11/12/19

i'm thankful to counter the narrative in my subconscious mind when i woke up at 5:30 this morning that wanted to iterate over work things i am anxious about with the waking knowledge that i am doing my best and people understand that is all i can do and people aren't spending their time thinking about all the ways in which i am inadequate and not up to the tasks of my job like i am (and in fact are maybe thinking those same thoughts about themselves). i'm thankful to go into today knowing the particular things i want to accomplish and feeling pretty good about my ability to accomplish them. 

i'm thankful that e held one of her gif dance party threads on slack and i filmed a gif of me dancing with miso, which erin then realized looked like we were acting out our :dancing-doge: emoji (i'm thankful this is an emoji we have). i'm thankful that after work yesterday miso and i played a brief but vigorous game of fetch in the backyard. i'm thankful for how whenever we let miso out into the backyard, she runs down the stairs and over the patio and, as she hits the grass, begins to bound and leap so gracefully and joyfully. i'm thankful that i gave her a little round of sourdough yesterday but put it in her water bowl instead of her food bowl by mistake, which led to a funny moment as she nosed it around the bowl, unsure how to pick it up.

i'm thankful that to go with our udon last night i sauteed some baby bok choy we had gotten from h-mart and steamed it. i'm thankful that since i've only cooked with it once before (and i think that was a meal kit where it was pre-prepped) i forgot to trim the ends, but that was fine. i'm thankful for the sweet soy dressing d made for it. i'm thankful for udon, the fancy refrigerated kind we had yesterday but also the kind that i remember being the first udon i had in my childhood, which is the one in the clear packaging with the stylized yellow letters. i'm thankful for the mouthfeel of an udon noodle, the chonky chew of it.

i'm thankful for this vlog d found (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivC3ZVIssu8) which is mellow and satisfying slow daily life vlogging, my favorite kind. i'm thankful that a subtitle in the most recent episode of terrace house mentioned "acts of service" which made me wonder about how pervasive the five love languages is elsewhere, whether that was phrasing introduced by the character or the translator.

i'm thankful for the book of m by peng shepherd (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36204070-the-book-of-m), which is post-apocalyptic fiction in the tradition of the stand and later station eleven, but i'm thankful for something that distinguishes it from those books, which is its loose flirtation with magical realism, which it uses exuberantly and without the kind of boring rules about consistency and internal logic and focus that they teach you in writing school.