Glad To Be Alive Monday

Scattered Monday thoughts can mean only one thing – BULLET POINTS.

Yay, I love a bit of free form thinking, slightly random,  even more slightly interrelated.

Here we go –

* A friend of mine has just won a contract to ghostwrite the autobiography of a well-known Aussie soccer player. However, he is not very forthcoming about details of his life and the few pages of notes he has provided are pretty much indecipherable. Once I got over the irony of my friend working with one of the people she has scathingly referred to for years as the inarticulate pretty boy sporty types (and stopped laughing uncontrollably) I offered my help.

Here is the opening paragraph I came up with:

Whenever a ball comes into contact with  a surface that has friction, the ball’s parallel velocity is changed and a torque is applied to the ball by the off-center force.  When the foot comes into contact with the ball, the upward and forward swing of the leg’s stroke gives the ball topspin.

Topspin changed my life.

My friend prefers the dumbed down version:

I kicked a ball when I was a kid. It went really far along the road. It was a good kick. That’s when I knew.

I had fun with the opening paragraph but can you imagine writing a whole book in that vein? It’d drive you crazy.

* Is it ever alright to flirt with a man when you’re married? A friend of my husband’s is absolutely hot and I flirt with him and he flirts with me whenever I see him. Our flirting is indulging a little frisson that exists between us and I am worried that it is inappropriate. Do you think that people who are both very much spoken for consider flirting to be safe and harmless and that it is in fact, safe and harmless? Did I mention that he is ten years younger than me? I am officially a cougar. Yay me!

* My son has an uncanny ear for accents. We were watching Bridezillas the other night (Hey! we always watch something tacky on Friday nights) and there was a bride on there from Staten Island, New York. By the end of the show he had mastered her accent. He has been doing it all weekend. He even rang one of his friends and they didn’t know who he was. I would love to be able to do that!

* Do you ever do something mundane like turn on the lights in the evening and suddenly become overwhelmed by the brilliance of the invention? Sometimes I am blown away by inventors – even over a hundred years later. Thank you, Thomas Edison.

* Speaking of giving thanks, I met a man at Baker’s Delight (local bread shop) today who had lost both of his arms in a fire. He was a former firefighter and had been trapped in a building. His arms were so badly burned they had to amputate what remained of them. You would expect a man who had endured such horror to be embittered, but he was incredibly happy just to be alive. I was humbled and inspired by his attitude. He had hooks for arms that were electronically controlled. I’m not sure exactly how it worked but it seemed to be that he could control them by thought. It was amazing. A little boy eating a cheese and bacon roll couldn’t take his eyes off him and asked him in a squeaky voice if he was a robot. He got down to the little boy’s level and took the time to explain to him how his hands worked. Such goodness always makes me teary. That little boy will remember that experience for a long time.

I am pleased to have met that man.

It makes me glad to be alive.

Hope your Monday is a good one.