I mentioned I was left with the tough job of cleaning up and putting things away …

OK, so cleaning up isn’t that hard. But Eleanor left me with a pile of perishable food and orders to consume it all before I go — or die trying. That included a large bag of lettuce, two quarts of milk (skim and 2%), a loaf of bread, cold cuts, a pineapple empenada, a bag of grapes, four single-serving cottage cheese cups, a package of large tortillas, and a half pint of heavy cream.

Combining everything into the classic bachelor meal wasn’t appealing. Well, maybe with peanut butter, but I didn’t try it. So each day I have eaten a seemingly random mish-mash of whatever appeared it was going to mold first. Reminds me of college days.

I wasn’t fast enough for the tortillas. They turned to something resembling blue cheese in the past few days, and even I wouldn’t eat them. Besides, something microscopic was obviously eating them already.

It has been an interesting challenge to come up with ways to use up food when I have no known cooking skills. Combine the cream with the skim milk (isn’t that just like whole milk then?) and add some chocolate syrup — voila! A way to drink a quart of milk in one day! And I’ve discovered that cottage cheese can be a side dish to almost any meal. (I’ve eaten so much dairy in the past few days that I may get a kidney stone from the calcium.) And there were other clever solutions that I probably should spare you.

People were reporting in today from all corners of the Airstream world. Brett says the Florida State Rally is getting underway. Colin Hyde and his family pulled into the rally today. Bert Gildart called from Tampa and says we’ll see him and Janie out west in a few weeks. Rich C says he’s going to stay here in Tucson another week, but I wonder if I’ll see him when I get back from Florida.

Dr. C emailed from his hideaway 50 miles south of here, and threatened to come up for a visit tomorrow before I catch the plane. Mike Young IM’d me about his plans with Rosemary to move to Phoenix. Leigh & Brian emailed that they would like to have joined us in Mexico but have prior commitments. I also heard from Mike & Terri Church, authors of the Mexico book I bought a few weeks ago. We’re going to start carrying their great RV travel books in our store in a few weeks.

And so on … I love keeping in contact with all my friends and acquaintances.

Tomorrow I need to do the final things to make the trailer ready for vacancy. Since we are on a monthly rental in the park, we pay for our electricity separately. So I’ll unplug the trailer and let it stay charged on solar power. I’ll set the furnace at 45 degrees just to ensure that the holding tanks won’t freeze in the event of an exceptionally cold night, check the propane, toss out anything perishable that I didn’t manage to eat, crack a vent slightly, and lock up. Not much to it.

There may not be a blog entry on Tuesday because I’ll be flying until late. The blog will pick up again on Wednesday from the Florida State Rally.