End of week 1 - thoughts....

So, I've now been in the UK for a whopping week. When I visited in July, I was here for about 9 days I think, so it's not the longest stretch I've gone here yet. Still, my mindset is a little different; I'm still in vacation mode, but there's so much "real life" in front of me that it's certainly not going to last much longer.

DH and I are still getting along - somewhat and sometimes. It's been tough for both of us, going from having completely independent lives for the last 4-5 months to living together again. There are certain elements of the house that make this a little tougher. The kitchen is tiny and there is a severe lack of storage, so our previous habit of both being in the kitchen, he cleaning dishes and I making dinner, is just right out. No storage or counterspace means that everything is always everywhere, and that's pretty annoying. The house also squeaks like an old door, so if he wants to be watching TV on the second level, and I want to be doing something else on the third, well the constant squeaks and groans of the floor make TV watching less than pleasant.

The cats seem to be adjusting just fine, as cats would. We've started them on two high-quality UK cat foods. Eliza won't eat it but Henry eats one of them. I'm really happy Henry likes the one, it should be really good for him. I don't know what we're going to do with Eliza. She seems to be okay with Fancy Feast, so I'll try and see what the best flavors of that are (fewest corn and other fillers) and keep her on those. She was 13.5 pounds at her last weigh in, and she's supposed to be closer to 10 or 11. Fatty.

Perhaps the highlight of my entire first week here was a little book club that I've joined. There's an online forum for Americans in the UK, and one of the girls organized a book club which met for the first time Saturday. We read "Petite Anglaise," a book written from the blog kept by an English woman living in France. Recommended only if you like to see how a narcissistic fantasy-world dependent person can construct a life for herself (in her mind) only to destroy her family when reality doesn't quite match fantasy, and sets out to create other fantasy lives for herself, which again never match reality. Anyway, the meeting was about 80% social chat and 20% book chat, which I found to be an excellent mix! It was nice to start building a social circle that didn't rely on folks knowing DH.

On the agenda for this week: getting the kitchen storage situation under control, getting the living room arranged the way I want it, hopefully getting a cell phone number and bank account, getting my summer clothes and linens organized somehow. And I think that's just for the first part of the week. I also want to try and get to a proper grocery store for actual shopping. The commissary on base is good for some stuff, but meats are not a strong suit for them. There's a butcher at the end of the block, across from the pet store. Maybe I'll trek out when the fog burns off and buy a little food for us and a little food for the cats. Just have to be sure not to mix it up!