Quiet musings… day #8

How many times the torch has been knocked out of the cupboard: Twelve.

What I learnt today: Mass is measured in kilograms; the gravitation pull on that mass toward the earth is called weight. The mass of an object does not change, but the weight of an object can change depending on how near or far it is from the centre of the earth.
The acceleration of gravity is 9.81 metres per second squared, meaning that in a vacuum, all objects, regardless of their mass, will fall, and accelerate, at the same speed; therefore, the pull of gravity is the same on all objects, and it is the mass of the object that dictates how fast it falls to earth. Wow, do I feel small. The universe is so unfathomably complicated; how did it come to be what it is, and equally, what it isn’t?

What I do to the driver on the way home whose trailer door is open and rubbish is falling out onto the dual carriageway: I pull up alongside, wind my window down and wave at him; he gets the message pretty quickly and pulls over to shut the door.

What I noticed: Nobody else who drove past him bothered to help.

What I hope the driver with the trailer does: Take time out of his busy life to put someone else before himself one day. In most cases, it doesn’t take a lot to help someone, and you could really make their day with just a little bit of effort; I think that makes life more worthwhile than any amount money of fame does. You’ll feel like gravity is pulling a little less on your heart for a while too.

What my wife and I do, unknowingly: We practise our parenting by talking to our cats in funny voices and referring to ourselves as mummy and daddy even though they are not our children – they did not come out of my wife’s body. We did adopt them, I suppose – so to speak.

JP Collins

Quiet musings… day#5

What the clouds say this morning: We’re being blown really fast, it looks like the world has been spun by a giant hand. We want to remind you that you are travelling at around 700 miles per hour, and that we are both moving around the sun at 67,000 miles per hour.

What the phone does: Ring, it’s the hospital, they’ve had a cancellation, can I come tomorrow morning?

What I can do tomorrow morning: Go to the hospital.

How my job is going: Really well; busy, in fact.

What I say to the cats: Ciao, come stai? They ignore me, except Cuzco who meows as if it to say “cosi cosi,” and “io ho fame!” Va bene, I reply, va bene, va bene!

What we call our cats: Agent amber, Captain Cuzco (often in the likeness of the captain caveman cartoon narrator), and Major Monty.

What my wife is when I get home: Upset because I snapped at her. Stress can cloud your judgment, making you direct your anger in the wrong direction.

What I do to cheer both her and myself up while we unload the dishwasher: I hold the flour-sieve in front of my face and lunge back and forth across the kitchen, pretending I’m fencing and jabbing at her with an imaginary foil. She pickes up a colendar and pretends to spar with me, holding it in front of her face. She then puts the colendar over her head and we laugh at how stupid we look. This is real love.