heartstring, Ollivander's is a safe place to shop for the new wand you'll need after a year of cursing out You Know Who. 

Borgin and Burkes may be engage in unethical business practices, but they're not dipshits.

They welcome magical folk of all genders to peruse their cursed necklaces and weird collection of human bones.

Over at the Three Broomsticks, the Butterbeer is hot, the Fire Whiskey is cold and Madam Rosmerta has NO TIME FOR TRANSPHOBIC BULLSHIT.

Here, Ron mansplains the nuances of gender identity - badly - to an endlessly patient Hermione. Harry just nods - because Harry know what's up.

Breckinridge serves the best roasted chestnuts in town. Be prepared for them to talk to you about their deep crush on Elliot Page. Mrs. Turner and little Nan have been standing there for well nigh an hour.

Lily Brothers saw this coming.  And Jimmy at the newsstand wasn't sure he was going to put his flag up until his customer Mr. Collins stopped by one morning and tried to engage Jimmy in a conversation about "cancel culture". Jimmy got his flag from Madam Rosmerta, she had extra.

To be honest, Mrs. Crachit's not super sure what's going on around here this year. She's worried Buckbeak might try to eat her birds. Bob's late getting home from work again. But she made sure to hang this flag on her house because she has a lot of kids. And if one of them wants to tell her something...she wants them to know they can.

And that's it! I know that this holiday season will be rough for some of us and that most of us are missing seeing our families this year. I am sending you all lots of love. And I wish you all a cozy holiday season full of magic, snacks and great books by authors who don't endanger the lives of queer, non-binary and trans people with hateful rhetoric. Fuck TERFs!!

 

Creampuff Thinks You Do-Gooders Should Apply for this Free Yarn

I LOVE to knit but I am so sloooow at it that, when I do finish a project a year after starting it, I generally have a recipient in mind and they'd better be grateful or Katr will add them to her shitlist of people I'm not longer allowed to knit for.

But I know that there are many of you knitters out there who are both fast AND community-minded and you like to donate your time and yarn to a cause. And for you, there's an opportunity to snag (haha) some free yarn for your next charity project!

The good people at Yarn Canada (whom, you may recall, sent me some lovely Bernat yarn to review last year and I knit a giant snuggly baby blanket) are offering a chance to win some FREE YARN to you awesome knitters who knit for charitable causes.

If you like to knit hats for preemies in the NICU or scarves for folks who've found themselves homeless or if you're part of a knitting cabal who knit or crochet items to benefit others, this is for you!

I don't know if knitting sweaters for penguins counts but it's worth a shot.

Want to get your do-gooding mitts on some free yarn? Fill out the application by December 31, 2019.

As for me, I recently finished the ONE THING I knit this year but it's a holiday gift, so photos at this time. I know, it's disappointing, but you'll live. And maybe by the time I post those photos, I'll have finished a WHOLE OTHER THING! Shut up, it could happen!

 

Happy Birthday to Katr!

I wrote half of this post last year, on Kate's 50th birthday. It was an epic birthday, we had a big partay and I NEVER FINISHED IT.

In it, though, I was going to make her birthday about me by bragging about a couple of things I did to surprise her, so I'm finishing it now!

Happy birthday again, Katr!

As she mentioned in her groundbreaking guest post two weeks ago, Katr turns 50 today!!!

(again, this was last year, she's 51 this year, which is still cool)

One of the hardest things in the world to do is surprise Katr. There are a few reasons for this:

1. While Katr enjoys little surprises, she is not into BIG surprises. Like, for example, if you told her to expect a quiet evening at home and then threw her a surprise party, she would still love you and appreciate the effort you went to but please don't do that ever again.

2. We work together - from home - in the same room. So it is challenging to have clandestine phone conversations or even email or text conversations because we are both in each other's business constantly. 

3. I am bad at keeping secrets.

The last time I tried to surprise Katr was several years ago when she REALLY wanted a new iPad for Christmas. I told her that I thought it was a bit too pricey and maybe a little unnecessary and she sadly agreed with my practical statements. But OF COURSE I was going to surprise her with the iPad.

So I ordered it online WHEN SHE WAS IN THE SHOWER, so she wouldn't see what I was doing. I diverted all email from Apple to a folder in my email that I didn't open if she was in the room. I was so stealth about this thing that I thought about adding "stealth" to my list of skillz on LinkedIn.

As the delivery date approached, we were getting a lot of other Christmas present-style packages in the mail, so I was confident I could hide the iPad in the shuffle of other boxes from other places. And when the UPS truck pulled up and Katr came to the door with me because she was ALSO expecting a package from UPS, I wasn't concerned. 

The UPS guy came to the door with two boxes and saw us both waiting there. 

"I've got packages for Roro and for Katr," he said, "who should I start with?"

"Me! Roro!" I said, matching his jocular tone.

"Okay, Roro!" he said "LET'S START WITH THE IPAD."

Why???? Why would he DO that? Katr's face filled with delight which then quickly turned to concern as I had a FULL AND VERY REAL MELTDOWN at having my carefully planned surprise ruined by UPS.

I'm still angry about it.

For Katr's 50th,  I took her 50 year old Snoopy plush toy to a local bear hospital to be refurbished, a gift she CLAIMED was a huge surprise but which she actually inspired by saying "I should get Snoopy fixed!" a few months earlier. I wanted to do something totally unexpected. So when she mentioned that she wanted to have a guy come and do a video trivia night at her party, I thought it would be fun to sneak in a couple of trivia questions from...people she loves from the internet.

Katr loves board games and she is a huge fan grrrrl of board game walk-through duo, Anthony and Frances of Ant Lab Games. I am also a huge fan of them, ever since the infamous Anachrony incident of 2017 - it was their 3 hour walk-through that made the game possible. I messaged them on Facebook and asked if they would record themselves doing a trivia question. They could NOT have been nicer or more enthusiastic about it and this is what they sent:

Katr is also a huge fan of musician Christine Parker, partly thanks to her sweet music video Where You Are. She got my family hooked on Christine's music as well - and Christine had a Facebook page. You can guess what happened next:

Brian from Vancouver Trivia Party was SUPER into making this surprise happen and sneaked the questions into his trivia set. And when they came up on the screen, KATR WAS SURPRISED!!!!! And also pretty moved, as a fangrrrl should be. She is adorable. Also, she knew the answers to the trivia questions, which gave her a leg up in the game. HA ha!

Anyway, thanks, a year later, to Anthony and Frances and Christine Parker, for taking the time to make my 50th birthday surprise dreams come true. You are good, kind people. And happy 51st birthday, Katr!!! I am so happy you were born!!