thank you notes 10/28
i'm thankful that after i lost my kindle on the plane back from miami, a friend suggested i contact the airline about it because they had once found her ipad when she left it on a plane. i'm thankful to have filed a claim a few weeks ago and then forgotten about it until yesterday morning, when i got an email that they had found it. i'm thankful for c, the very nice lost & found person who contacted me about this. i'm thankful that he also thought he had found d's old 3DS and thankful that, when the identifying information i gave him wasn't enough, he told me more and said "We normally are not allowed to give this much information without verifying it first, but I am hoping some of this sounds familiar."
i'm thankful for that small gesture, which is something i try to do with the customers i work with sometimes, and thankful he offered it to me, even though the identifying information indicated the 3DS wasn't mine. i'm thankful that i could have lied but didn't and am thankful for the conversation i had with d about this, where i couldn't remember whether when i filed the claims originally i had lied and said that the 3DS was my "daughter's" as a way to engender sympathy, which is something i was sleazy enough to think of but not necessarily something i was sleazy enough to do.
i'm thankful we went into the office yesterday so we didn't have to be home while our landlady showed our house to prospective tenants. i'm thankful that, as we approached the parking garage near the office, d couldn't find her parking pass—i'm thankful, because this was stressing her out, that there was a space where we could pull over in the street the parking garage entrance is on. i'm thankful that to be helpful i jumped out of the car so that we could root around in the floor of the passenger's side, where we found the pass.
i'm thankful for her relief and am thankful that though the parking garage was full, there were still some spots available on the top of the garage. i'm thankful to be on the top of a parking garage, which i realize doesn't offer protection from the elements but i'm thankful to trade that for the superior view. i'm thankful that after we had gotten out of the car and headed to the skywalk connecting the garage to the office building, i realized that i didn't have my phone. i'm thankful that i figured it must have been in the car and to have known that i wouldn't need it at the office and so it wasn't worth going back.
i'm thankful that the morning at the office went by relatively quickly and am thankful that in the afternoon, the showing was done and we were able to head home. i'm thankful for the fear i felt when we got to the car and my phone was not in the seat or on the floor. i'm thankful that d tried to be reassuring and suggest that i had probably left it at home, but i'm thankful that i felt with rapidly increasing certainty that it must have fallen out of my back pocket when i got out of the car to find the parking pass. i'm thankful that we went by that place slowly and it wasn't there. i'm thankful, when we got home, to have realized that it wasn't there either (i'm thankful to be right, sometimes, even when i'm being right about something bad).
i'm thankful that when i got home, i tried to use find my iphone, which reported that my phone was offline. i'm thankful to have put it in lost mode but to have pretty quickly given up on the phone and become grumpy and unfairly annoyed at d (even though it wasn't her fault that i put a large phone in a small pocket). i'm thankful that d, as ever, did not give up hope, and am thankful that a bit later she got a call from a homeless man who had found the phone just after i'd dropped it. i'm thankful that i was able to leave work briefly to bike to meet him over by the hospital.
i'm thankful that while i waited for him, it was cold and i thought about him being cold that night. i'm thankful that i felt suddenly very stupid and small to have gotten upset about losing my phone. i'm thankful when he got there to have given him a hundred bucks, which suddenly felt like not enough at all but which was all the cash we had on hand and which he seemed happy with. i'm thankful when he told me he hated losing things and seeing other people losing things and apologized about "holding my phone hostage" (he had mentioned the money he could get for the phone when he called) i told him that he had nothing to apologize for at all and thanked him profusely for having found and returned the phone. i'm thankful that we ended the conversation by shaking hands and telling each other to have a good day before going our separate ways. i'm thankful to hope he is doing okay.
i'm thankful that at the end of the day, a customer was very unhappy and i had to work an hour late to help resolve her issue. i'm thankful for my coworker a, who also worked late to tag team the problem with me—i'm thankful for our camaraderie, which made staying late not feel so terrible, and thankful for the joking texts we sent to encourage each other as we tried to make something very difficult happen. i'm thankfully that eventually the customer realized that the simple thing she was upset about us not being able to do was not actually a simple thing at all, was maybe not even a possible thing, and though we weren't able to resolve her issue, was okay with that and with leaving it and checking in today to try to find a different solution that might work.
i'm thankful after that was done to have talked to my parents on face time. i'm thankful that my mom had gone out the previous night with her old coworkers (my parents are moving from miami today) and had partied hard (while also being sick) and am thankful that her voice was very hoarse and funny sounding to me, like she was a totally different person. i'm thankful despite how her throat hurt to talk, she was happy that we had called to talk to her. i'm thankful we did that too (i'm thankful for this beautiful sad essay by darcie wilder, one of my favorite writers). i'm thankful afterwards to have watched the most recent episode of american horror story with d. i'm thankful how the show's midseason twist was actually kind of working on me and i was getting into it a bit, actually watching instead of looking at my phone and doing other things, until a moment late in the episode where a character did something so stupid and illogical that i remembered i was still watching a ryan murphy show.
i'm thankful to echo this call against live podcasts, even though i understand how for the podcasters i love they might provide the opportunity for status or income, because i love the quiet intimacy of the medium and having to hear other people's performance-y (i'm thankful as someone with a low-level graduate degree in the humanities to refuse to misuse "performative," even though i don't have a better word) voices echoing through larger rooms ruins that. i'm thankful for vine, which i will miss terribly, even if snapchat provides some of the same pleasures, and am thankful for the youtubers who have compiled many "best of vine" compilations, which are always a pleasure to watch when stoned or sad and which i will surely return to even after no new vines are being made. i'm thankful when animals move to music.
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