Saturday, February 26, 2011

Saturday, Part Three
(Click here to jump to Part One)

I rummaged in a few cabinets looking for the electric skillet. I don't normally cook on the stove since that uses propane and propane costs money, but electricity is included in the lot rent. Besides, having the cover down on the stove gives me the only usable counterspace in the tiny RV kitchen. One of these days, I'm going to find the right size sink covers to replace the ones that originally came with the RV. I'm not sure how many people have owned this RV, but they all took good care of it. Except for the sink covers which were MIA. The last owner only had it for a few months and I wondered if the missing sink covers had anything to do with that.

It was a major pain in the ass to do without the counterspace those would have provided. I laughed as I imagined a retired couple and the wife shaking a big wooden spoon at the husband, demanding a better kitchen. The oven doesn't work and given that it's spotless and looks brand new instead of over 10 years old, I supsected it had never worked. That bummed me out at first since I love to bake, but once I found out how much propane cost, I quickly got over it and decided the oven was just more cabinet space. Maybe it was something Mrs. Previous Owner couldn't live without, but I wasn't inclined to spend the money to get it fixed. My bread machine bakes just fine, provided one doesn't mind that everything ends up shaped like a loaf of bread.

I finally located the electric skillet in a cabinet over the bed. When you only have 150 square feet of living space, where things are stored is more about the dimensions of the cabinet rather than it's location. The location of the screwdriver needed to tighten the legs on the skillet, however, was in the kitchen junk drawer. I'm pretty sure almost everyone has a junk drawer containing at least one screwdriver in their kitchen. Some things never change whether you live in a house or in an RV.

Having brought the skillet up to acceptable safety standards, I went about cooking breakfast. Hash browns first since they would stay hot sitting off to the side on a plate while I cooked the bacon and eggs. A couple of months ago, I finally gave that precooked bacon a try and decided it was made for people who live in RVs. With just two minutes and my electric skillet, I can have hot, crispy bacon that hasn't made a complete mess of my tiny kitchen. I try not to think about how such a thing is possible. I'm not entirely sure you could make bacon any less healthy than it already is, but there's bound to be a price for that convenience.

I had cooked enough food to feed a family of four and in the process remembered that I had used my spatula as an ice scraper on my windshield a couple of weeks ago. I added "spatula" and "ice scraper" to the shopping list, ate a single portion and turned the leftovers into breakfast tacos that I could zap in the microwave for breakfast next time. No sense in cooking breakfast four times when you can do it once.

After the dishes were done I took a stroll over to the RV laundromat. As I suspected, the three washers and dryers were full. There was a line of full hampers lying in wait and quarters stacked on the machines just like I used to do at the arcade to claim my place next in line at my favorite pin-ball machine. The dryers run for 45 minutes so I did the math and determined there was enough laundry in line to last for another 4 hours. And that didn't include anyone who had not yet staked a claim.

I figured I had to go with the post-midnight plan and should go home and take a nap. By now it was three in the afternoon and if it had been a work day I would have been yawning my head off and more than ready for a nap. But I hadn't spent the day in windowless cubeland at the call center so I wasn't doing any yawning. I gave the nap idea a try anyway. No luck. The cloud cover outside wasn't enough to keep the RV from being too bright inside for a nap. I added "eye mask" to the shopping list and wondered if I was going to have to go to the sex toy store to find one.

I drive by one of the largest "adult" stores in the area on my way to work, but they probably were not open that early in the morning. There is no way I was going to burn that much gas to drive there on the weekend just to buy an eye mask. No, I'd save that for when I had enough extra money for a new vibrator and some porn DVDs. Except I don't have a TV and the DVD player on my computer is broken. Oh well, maybe Wal-Mart carries eye masks.

Too bad it quit raining; rain would make it dark enough to nap. I stuck my head out the door and asked for more rain. The clouds didn't answer, but my dog did, indicating that he wanted a walk.

3 comments:

  1. Loving your writing. Desperate to know about the helicopter...

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  2. Thanks BW. I plan to write more of the story this weekend since it doesn't look like I'll have time during the week. Not sure how my life got so damn busy... oh yeah, it's that working 40 hours a week with a long commute thing :)

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  3. Something to do while you're waiting for the laundry to finish anyway... ;)

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