i just cannot get it up for a hummingbird

i'm thankful, as someone who really loves cookie dough, both in and of itself eaten out of a mixing bowl or from a plastic sleeve and as a mix-in for ice cream, for my mom's oft-stated very strong dislike of cookie dough, and her very funny to me sincere statement, as we stood outside salt and straw and i ate my favorite flavor (salted malted cookie dough) that "i just never got on the cookie dough team" (i'm thankful, as always, for a new prozd food rating video, this time about ben and jerry's).

i'm thankful that at one point, we were talking about 21st birthdays and my mom mentioned she was pregnant with me and so didn't get to drink on hers and i'm thankful she suffered through this indignity and gave birth to me! i'm thankful that my parents let me pay for things a lot more often this trip, which made me feel good.

i'm thankful that when we arrived at a restaurant patio and the three picnic tables were taken, leaving only standing tables, and i went to walk over to the standing table, but a solo person who was occupying one of the picnic tables got up and insisted we take the table since there were four of us.

i'm thankful that my parents and d are people, like a number of my closest friends, who can see a bird while out on a walk and exclaim genuine awed gratitude that they were able to witness such a thing, whereas i just cannot get it up for a hummingbird.

that said, i'm thankful that my astro poets horoscope is really popping off again: "You saw a vastness before you and you got scared. But right now you can rejoice. There is love in every place you look. What is real will always be. In the expanse too is a bird." 

i'm thankful for the distinction we discovered between poets and fiction writers during the MFA program, which is that poets know very granularly the names of trees and flowers and shit like that whereas like when i think "oak tree" and "maple tree" and "cypress tree" all i'm seeing in my brain is the same platonic emoji of a thing with a brown trunk and green top. 

(i'm thankful that i have at this point learned to recognize, from d pointing it out to me repeatedly on walks, what a japanese maple looks like. i'm thankful for the apple tree on the campus of the abandoned christian college in our neighborhood, which we saw on a walk with my parents and should check back on in a few weeks. i'm thankful that my parents told me about how when they visited greece, there were orange trees everywhere, full of fruit).

i'm thankful that, looking for something to watch with my family to pass the afternoon, i landed on the hbo max documentary series 100 foot wave, which is about people trying to find and surf the titular wave. i'm thankful for the footage, which is breathtaking and i'm thankful to have learned, in the second episode, the ridiculous way that they actually measure big waves, which is to find the best picture of someone riding it, identify the crest and the trough, try to guess how tall the person is at the moment the picture is taken (since they're probably crouched to some degree or another) and then use that person's height as a measuring implement to figure out the size.

i'm thankful to have learned from my parents, who work in weed retail and logistics in colorado, that "safety meeting" is an industry-wide euphemism for getting high with your coworkers in the parking lot. i'm thankful for how much my mom enjoyed VR sports. 

i'm thankful for the music cues on love island, such as the recent episode that started with "heart shaped box" (i'm thankful for d singing that song, which i love, after it had stopped on the show).

i'm thankful that, though many ostensibly "compostable" containers are not accepted by the compost utility, the giant pizza boxes that my favorite pizza place uses are (which is great, since i can put the whole box in the large compost bin, whereas i would have to strip it down to pieces in order to fit it into the smaller trash can).

i'm thankful that the bee sting on the instep of my right foot is less swollen today. i'm thankful for all the clover in our yard and all the bees that i can see feeding on it, since i know bees are having a hard time of it and we need to support them when possible.

i'm thankful, because there are so many water fountains in parks that do not work, when i get one of the ones that does work when i really need it, as i did today.