What is normal anyway?

Everyone assumes that their lives are normal. You assume that they way you were brought up was normal, whilst you are living your childhood anyway. I agree that some people come to the realisation at some point, that their childhood wasn't normal. But I digress briefly. Today K and I will attend a wedding. I will be wearing a cream suit with a red shirt and a red sequined cowboy hat. K will be wearing a navy blue pinstriped suit with a red camsole, no hat. So she commented that she wished she had some red shoes, and I agreed, that red shoes would go well with my outfit too. I then went on to say that my father had some red sequined stiletto heels that I could have worn with my outfit. What is wrong with that? She laughed and left the room. Well? That for me was normal! My father was an actor, and from time to time dragged up for music hall performances. So he owned dresses, wigs and stillies! And one pair of those stillies were red sequined. Normal. It got me thinking about normality, and I realise that my upbringing was anything but normal, but I wonder what normal is. Because there are things that I remember doing that I look back on now and thing how awful that was to have to do, like stealing food from the cupboard because I was hungry and too scared to ask for food. My sister and I got really good at taking small enough pieces of stuff that no one would notice some gone. And then when we were older (early teens) we could just blame my father, who by then was losing his mind, the fact that my mother hated him and was happy to blame him for anything was an added bonus. But that is terrible, to have to steal food! We also lived in fear of my mother's anger. It seemed to me that she was permanently in a bad mood, probably brought on by my father's increasingly antisocial behaviour, but not a great atmosphere when you are a kid. But it was normal, and you adapt and learn to avoid confrontation. But I get back to the shoes. There must be thousands of kids out there who know about their fathers stash of ladies clothes, who think that all dads dress up in ladies clothes when no one else is about, who think that it is normal.

I still don't have any red sequined stillies to wear with my red sequined cowboy hat. But I will enjoy the wedding anyway. I hope.

Later

p.s.

Just thought I should add, my step daughter has just landed a really amazing job! She will be working for one of the largest Marketing Companies in the world, and she is really buzzed as you can imagine. K is on the phone to her now talking it through, she is really jazzed.

Now Bunty has come in again, no doubt she will nag some more about going out.

Hotter than DC, bread baking

So here I am, sitting at my computer, at 8.32pm, and it is 41 degrees!!!! When I lived in DC it wasn't this hot, to my recollection anyway. We don't have A/C which is probably part of the reason. But that aside, my bread worked today as per normal!! So there you go, all those people who say you can't bake bread when it is hot outside ner ner ner ner ner. The only thing, and if anyone has any ideas about this I would love to hear them, the dough I make makes fabulous rolls, but the loaves are always too dry and a little dusty. Now according to a web site that I went to that was all about bread, that is because I let the dough rise for too long. I could buy that except that the loaves and the rolls rise for the same amount of time. I also, on the batch before this last one, put the loaf in the oven before the rolls, so that it didn't rise for as long. Yet it was still dry. It isn't inedible, it is just that it falls apart when you eat your sandwiches. So like I say, it you have any ideas on that, I would love to hear them.

Now Bunty is scratching at the door trying to get me to take her for a walk. Which I will do of course, whilst K is washing the dishes, but I am not ready to go yet. Give it another 20 minutes or so. Hopefully it will have cooled down somewhat by then.

Yeah dream on.