11/16/15
i'm thankful that the two very bad dreams i had last night ended and that i woke up safe in a warm bed next to the person i love. i'm thankful that in the first dream, in which my mother was stabbed to death in an elevator while i stood in an anonymous corridor elsewhere in the building, i did not have to see my mother be stabbed to death. i'm thankful that in the second dream, in which my father was dying of a mysterious illness, i was able to distance myself from my wracking dream sobs with a meta-meditation about how the narrative structure of the latter part of the dream resembled a sequence in fallout 4 that i had played that evening. i'm thankful that bad dreams end.
i'm thankful i have a doctor's appointment today. i'm thankful i'm not as anxious about going to the doctor as i have been in the past. i'm thankful i have good insurance and can afford to go to the doctor when i need to go to the doctor. i'm thankful that the weather is warm enough that i can run or bike to the doctor and back.
i'm thankful that even though i lost my debit card while biking yesterday, a nice person named "julie" found it and phoned the card company. i'm thankful for "kevin," the customer service representative i spoke to who was very nice and helpful. i'm thankful my identity was not stolen.
i'm thankful for the deep, comfortable bathtub in the house we're renting. i'm thankful for plentiful hot water. i'm thankful that the piece of cardboard i tried to fashion (using folding, gorilla glue, packing tape, and rubber bands) into a sort of "bath desk" was a wobbly failure and that even if it hadn't been, it wouldn't have worked because of the angles of my arms and bathtub ergonomics. i'm thankful that it didn't work because i was able to type out the last entry easily just with my thumbs, my arms submerged in the hot water, and was more comfortable than i would have been otherwise.
i'm thankful for the joy that d and her sister e shared while playing together in e's animal crossing town. i'm thankful for the ability to watch their colorful avatars fish and hunt for bugs and shop. i'm thankful for this insane chart, which shows how dialogue responses shape your character's appearance.
i'm thankful for my longest meditation session yet. i'm thankful for seated forward bends and i'm thankful for cactus pose. i'm thankful for the concept of loving-kindness meditation. i'm thankful that i have felt so much more positive and good since i started to write these thank you notes. i'm thankful whether that's correlation or whether it's causation.
i'm thankful that in one week, i'll be on vacation for a whole week, which is the longest vacation i've had since last christmas.
i'm thankful for this description of water coming out of a garden hose, from greg hrbek's not on fire, but burning: "as moses nkondo opens the nozzle of the garden hose (the water has been surging there like blood behind a clot and now released atomizes against the blacktop, alchemizing into a rainbow-flecked spray), he watches the two boys walk towards the neighboring house."