2/13/17

i'm thankful that after dinner, we walked past a building with an enormous picture of paula deen and her sons on its facade on our way to a moonshine tasting. i'm thankful that in the square in between the two locations were a huge amount of rocking chairs; i'm thankful that normally a rocking chair is a solitary thing, so it was strange to see an army of them full of people rocking out of sync. i'm thankful that the flavored moonshine tasted gross to me and i stopped trying it after the first thimble-sized sample. i'm thankful for an old lady who very aggressively tried to elbow into my place at the bar. i'm thankful that after the moonshine tasting we went to a wine tasting, where i tasted a bunch of sweet fruity wines that i probably wouldn't normally like but were interesting to taste in small amounts in sequence. i'm thankful for the bottle of muscadine wine d bought and to have been reminded of the muscadine bush along the fence in our backyard in the first house i lived in.

i'm thankful that after the tastings, we went to ride go-karts on a three story track. i'm thankful that for some reason our friend had fixated on the idea that though i don't drive, i love bumper cars (i have not ridden a go-kart or bumper car since i was 12) and so chose this activity. i'm thankful that d and i shared a double kart and i'm thankful for the g forces of winding up to the top of the track and then cresting a hill at the apex and speeding down into another corkscrew. i'm thankful for d's screams of glee. i'm thankful that the ride was longer than expected. i'm thankful that after the go karts, we played mini golf. i'm thankful that i got an accidental miracle hole in one despite playing terribly for most of the game. i'm thankful that d's work bff's ball accidentally went into a water hazard but we were able to fish it out. i'm thankful for the moment when her work bff hit a ball way to hard and banked it off a rock wall (it was a cave-themed hole) and hit d, which seemed so improbable. i'm thankful that we all had a lot of fun together.

i'm thankful that at their house, we played a few video games and then went to sleep. i'm thankful that d and i had forgotten our toothbrush heads and hadn't had time to get toothbrushes earlier in the evening, so we each had a mint before bed. i'm thankful that d, who had much more to drink than me, fell asleep almost immediately while i lay in bed looking at the internet i had missed during the day on my phone for a half our or so. i'm thankful that as her sleep deepened i started to hear d sound like she was about to throw up and nudged her and asked if she was okay, to which she said that she was fine and drifted off again. i'm thankful this cycle repeated several times, with me alarmed that she was going to throw up and/or die of choking on her own vomit and her nonplussed. i'm thankful for the last time i woke her up, when i realized that the issue was that she had put the mint i had given her into her mouth and fallen asleep without eating it and it was still there. i'm thankful she crunched on the mint and swallowed it and i no longer had to worry. 

i'm thankful that in the morning, we went to a restaurant in downtown knoxville where i had a large sweet potato pancake with candied pecans and bacon and fried chicken. i'm thankful that all of the above was very good and made me feel full but not uncomfortably full. i'm thankful that we took a walk through the downtown and then went back to their house and took a walk through their neighborhood. i'm thankful that it was 70 degrees, which felt crazy and wonderful. i'm thankful that at that point i was ready to leave for home but d wanted to have homemade pizza with them. i'm thankful we waited, since we had lots of fun play time with their dogs in the interim and also the pizza was very tasty. i'm thankful that we got onto the road eventually and am thankful for d's skillful and safe driving. i'm thankful that we did the thing we did when you get to the part of the trip which feels like it's going to stretch on forever, which is to listen to erotica podcasts and laugh at the writing and reading. i'm thankful that as it got dark and we got closer to home, trended into listening to old pop songs from when we were young. 

i'm thankful that we got home and our house was fine and all our stuff was there. i'm thankful that we decided to put off cleaning out the trash we had accumulated in the car over the course of the ride. i'm thankful to have taken a long hot shower. i'm thankful to have brushed my teeth twice. i'm thankful to have drunk a large glass of water. i'm thankful to have done some lazy yoga to try to stretch out the tensions of the road and of not exercising for two days while eating large amounts of unhealthy food. i'm thankful to have laid in my bed and fallen asleep earlier. i'm thankful to have woken up this morning, still in my bed. i'm thankful to have had a good trip, but i'm also thankful to be home.