9/25

 

i'm thankful that last night after dinner when i took miso out for her walk, i had on headphones at first so that i could listen to music, which was nice in the way that listening to pretty old soul music in the dusky twilight time of an end of summer evening is nice, but then i felt like while wearing the headphones, i wasn't as connected to her as she explored and took them off. i'm thankful to have remembered last weekend when we took her to the park and on the trail circling the park, there were a father and son run/walking and the father was wearing headphones but the son was not and i thought it was odd, like if you're walking with someone you should walk with them, fully,

 

and yet i also know that i don't know anything about them and sometimes being able to put on headphones while doing something that might otherwise be unpleasant (like a walk/run or washing the dishes or mowing the yard) is one of the great solaces of modern life and life is hard and sometimes you need that more than you need to be "present" (i'm thankful that though i love listening to a podcast while doing the dishes, for one of my coworkers that time is something else, sacred and essential and desperately guarded). i'm thankful on the walk yesterday evening to have compromised by listening to a podcast on low volume on my phone's speaker. i'm thankful for the noises of all the bugs that are alive now and i'm thankful for the silence that will come soon as it gets colder.

 

i'm thankful that though it rained most of the day yesterday there were periods where it wasn't raining or wasn't raining as hard when i could take miso out and i'm thankful that even when it was raining, she is not much put off by the rain as the dogs i had growing up were. i'm thankful that last night after yelling at her because she bit me so hard i bled, i laid in her pen with her on the ground, my head on her hair-caked bed which must be making my antihistamine crank so hard, and she laid against me sweetly for a while, before getting up and peeing under the dining table, her first accident in several days. i'm thankful that this morning she sat in my lap for a bit in the living room after we got up and went out into the dark and she had breakfast.

 

i'm thankful for double stuff oreos, which, even though i actually think they are deeply inferior to regular oreos and bought them by accident, are still, at the end of the day, dessert. i'm thankful for hot showers. i'm thankful for vocoders. i'm thankful that there is a powerful new coffee & TV about sharp objects and a lot more. i'm thankful for my year of rest and relaxation, which continues to be dark and funny and weird in the best ways. i'm thankful, even though i have trouble reading paper books with my screen-addled brain, that my copy of LIVEBLOG is coming today. i'm thankful that i have time to make myself tea and take miso out one more time before work starts. i'm thankful that today is the last rainy day for a while, at least according to the forecast.