I'm becoming British.

I’m feeling pretty British right now.  I’m sitting here on our couch, watching an X-Factor rerun (they love X-Factor here—probably more on this at a later date), then, a commercial for the very same frozen pizza I am currently eating (they love their frozen food here), I just flipped past a show called Porridge (definitely more on porridge later), and settled on Chopped UK episode (which we’ve seen already).  BUT I JUST FOUND NCIS!!!!!!!! OH MY GOSH IT HAS BEEN SO LONG GIBBS I HAVE MISSED YOUR HANDSOME FACE.  And I haven’t even seen this episode before.  American instincts have joyously returned.

But a word about porridge.  I had read about British people eating porridge in Charles Dickens and Jane Austen novels, and I imagined it was some white sloop made of who-knows-what, maybe newspaper.  Not until I came here did I realize that porridge is, in fact, oatmeal.  Who knew.  (Is this common knowledge?  I don’t know.)  Ashley and I went way overboard on our porridge eating.  We ate it everyday for breakfast—hers plain or with honey, mine with peanut butter or brown sugar.  We would eat it for dinner sometimes or as a snack on the weekends.  We talked about how much we loved oatmeal, how we could live on it.  So delicious and nutritious.  Then, the unexpected happened (well, someone may have foreseen this…).  The other morning, I made myself a bowl of oatmeal for breakfast.  I mixed in the peanut butter and raised a spoonful to my mouth…but I couldn’t do it.  I just stared at it and thought of lumpy papier mache paste.  Something inside me had just turned off and I could consume no more oatmeal.  Even the knowledge that I had just mixed in approximately 4 pounds (currency, not weight) worth of precious Skippy would not sway me.  I couldn’t eat it.  I later admitted this to Ashley, who said the same exact thing had happened to her a few days before.  All the oatmeal we had bought in bulk sits in our cabinet, untouched.  I guess we’ll have to make cookies. 

Surprisingly, I have more to say about oatmeal.  I had assumed that porridge = oatmeal.  However, last weekend I learned from Will’s cousin’s friend’s husband that porridge is oats with milk and gruel is oats with water.  Guess which one I’ve been eating.  GRUEL.  I’VE BEEN EATING GRUEL.  I’m feeling pretty British right now.

Send me Jif.

If you want to make me the happiest girl in the UK, send me a twin pack of those big Jif jars of peanut butter (creamy, not crunchy).  My birthday is a few months away, but I’m willing to celebrate it early.  As you all probably know, I’m very dependent on my American name brand peanut butter.  We’ve been buying these teeny tiny jars of Skippy (and Skippy is fine, but I really just want me some Jif).  These jars, which hold about the amount I apply to a sandwich, are insanely expensive!  I don’t even remember how much they cost because, upon purchase, I instantly block the price from my memory and instead focus on how thankful I am for American peanut butter.  Ashley suggested today that we make the switch to British supermarket brand peanut butter, which we can get in much larger quantities, for much cheaper.  …I’m just really reluctant to do this.  I was exploring this whole blog thing a little bit today, and I noticed that I can add a little PayPal gadget to my page….peanut butter fund?  What do you guys think, yeah?

In other news, I did a long overdue load of laundry today—mostly T-shirts and underwear, that sort of load.  I thought everything had been washed enough times that I could throw it all in together and put it on hot.  Evidently, I was wrong.  Some article of clothing (I oddly can’t figure out which) caused the non-cotton parts of my other clothes (waistbands on underwear, lace trim on a white tank top, the stitching on a running shirt, etc) to turn this purple-grey color.  But actually, nothing is ruined and I consider several articles of clothing to be improved.  The tank top with the new color lace looks like a completely new shirt.  It’s the luckiest washing machine mistake ever.

Third and final tidbit of my day—London is doing this Open House event this weekend.  Lots of buildings and architects’ offices are open for the public to tour for free.  After a very leisurely morning, I decided to pick one and check it out.  So I went to Norman Foster’s office (Foster + Partners), figuring it should be pretty interesting.  (Brief explanation for non-architects: Norman Foster is a pretty big deal, I guess.  Foster + Partners did the Gherkin in London and the Hearst buiding in New York.  Only he isn’t actually too involved anymore—he’s created an empire of minions to design in his high-tech style.  And if my tour guide—a project manager for the firm—was any indication, these minions all think they are very, very important.)  The office was pretty cool, but there was definitely a snobbish “we are the premiere London firm” vibe, which kind of made me want to be a nudge.  So during the tour, I spoke up and asked, “How regularly does Norman, you know, pop into the office?”  The tour guide’s eyes bugged out a little bit and he replied, “Umm, Lord Foster isn’t as involved anymore, but certainly has his hand in many of the projects.”  Bleh, excuuuuse me.  Architecture school put me on a first name basis with every architect, even the lords of the bunch.  How do you even become a lord anyway?  Is a lord some kind of mega-knight?  If so, Sir Elton John definitely deserves an upgrade.