From Murder to Disney

I know, I know, I’m trying to accomplish my goals: post recipes and catch up on the past few months of living in England. But I also thought that maybe, just maybe, I would also let you have a peek into “real life.”

Yesterday was a great example of “real life” with the Kiels. First of all, it was a Wednesday, which means a long day for me. Every Wednesday, I try to meet up with a couple of women I’ve met for lunch. It used to be pretty easy, but then one of them got a job (sad for my own selfish reasons — she’s helping me knit!). And the other is in my shoes (two people, one car), which makes it difficult for her to make it sometimes. Anyways… since I’m already committing to having the car for the day, I usually try to get as many errands done as possible.

So my day started with Andrew’s: at 6am. Ugh, I really hate getting up when the sun isn’t even up yet. It was obviously worse before (yes, our days are getting longer now!), but right now the sun rises at 8:04 and sets at 4:08. So I went with Andrew to work so I could take the car back home with me. I tried to be productive at home (get some chores done), but I’m now a Blogging Addict. So not much got done before I needed to take a shower.

I had come up with my weekly menu the night before, so I already had my grocery list ready to go. That’s usually my Tuesday night “thing”: pick out recipes, write every ingredient down, check the kitchen to hopefully cross things off the list (like spices & flour), then put the list into a checklist on my phone. I have to have 2 checklists: the “to buy on base” list and the “to buy in town” list. As I type this, I’m wondering if I have obsessive organization issues…yikes.

So I went to base early to get a few things taken care of before lunch, including buying some wine for me 🙂 and getting Andrew a scrub brush. Before we got married, we made some personal vows to each other. One of them was that I would do all of the cleaning EXCEPT scrub the bathtub (I detest it). I tried not to nag Andrew to clean the shower before this, and he finally (after over 3 months of living in this house) requested a scrub brush so he could clean the shower. I was thrilled! The other thing that is Andrew’s job is to take out the garbage and sort the recycling. I don’t think he has it bad at all.

Then I had lunch with Karyn, where we were able to catch up on things and show each other our knitting projects. She is much more advanced than me with knitting, but she’s a great source of knowledge when I have a random question for her. Karyn gets an hour for lunch, so we didn’t have a ton of time to knit, but we did get filled in on our personal current events.

Next up was the grocery trip to the commissary. I am a very focused grocery shopper. I am a woman on a mission: get the necessities and get out as soon as you can. This being said, I absolutely love grocery shopping — it’s one of my favorite types of shopping! But if I dawdle and peruse, I am bound to buy unnecessary things. Which is why I will probably rarely take my children grocery shopping with me someday. So, yes, I am a fast shopper. Don’t be offended if I breeze right past you and don’t make eye contact: I’m looking at food and comparing prices, not looking at your face.

I’ll skim the rest of my day, as I can see I’m babbling a bit here… sorry, I love to talk and I love to type. 🙂 I made a stop at Tesco to pick up a few things there (always milk and eggs, and usually some meat and vegetables), then drove home to unload all of the purchases, get some dishes done, and drive back to base to wait for Andrew to get done with work. The hard thing about this whole we-only-have-one-car thing is that Andrew never seems to get done with work at the same time every day. It’s generally between 3:30 and 5:00. That’s a big range. So I got to the hangar at 3:40, which was nearly perfect: I only waited in the car for about 10 minutes, I think.

Once we were home, I pulled out my dinner recipes. I was making 2 things I had never made before, and I wanted to figure out how much time I needed and what order to do things. If there’s one thing I hate (and there are many more than one), it’s feeling out of control in the kitchen. The most difficult thing for me is getting the timing right when making multiple dishes. I think I’m getting better, but there are some nights where it’s better to stay OUT OF MY WAY when I’m in the kitchen. I can be a bear when things aren’t going the way I want them to!

While eating dinner, we decided to watch a movie. Andrew wanted to watch “Natural Born Killers” because neither of us had seen it, and it was supposed to be one of those movies you HAVE to see. So I agreed to it. With most movies, I cannot help but Google the title and read what the general plot is and what people thought of it. And I was intrigued by this one, because it was said to be very controversial and violent.

Well, it was. I don’t even know if I liked the movie or not. It was intriguing in a psychological and sociological way: how these two people became so violent and the way violence is perceived by the media. But it was pretty gruesome at times, and there were definitely some disturbing parts. For example, one of the main characters, Mallory, has her upbringing portrayed in an “I Love Lucy” scenario, complete with the laugh track, even though there was nothing funny about it: her father abused her mother and her verbally and physically, and he also abused Mallory sexually. Disturbing stuff. As the movie continued, I started to actually feel stressed out. There are moments of rapid shots of a variety of media, which definitely helps the viewer get involved in that frenzied feel the killers must have been feeling, but it also just made me feel edgy and a little uncomfortable (I’m sure this was the point).

After the movie was finished, it was about 9:30pm, around the time Andrew likes to head upstairs to get ready for bed. Well, we were afraid we wouldn’t sleep after a movie like that, so he told me to pick out something more light-hearted to watch before bed. And that’s how we went from this:

to this:

Yep, I stuck in Disney’s “The Emperor’s New Groove.” It may have been the perfect choice! Plenty of giggle-worthy moments, even though there is attempted murder in this movie as well. And that, in a nutshell, is an example of movies we watch. We enjoy watching things that make you think, films that are dark, and movies that have interesting filming techniques. And we also love animated films that you barely have to watch to know what’s going on. They have funny one-liners, cute songs, and pleasant endings.

So here was a day-in-the-life. Hopefully they won’t all be this lengthy. But I did warn you that Wednesdays are busy days for me!