Creampuff Revolution

Creampuff Stay-cation Super Productive

I am ashamed to note that I am about a week behind on my "weekly posting" plan but in my defense, Katr and I were on vacation last week! Wooo! 

It's been a bizz-nizzy few months of working here and instead of going anywhere for our fabulous week off, we thought we'd just putter around the house and enjoy a keen staycation. 

As always, I had a lot of plans for our staycation. I was totally going to:

• Knit a baby sweater for an upcoming baby


• Clean out the lazy susan because I keep buying pasta sauce without looking in there first and now it looks like an episode of Doomsday Preppers in there


• Clean out and reorganize my dresser in preparation for "summer" or whatever we have here in Vancouver during months traditionally associated with summer


• Go see The Avengers, because I love superhero movies and love Joss Whedon even more


• Buy a file cabinet and reorganize our filing system, which right now looks like monkeys are doing the filing


• Go through my desk caddy, which I'm pretty sure has cheques from two addresses ago and a lot of calcified lip gloss


• Take the dog on long, meandering walks while thinking deeply about all of the creative projects I've been meaning to work on


• Work on the all of the creative projects I've been meaning to work on


• Cook healthy gourmet meals every night, using all the new cookbooks we got for Solstice and my birthday


• Do yoga every day


• Feel really fucking smug

What I actually did:

• Knit 1/4 of a baby sweater


• Watched Katr do some gardening


• Got into a fight over three scraggly basil plants with some douchebag at Home Depot


• Played stupid Castleville


• Ordered dinner from a different place every damn night 


• Did yoga four out of the eight days we were off - but mainly savasana


• Finally beat the awesome new level in Kingdom Rush


• Long weekend Criminal Minds marathon

Basically, it was the best week of my life. I hope you had had equally felicitous long weekend fun!

In related news, Katr did some gardening! Stay tuned for lots of pictures of tiny plants and angry rants about the critters who nom them.

 

 

Creampuff's Chin Does Not Touch Her Shin

"Oh SHIT," I thought, as our yoga teacher Jane came to the door holding a beautiful orchid plant, "this is it. She's had enough of our whining and question-asking and weird smells emanating from our dog, always from the dog, never from us! She's leaving us! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!"

I braced myself for the goodbye, because, like Taylor Swift, it's all I've ever known. But Jane took me by surprise and said "It's our one year yoga anniversary! So I brought you an orchid! Also, here are some raw vegan gluten-free brownies. They should go in the freezer."

That Jane...she's the best.

I can hardly believe that it's been a whole year since we "began our yoga journey". There has been sweating. There has been weeping. There has been accidental groping (of us by Jane...of Jane by us...of Emmy Lou by Jane and us). But there has also been some significant progress and I have to say that while we can't yet do this:

We are suuuuuuuuuuuuper close.

Here are some changes I've noticed since we started our corporate yoga initiative a year ago:

1. There is a lot more grunting in the house.


2. I really appreciate yoga jokes, in a way that I didn't ever think would be possible.


3. Emmy Lou loves yoga too. Her favourite move is the "Sheddingalloveryourmattasana".





4. Some foam blocks are denser than others.


5. If I do 10 minutes of sun salutation-esque activity every day, my back stops hurting and I feel like a normal human.


6. Breathing is THE SHIT.


7. Ashtanga yoga (the kind we do) is the best kind of yoga. All other yoga is "pussy yoga". As in, yoga for pussies, not yoga for your pussy.


8. Sometimes, when you transition from the cobra to downward dog, you involuntarily let fly such an intense, fabric-rending, dog-disturbing, room-destroying burst of flatulence that the other people in the room think that you've kicked over a chair and then none of you can stop laughing.


9. When Jane says "soft gaze", she is not actually saying "soft gays".


10. You haven't fully tested the limits of how far up your ass your yoga pants can go until you finish three variations of Prasarita Padottanasana.
    
    


11. Yoga is never "finished."

This last one was a tough one for me - the idea that I will never "get it right" and be able to stop doing yoga forever. Yoga is this neverending, constantly shifting exercise in "finding space", "breathing into your heart", "lengthening your spine", trying not to get dizzy or barf or cry, thinking a lot more about your perineum than you're used to and smelling yourself. 

But I am pretty pleased that we've been doing it for A WHOLE YEAR. And I look forward to our two-year yoga-versary, which I hope will see us both throwing moves that FEEL like this:

but will likely look more like this:

FAT YOGA RULES!!!

 

Creampuff Gives You "Permission to Live". You're Welcome.

I don't usually yap about other blogs because I'm a narcissistic twat, but this is probably the most awesome blog series I've read in a long time and I wanted to share its awesomeness with you.

As you know, I became obsessed with fundamentalist Christian blogs in December of 2010 and, as an offshoot of that obsession, I discovered another fascinating set of blogs - recovering fundie blogs! 

My favourite of these recovering fundie blogs is called Permission to Live. When I first started reading it a year and a half ago, the anonymous author wrote about her upbringing in a fundamentalist Quiverfull home and her courtship process and her changing philosophies around religion and parenting and (occasionally) political issues, such as gay marriage and (occasionally, obliquely) sexual orientation.

Her blogging was pretty sparse over the last few months - she, her husband and four kids were in the process of moving, so posts were few and far between. And then a few weeks ago, she started to tell a new story.  And it was such a fantastic, lovely love story, told so well, that I actually put all the links together for you so that you could go read it. And if you don't have a little tear in your eye by the end of it, then you are DEAD INSIDE.

Intro: Unwrapping the Onion

Part 1: A Secret Revealed

Part 2: Research 101

Part 3: A Growing Up Story

Part 4: When It Doesn't Add Up

Part 5:  The Beauty of Acceptance

Part 6: Talk of Transition

Part 7: Charting a New Course

Part 8: Coming Out, Bit by Bit

Part 9: Starting a New Life

 YOU'RE WELCOME.

The Underdog Railroad Strikes Again!

A year ago this weekend, the fine folks at Vancouver Shar Pei Rescue told us that a wrinkly dog named Lindy Loo needed a ride from the SPCA shelter in Burnaby to Kelowna (about a 4.5 hour drive from here). So we drove her there and I took 84 photos and somehow never got around to posting them on my blog. HA ha!

What the fuck was I doing last April that I didn't get around to posting about this? It's cute pictures of dogs! Okay, here you go:

This is Lindy Loo taking a walk after being sprung from the shelter. Look at that wrankly dankly!! "Wrankly dankly" is a technical term.

"Uh...you guys aren't going to make me get into that crate without treats, are you?"

Mountains! Not seen: Lindy Loo making horrible horrible sad noises in the back of the car for the whole drive.

Freedom! This is Lindy Loo at CG's house, being vetted by alpha dog Mister. CG is an underdog railroad hub - Lindy Loo was staying with her and her pack over the weekend and was then headed to Edmonton, her final destination. She is very loved in her new home, by the way!

CG lives right on the lake! So Emmy Lou got in the lake.

Another of CG's pack. Look at the rombly pombly! "Rombly pombly" is a veterinary term.

Rombly pombly checking out wrankly dankly.

Emmy Lou gets the once over from Mister.

I remember this trip like it was yesterday - but no no! It was a YEAR AGO yesterday. And then THIS weekend, a wrinkly dog named Sadie needed a ride to Kelowna. And a boxer named Phoebe needed a ride to Vancouver. So we drove Sadie to Kelowna and picked up Phoebe to bring her to her excited new owner in Vancouver.

Still snowy in the mountains. We did not "chain up" our tires.

Sadie stretching her three legs at CG's place in Kelowna after the long car ride. She was a total sweetheart in the car - but for her warthog snufflings, we wouldn't even have know she was there.

Sadie in the sun, getting ready for her one-on-one with pack leader Mister.

Mister and Phoebe, waiting to meet the new arrival.

Phoebe!! Such a flopsy wopsy. Technical term.

Phoebe's new owner was SOOOO excited. Phoebe is her third boxer and they took to each other right away. Mere hours after we dropped her off, we got this from Phoebe's new owner:

All in all, two April Saturdays well spent. Of course, afterwards, we were all pretty exhausted from our rescue efforts:

If you are fans of wrinkly dogs, you would do well to "like" the Vancouver Shar Pei Rescue Facebook page. Because those dogs are REAL and they're SPECTACULAR.

Creampuff *Might* Have An "In" with the Union

I was walking the dog in the sunshine yesterday and a fellow stopped me on the sidewalk to let me know that I look very similar to Jean Van Vliet, the President of the Canadian Auto Workers Local 3000. "Not a bad person to look like!" he exclaimed as he walked away. End of encounter.

This was delightful for a number of reasons.

1. What?

2. "Jean Van Vliet" sounds very similar to George Costanza's fake boss/alter ego "Art Vandelay".

3. I usually get told I look like Toni Collette in Muriel's Wedding or my uncle Ian. So Jean is new. Here is a photo of Jean (she is on the right, in the plaid).

Here is a photo of me, for comparison:

Haha! Oh, a REAL photo. Okay, here's one. I am also on the right.

It's like me and Jean are the same person! In the sense that we're both fat, white and bespectacled. But sometimes, that's all it takes to create a doppelganger.

I'm not sure what to do with this information. Should I let Jean know that we look alike and that I'm available to take her place at union events? 

ETA: My friend and future Minister of Information Doai has created a new campaign photo for when I next run for office (at CAW or BEYOND)! I hope this shot doesn't make it look like I'm on the take.

May the Odds Be Ever in Creampuff's Favour

Well, you can all exhale. I've seen The Hunger Games and I'm ready to tell you all what I thought about it.

• Jennifer Lawrence is THE SHIT. I didn't find Katniss particularly likeable in the books but in Jennifer Lawrence's hands, she made a lot more sense to me.


• Also, Lenny Kravitz is a delight.


• I don't know the words for the "up-the-nostrils "constantly shuddering camera" style that the film was shot in. Sometimes, I really enjoyed that (particularly during some of the violence at the beginning of the Games). But other times, I was like JESUS CHRIST, STOP SHAKING THE CAMERA AND JUST SHOW ME WHAT IS ACTUALLY HAPPENING.


• In the movie, I didn't feel like you really got the sense of just how oppressed the people in the Districts were (or what goes on in the other Districts). I was expecting to see/hear a little more about that (as a lead up to the following two books). And I get why the whole Avox thing didn't really make it into the movie, as there wasn't a lot of time. But I think that a little more talk of the everyday menace of the Capitol would have been interesting.


• CONVERSELY, in the book, I didn't really get the true impact of the Capitol's obsession with the Games whereas in the movie, it really hit home that these fancy-wigged jag-offs were totally disconnected from the reality of the situation. That scene where Katniss and Peeta arrive on the train and the crowd goes wild was nuts. "Wooo! We're so excited to see you guys kill each other! What will I WEAR??" Awesome.


• Doesn't Rue's District send Katniss a gift in-game after she "buries" Rue? I missed that moment not being in the movie. But Rue was adorable.


• All the crazy stuff that takes place in the Games Room with Seneca and the game operators was super interesting and also, made the whole affair seem that much crueller and fucked up. Huzzah.


• I was glad they left out the whole "muttation" thing and just went with random evil dogs. The muttations really freaked me out in the book.


• I didn't really feel like Haymitch was as important or memorable in the movie the way he was in the book. But I kind of blame that on Woody Harrelson.

Overall, I really enjoyed it and look forward buying it and watching it over and over again while waiting for the next two films to come out. Fingers crossed for an extended cut! Wooo!

In the meantime, thanks to The Hunger Games, Katr and I have now found the perfect way to see blockbuster films in the theatre without the hassle of "other people" or "children". All it takes is a 20 minute drive to Coquitlam at noon on a Wednesday and an extra $5 for your ticket to the 19+ VIP theatres. HAHAHAHAHAAA!!

Aw, we felt like jerks until we got in there and saw the huge screen and extra comfy seats and also, seat service. It was like seeing The Hunger Games in Business Class. Maybe you can join us next time! Just don't sit too close.

 

Ding dong - the skunk habitat is gone

As some of you may recall, the abandoned house next door has been the cause of some anxiety, mainly around the skunk and how it lived there.

Since Emmy Lou was pwned by the skunk, we haven't had a problem with it coming into our yard but I would still smell it out and about from time to time. Skunks don't hibernate but they are less active in the winter, so as spring slowly thought about approaching, I started to get a little more anxious about the stank which the warm weather might bring back into our lives.

Until yesterday.

Our neighbourhood is a bit of a construction zone at the moment - they bulldozed an abandoned house just down the alley from us a few weeks ago and last month, the house kitty-corner to ours caught fire and is in the process of being "restored" by "restoration experts" who "smoke pot" on their "lunch hour" near "my dog". 

So when yet another large piece of construction equipment showed up, I didn't really notice - until it started to feel as if a giant was stomping on the abandoned house next door. OMG - was a giant stomping on the house next door?? Or was the development that we heard about from the city last summer finally about to begin??

It turns out it wasn't a giant. I beetled out with the dog and became the weirdo who records 20 minutes of not very interesting footage of the house next door being slowly chewed up by a large, T-Rex-like machine.

Here's the house before it got eaten by a giant orange machine:

And here it is after day of debris clearing:

We work from home and so obviously, the fact that there's going to be a huge amount of construction next door for months and months sucks a lot of wang. But on the other hand FUCK YOU SKUNK!!!!!! YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!

I learned to use iMovie to commemorate this occasion. I hope you enjoy my stellar camera work.