Civilized

I haven't eaten cereal in weeks. I used to love cereal. I used to love cereal so much that I'd eat at least 2 different types mixed together in the same bowl every morning for breakfast. So much that, for years, until I realized how not-especially-healthy it was, I used to eat 2 bowls every morning. I still love it, and I'm sure I'll go back to it in the near future. But for the time being, while I'm being all rigid about cooking as much as possible, I've been having oatmeal or hot cereal or warmed-up couscous with milk or other such things for breakfast.

Then this morning I really went fucking nuts. I was at Trader Joe's last night, on foot since I'm trying to drive as little as possible (both because of gas prices, and because my car kind of sounds like it's going to lose a couple wheels at any moment), and my initial goal was just to grab some mushy hot cereal to last me through the week. I tried one kind of hot cereal from TJ's which looked cool on the package but turned out to be way too whole-grainy. The only way to make that stuff mushy would be to throw it in a food processor for 30 seconds or so. (Yeah, I do have a food processor. What the fuck's your point?)

Where was I? Oh right, mushier hot cereal/oatmeal. Anyway, I stopped near the entrance to TJ's, where they keep all their bread products. I was idly thinking about grabbing a bag of corn tortillas when a bunch of tall British guys in fuzzy black hats blasted me with a horn fanfare and alerted me to the package of crumpets a couple of shelves below. "Thanks, British guys," I yelled over my ringing eardrums, and I picked up the crumpets and bought them (along with a few other random essentials). Because why not? I never tried crumpets before. And I figured I might as well, if for no other reason than because I'm sure there will come a time when I'm sitting in the middle of a random conversation and someone says "Has anyone actually ever had a crumpet?" and everyone kind of laughs for a second and says no and there's a general lull in the conversation and people are starting to get up and leave but I save the day by saying "Yeah, I've had one!" and suddenly the evening has gotten its second wind, and the drinks start flowing again and people are in awe of my crumpet-having experience and, yes, my existence is finally validated just because I heeded the advice of some imaginary Redcoats and spent $1.50 on a package of starchy little English muffin-looking things.

But that's all sort of beside the point. This morning for breakfast, I had scrambled eggs and two crumpets lightly toasted with butter. That is the point. Oh, I had orange juice too.