12/26/15
i'm thankful for video calls. i'm thankful that even though this is the first christmas that neither d or i went home, we were able to feel like we were present with our families and they were able to feel like we were present with them through the high definition moving images streamed through the air across the country and onto our screens. i'm thankful for the way that working to fit ourselves into the frame made us, in some ways, more present, than we would have been otherwise. i'm thankful, at the same time, that we were able to stay home together alone, that our first christmas since we got married could be ours to share.
i'm thankful for d's dad's excitement about the case of beer and champagne and wine that we got him, which earned a joke from d's mom about him showing up to give his sermon drunk. i'm thankful for my dad's excitement about the surprise gift of the toy bb8 robot he received, which he was not expecting at all and which made his face look briefly like a little boy's (i'm thankful that my mom, who usually has trouble buying my dad "stupid" things, felt freed to do so and had the idea). i'm thankful for d's mom's excitement about her new michael kors bag which she had been wanting for a long time and which she leapt from the couch to model for us in a rapid fire variety of positions. i'm thankful for my mom's excitement about the food lab cookbook i bought her, and thankful for her texts throughout the day about interesting things she'd learned from it. i'm thankful for my brother's excitement about fire emblem awakening, which d got him because she loved it so much and thought he would too. i'm thankful for d's sister's excitement at the makeup set d got her and i'm thankful that, as promised, she wore her kigurumi which was beyond cute and had fur claws. i'm thankful that d got a kigurumi of her own for christmas as a surprise gift and that she put it on immediately to show off and also looks adorable in it. i'm thankful that i got a new set of nonstick skillets for the kitchen so we can stop possibly ingesting toxic chemicals when i use them. i'm thankful for the annual ritual of watching my dog crawl into her enormous stocking to retrieve her gifts—i'm thankful for how much she liked the stuffed possum she was given.
i'm thankful that d and i both have families (and now both have each others' families) that love us and i'm thankful that we were able to connect with them on an important day. i'm thankful, even though i'm a person that thrives on routine, for the way that holidays can sometimes disrupt routines for the better. i'm thankful for blessings on blessings on blessings.
i'm thankful that after the bustle of unwrapping, we cleaned the house so that it would be nice for us for the rest of our vacation (or at least for a little while). i'm thankful that though for some reason, it did not feel good to be in my body/mind yesterday afternoon (possibly because i took my prozac late because i was on the video phone calls, possibly the exertion of emotional effort to be present through the screen, possibly not having time to do yoga or meditate, possibly some subconscious feelings of guilt at being away, possibly any number of other things created by the mysteries of the processes of the body that are totally outside of my control), i forced myself to go running and it was a beautiful warm sunny day. i'm thankful for the 'do not enter' sign i passed whose paint was almost entirely faded, erasing its warning. i'm thankful that i encountered the large tree which had fallen across the path while running instead of while biking—i'm thankful for the joy of jumping over it and barely breaking my stride as i continued up a shady hill. i'm thankful that by the time i got home, i was feeling better. i'm thankful that i discovered the power of exercise to help me feel better at a relatively young age. i'm thankful that d texted me while i was gone to check on me and that i responded immediately that i was fine and would be home in five minutes.
i'm thankful that we had leftover shrimp scampi with linguini to eat for dinner and i'm thankful that i decided not to bother with a salad, which would just be a distraction from the pasta. i'm thankful that after dinner, while d played zelda, i started watching nymphomaniac: volume 1, which i've had saved in my netflix queue for a long time but couldn't make myself watch. i'm thankful for lars von trier's masterly command of the brechtian alienation effect and i'm thankful, at the same time, for the beauty of the photography. i'm thankful for the artificially-imposed literary device used to structure the narratives, for the weird role played by stellan skarsgard as a delivery mechanism for facts about fly fishing and polyphony. i'm thankful for the quality of the performances, even from actors like christian slater and shia le boeuf, who initially felt like stunt casting but who really delivered. i'm thankful for the sadness of the movie, especially in the scene with uma thurman (which is also very funny) and the scene where christian slater dies of delirium tremens (which is not funny). i'm thankful that d eventually got so intrigued by the movie that she put away her game and we turned off the lights and embraced while watching the end. i'm thankful that as we sat there, i thought of the ending of melancholia, when the family huddles together under the makeshift structure made of sticks, united as the world ends around them.