Month: March 2009

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A Beautiful Spring Day!!!

WOW! It’s sunny and warm out, with just a hint of a breeze. (In all fairness, yesterday was a beautiful day, too, but I had more important things to do than enjoy it. 🙂 ) The entire park is out and about doing things outside. This weather seems to have also motivated everyone to do laundry. I think I’m 30th in line. 🙁 I would just wash at home in the Wonderwash as it would not be a hardship to spend a few hours outside doing laundry, but there are too many clothes to dry indoors and exterior drying is not permitted.

I finally swapped my winter clothes for spring/summer items, so I have quite a bit of ironing to do. Thankfully, the laundry room provides an ironing board, as did the park in Oliver, so I can continue to keep Miranda an ironing-free zone. 🙂

I took advantage of the beautiful weather to wash the toad, something I haven’t done since I arrived in Oliver!

I also topped up my new batteries, something I had to do for the very first time! I wish I had known during the winter that I wouldn’t need to top them up until a gorgeous spring day as it’s a lot of work. I have to remove five screws and manoeuvre the batteries into position, so it takes about a half hour in a very uncomfortable position to check the water levels. I would have saved myself a lot of numb fingers had I been able to predict the future. 🙂 Yes, a battery monitoring system is on my list of desired items at some point!

My cats have also been enjoying the weather seeing as birds like the cedar hedge behind Miranda. They also like to sit up front and ‘chase’ squirrels to the back by following them from window to window. It makes me think of the portrait subjects jumping from frame to frame in Harry Potter. 😀

(A tip for those RVing with cats: if you’re sitting in the lounge one day and noticing that it’s drafty, check to see if one of your cats cranked open a window in the cab!)

Speaking of windows, I opened a few today (ah, fresh air) as well as a two overhead hatches. I’ll be stowing away the hatch foam covers in my final step to fully dewinterizing the rig.

(There’s a FLY outside one of my windows. Between that and the robins I’m ready to concede that Mother Nature really does intend for winter to be over!)

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Chlorine Overdose

My friend Donna is in the GVR this week, so we made plans to see each other. Since she had her boys in tow, she suggested we meet at an indoor pool where they could splash about without being bored while she and I got in a good gab fest. I proposed the wave pool at the Newton Centre, in Surrey. I’d discovered this pool while riding the bus to work in January, but had never been since I have a pool here at the RV park.

I was most impressed with the facility which boasted a wave pool, several smaller splash pools, two water slides, a steam room, and more. They were barely a notch down from the similar ones at the West Edmonton Mall. It was the most amazing municipal pool complex I’ve ever visited. Entry for an adult is a mere 5.05$, and a family can pay 2.55$ per person.

Donna and I had a great time lounging in the splash pool, treading water in the wave pool, and riding down the water slides. As is par for the course for us, the afternoon flew by in a fury of gabbing while soaking until we were prunes. Ah, girl time, there’s nothing like it. 🙂

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Doing Laundry in an RV

Had some ‘unmentionables’ to ‘hand launder’ (using the Wonderwash of course!) this afternoon. It’s been pouring rain out all day, so stringing a clothesline outside for drying is out the question. I guess my only other option was to open up the laundry rack in the middle of the kitchen or dressing room and trip over it all day, right?

Here’s an RV tip: make use of its versatility:

laundry

My laundry rack squeezes in perfectly between the dinette benches and the table stows away in the cab.

It’s been damp in here the last few days (what a shocker), so I fired up the electric heater, which effectively turned the dinette area into a drying room!

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Why You Should ALWAYS Carry Your Camera!

I drove around White Rock this evening to check out the small, unadvertised RV ‘parks’, take in the scenery, and watch the beginnings of a beautiful sunset over the Pacific Ocean. At one point, I turned onto what turned out to be a cul-de-sac ending with a circle for people to turn around. In the middle of the circle was a circle of grass in the middle of which was… a palm tree.

Geeze, had I known in June 2007 that there are palm trees in the GVR, I could have just stayed there instead of continuing on to San Francisco where I saw my first palm tree in its natural habitat!

I hope I can find the little guy again; he was short and squat and hardy… kind of like me. 😀

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Luxury

Luxury is a relative term.

This concept is beautifully illustrated in one of my favourite books of all time, The Endless Steppe by Esther Hautzig. It is a memoir of the Siberian exile of a young Polish Jewish girl during WWII.

Ms. Hautzig wrote:

We were one of four lucky groups: Father found us living quarters in a corner of the room. In an utterly bare room, two walls to lean against, a corner to curl up into, were luxury.

I  was ten when I first read those words and they have followed me for twenty years, helping me appreciate what I have even while longing for more or better.

Tonight, I came home to find Tabitha in the study looking out the back window while Neelix was in the lounge looking out the window on the passenger side. Rather than disturb the cats by shutting the blinds, I was able to slide closed a solid wood door with a satisfying ‘thunk’, stretch out an accordion door, and change into jeans in a private room large enough to move about comfortably. I’ve discovered that in a less than 300 square foot RV, a dressing room is luxury.