8/8

i'm thankful that i can make d laugh so hard that her stomach hurts (i'm thankful that her food poisoning is over, so i felt okay about hurting her stomach with laughter, as i did last night by pretending to be our future dog (which we are getting in 23 days) and then also by standing behind her with my arms over her arms as if i was a robot exoskeleton suit and using her arms to pick up a glass of water and drink from it and then also by laying down on top of her as she was sitting in a chair and musing on how we could measure the pressure i was putting on her by putting a scale in between my back and her stomach and taping my phone to my back so that it could capture video of the weight. i'm thankful that none of these things in the abstract seem very funny, but i'm thankful to know that jokes die in description and explanation and to say that you'll just have to take my word for it that they were funny and she laughed very hard. i'm thankful that she likes to laugh at and with me and that i in turn get to spend my life with her trying to make her laugh. i'm thankful that though early in our relationship, joking was sometimes fraught, because i would tease d and unintentionally hurt her feelings, i've (mostly) learned to pull back from the kind of joke that would hurt her feelings and stick with the kind of joke that makes her stomach hurt (from laughing too hard. i'm thankful, when you know a person for a long time, for all of the private jokes that build up, that, to people outside of that knowledge, aren't that funny or aren't even jokes at all, just combinations of words and gestures and movements, but i'm thankful for how within the knowledge, those jokes are magic spells, incantations that reliably produce joy. i'm thankful for the blessing of having private jokes with lots of people in my life, but i'm most thankful for the ones that i have with her.