The gig’s been really tough lately, no rest for us wicked girls. NO rest and no time away makes two girls cranky everyday!

So yesterday in a feeble attempt to restore body and spirits… we abandoned ship, put a sign on the door and fled the compound. No real destination in mind. We ended up having a little coffee/snack at a cafe, then going off to the Othello Tunnels just outside Hope. We had heard about them as being a must see, but so far hadn’t been inspired to go.

WOW, what an amazing place, a must see for sure. An old railway was built to get through this canyon and a spectacular walk through the tunnels all that remains.

We went for a great walk, then headed down a path that took us to the bottom of the canyon, where we sat on the rocks and watched the water rushing down.

far from an actual day off, but helped put mind and spirits right for the day at the very least!

Here are some great shots alison took when she was here. Now you all can see first hand what an amazing photographer she is!

My personal fav

Deb’s fav

another great one… maybe for the cover of airstream life??

if you are on facebook, you can click here to see more of her work. if you become a fan she posts her pictures there and you can get your daily dose!

As ya’ll know, kimi loves her internet. Biggest case in point is us meeting our best boyfriends.

Who would have thought asking a simple question on the airstream forum about towing an airstream would have lead to meeting two of the nicest men on the earth?

Who would imagine that meeting would then lead to us spending a summer in anne’s land, and meeting all the wonderful PEI riff raff that we did?

Well Kimi’s internet came through again this week. With real live visit from a new internet connection.

I’ve been following (well virtually speaking) a woman from California, who’s an amazing photographer. I follow her blog about her travels, and view her stunning work online .

We have commented on each other’s blogs from time to time, and as the virtual world goes, she’s one of my facebook “friends”, even though we’ve never actually talked to each other or met. I was reading her blog last week, and she was in the area (well if you consider oregon “in the area”). 

So since she’s my “friend” on facebook, i decided to send a little comment on her blog to ask if she’d be interested in visiting, that we’d love to meet her, and we could show her a little BC.

And guess what? She actually came. She somehow trusted that we weren’t some internet stalker girls, and she headed across the border and up to the no-tell-motel. What a lovely visit we had.

It was great fun getting to know each other, swapping life stories, and showing her the sights the no-tell-motel has to offer. (well if you consider a trek up the falls as showing her the sights!)… all confirming to me what i already know, the internet is a wonderful and magical place to meet people you’d otherwise never come across.

The best part about it was we were able to offer her an airstream first. This is a girl with her own airstream dream, and she got to spend the night in ours, her first airstream sleepover… how nice is that?

The only down side of the visit was that she got the third degree when entering our lovely country. After my deb deb’s suffered two similar third degree’s i’m convinced either there’s one vigilante border guard where we usually go over, or Canadian border guards in general are really a suspicious and cautious lot.

They not only grilled her but they called me to corroborate her story. A story which by their accounts is sketchy at best i imagine from border guard land. Girl traveling alone with just a tent and a dog, wanting to go up to Canada to visit two no-tell-motel mavens, never met them, found them online… but seriously folks, worth the 2nd and 3rd degree? Sheesh

Fortunately it didn’t put her off too much, she figured it was their round about way of saying “Welcome to Canada”.

Least you all think i’m a radical, man-hating dyke… you know writing about man pee and all. Cause to balance that whole issue out… there is a women based complaint.

Hair

…long hair to be more exact.

It personally boggles my mind how much hair can fall off a long haired women in one overnight stay. You think anyone would be offended if i put a brush at the door and wrote a polite note asking for anyone who’s got hair over 3″ to please brush at the door?

Feeling very nostalgic for the good times of last summer. Was looking through my pei pics, and had to post this one. Our man buddie, shuddup larry at halloween last year at bayside rv campground… i wouldn’t let him in the door with that hair!

This motel gig is making me wonder things… so i thought i’d ask my internets, cause you guys are really there for me and help me understand things that… well… that just don’t make sense.

Today, i cleaned my 4,387th toilet (not that i’m counting). As i’m wiping up the man pee from the base of said toilet, the logics of how it got there hit me.

So i ask you my internets to please, please help me figure out, how does man pee get on the base of the toilet?

I mean i get that floor and walls are fair game, one little mis-step, or distraction can make that one eyed willy swing a little erratically… as a mom of two boys, i’ve witnessed/washed many an errant splatter.

But the base… just how does that man pee get on the base? How does the arc take it around the toilet bowl, and back down… as if in a curve?

cause you know internets… this is actually the only way i can figure it:

Sometimes life is ironic.

As you know (cause i’ve whined over and over again about it!)… our weather has been crap. This week the sky cleared, and we are getting sunshine and HEAT like the rest of north america…GREAT…. i mean finally… right?

Well, in life’s ironic plan, not so right. My poor deb deb got felled by a massive summer cold on the first day of sunshine, and has had a miserable week lolling about in the high heat with a fever.

So in an attempt to cool her down, there we were yesterday while the sun shone… with all windows shut, curtains drawn.. air conditioning on locked forever inside the no-tell-motel… oh irony, why do you have to be such a horrid old bitch?

Then in a further test of emotional fortitude, hitting when we are lying there feeling sorry for ourselves…. 

There’s one tv show that gets me transported out of here….. So You Think You Can Dance. And there’s one dancer who is so brilliant it makes you weep when you watch him. Well this week he hurt himself, and is out of the show.

For those of you who live real lives, and don’t watch this brilliant show, here are two videos that show this young man’s talent… he’s absolutly stunning…. i personally am going to cry now!

Alex Wong – Hip Hop

Happy belated Canada day and Happy 4th of July to all our internets! Hope you are all having a great start to the summer.

Here in rain forest land, we are still experiencing the rainy cool weather we have been for months. I sit “working” in the airstream this lovely rainy afternoon wearing a wolly shirt and fuzzy socks…. not my idea of summer!

Turns out that lovely mountain range that starts right here behind the no-tell-motel has 30% more rain than the rest of BC. Great. hurmph

Top row of the graphic is what the weather has been like for pretty much since we got here. Though it’s only showing a week in june, it may as well show the whole month of june and may.

But there’s a light at the end of the tunel…. bottom row, what’s coming up for us this week…. sunshine and HEAT. WHooooo hoooo keep your fingers crossed for us, we really REALLY need  some sunshine right about now…. we are getting grouchier and grouchier by the moment!

It’s been really busy at the motel, not leaving much room for blogging, breathing or relaxing of any kind, which is deffinatly adding to the grouch factor….

So today rather than whine (well don’t include the above few paragraphs as whining ok??).. i thought i’d focus on the positive.

There are two amazing souls living at the motel for a few weeks, and we’ve had some lovely evenings of actual company. They are settling in the area, and have now found an apartment nearby, so they’ve promised to entertain us with theme nights Fridays.

Upcoming theme…. Mexican night. Margaritas, fajitas, and fun…. if they turn out anything like our “paralyzer” and bonfire night thursday, we might just ungrouch a little!

I’ve been painting, which is wonderful to come back to after over a year away from it. Have created a couple of peices already. The below is one. It’s called “Hope”. Not sure it comes out in the shot of it, but it’s a bright, happy little spot of sunshine up on the wall in the bedroom, which we are both loving in our space.

There’s nothing like working in the service industry to give one a lesson on how to treat others! 

Over the weekend we had another family group taking over a couple rooms of the motel. Bunch of kids/adults.. nice enough, but that kind of attitude.

You know… that kind of attitude that makes you feel like the “help”.  An obliviousness to the fact that there are other people on the planet besides them. The kind of attitude which is of ownership to all the space around them…. you know the type?

Their kids were jumping all over the beds, dumping bikes all over the sidewalk… running back into the rooms they had vacated, while my deb deb scrambled to clean for new arrivals…

Contrasting to that, a lovely older couple, who stayed in the room beside the group (god only knows how they survived). The fellow came into the office so very sweetly to check out.  He was totally apologetic…. they had been munching chips over the weekend, and they felt badly for leaving us some messy crumbs.

…just makes you wonder, doesn’t it?

So, i confess, Financial Dyslexia is a fairly new affliction…

My whole life has been playing catch up to my Date Dyslexia. I can’t begin to tell you how many appointments, meetings i’ve missed because of it. Oddly enough, I’m a stickler for time, so am never late… just typically show up for said appointment/meeting on totally the wrong date.

Classic Date Dyslexic moment… showing up for a flight home a day early.

Unfortunatly for me, the woman at the counter didn’t catch it. So i arrive to my connecting flight in an airport far away… only to have them say “hay lady.. your flight’s tomorrow”…. duh right…

I mean i do have a bit of an excuse… having worked out of a home office for 10+ years, days blend. It’s a funny thing… when the talk at the coffee machine isn’t “Wow it’s hump day” or “TGIF” how that lends itself to not knowing what day it is  or if it’s the weekend or weekday…  or even what month it is. (once i even had to double check the year when signing a cheque… WOW… double dyslexia).

But the very funniest story (cause at some point you just have to laugh in the face of it)… was one day walking the dogs. 

I ran into a fellow dog walking friend, who i hadn’t seen for months.  I was asking her how she was, what’s been going on… all that kind of catching up stuff. Her family was from Calgary, so in that catch up vein… so i ask “So when you heading back home for Christmas?”

She stopped, looked really puzzled…. kind of thought for a moment and said ” Uhhhh…You mean, next Christmas??”.  No.. says i, this Christmas…. completly oblivious to the fact that it’s may, there’s not a snow drop in sight, the birdies are singing and flowers are a blooming…

Suddenly i came to earth, had a look around me and totally clued in on the ridiculousness of what i had just asked…. can’t tell you how hard we laughed at that one…. course she never let me forget it!

Yesterday confirmed to me a thought i’ve been having lately. Wondering if there’s such a thing as financial dyslexia? (ok allyson and wendy {my financial gurus/accountant/bookkeeper}… not a peep out of either of ya).

I’ve known all along i’m financially, accounting, numbers “challenged”… and one might place the level of it into the dyslexic category. But now it’s become obvious that it’s not just a simple fear of the almighty $$… it’s a true disability. 

Lately, no matter how hard i try, i can’t seem to even perform a simple bank transaction. I thought it was just fluke, but after yesterday it’s been confirmed. I have Financial Dyslexia.

It starts innocently enough… i head off to the bank machine, checkbook/bank card/specific instructions in place, check. I search out the bank machines that don’t charge me extra fees… check. I have my handy dandy cell phone/calculator in case i have to make any calculations, check, check and double check. But somehow, even with all that it all that falls apart at the machine.

Deposit a cheque for $1800 and enter $800 into the key pad… the months it took to sort that one out were well worth having $1800 in the bank! Loose the cheque in the 4 steps between truck and machine, leave the bank card in machine…. i really thought all these were random acts that could happen to anyone…

well now i know, they don’t happen to mostly everyone, they happen with alarming regularity to ME.

Yesterday was no exception. Trusting, innocent, optimistic deb deb hands me a cheque to deposit. With strict instructions to deposit it before i go off for a stroll around Harrison Lake. Before, right kimi? Yes deb deb, before… promise.

Slide into parking lot, cheque in hand, bank card in hand, final amount in head… Check, Check, Check.

Get to bank machine, enter card, enter PIN number…

uhhhhh, hmmmmm, scratch head… PIN number, PIN number i’ve had for years, perhaps the only pin number in my lifetime of PIN number having…. total and utter blank. Blanker than blank…

3 failed attempts later bank machine spits my card back in my hand, and i go home dejectidly with un-deposited cheque in hand. Pretty sure deb deb’s going to have to take care of this banking thing in future, n’est pas?