thank you notes 2/15

i'm thankful that it snowed all day yesterday, much more than i was expecting it to (even though it never snows as much as i want it to, i'm still thankful for whatever we get). i'm thankful we had already done our grocery shopping and errands and so didn't have to go anywhere. i'm thankful that i got to keep catching sight of it coming down outside the windows as i walked around the house throughout the course of my day, for the small fun of checking how much more had accumulated since i'd last looked. i'm thankful for the post d wrote about the snow. i'm thankful for the boomeranging weather we're having, which means that early this morning it was 20 degrees and we had 4 inches of snow on the ground and this saturday, it's supposed to be 57 and sunny. i'm thankful that d's parents gave us a $50 gift certificate to red lobster (for christmas, pre-"formation," lol) and so we're going to go there. i'm thankful to remember a valentine's day a few years ago when we walked there through bitterly cold sludgy ice and snow, for the relief, when we arrived, of baskets of warm cheese biscuits and little ramekins of melted butter.

i'm thankful that this morning i decided, because i wasn't sure if the roads west of downtown had been plowed and didn't want to risk an accident, to walk to my pre-op gastroenterologist appointment. i'm thankful, always, for a walk through the snow. i'm thankful for the chance to get to listen to the life of pablo for the second time on my way to and from the appointment (i'm thankful to d for signing up for a 90 day free trial of tidal back when they were still giving them out and letting me use her account). i'm thankful that i am maybe more reticent than normal to talk about hip hop after i overheard a conversation at lunch between two white locker room bros about some young rapper and how they were hoping he wouldn't get put in jail; i'm thankful how one of them said "he's only 18, so he's getting pretty wild" and the other said "yeah" knowingly (i'm thankful that neither of them could have possibly been more than 19 years old and one of them had braces); i'm thankful how one of them said "we don't want another bobby shmurda situation" and the other said "shmurdz! is he back in jail?" (i'm thankful for "shmurdz"). 

i'm thankful that, after walking half an hour through the snow, i got to my gastroenterolgist's office and they told me that a) my appointment was at the hospital (which is five minutes from our house), not the office, and b) my appointment was tomorrow, not today. i'm thankful this was no one's fault but my own and thankful that it will make me more empathetic towards students who misremember the times of the appointments i schedule for them. i'm thankful that on the walk back home, i stopped at the donut shop by the cemetery and got surprise donuts for me and d, who is off today for president's day. i'm thankful that i called the hospital to preregister for my appointment tomorrow and thankful for the woman on the phone, who kept calling me "hon" and "honey" and who gave me a hearty "congratulations!" when she said, updating my records, "single?" and i said "no, i'm married now."

i'm thankful that because schools were closed for a snow day, for most of the afternoon, my job was to babysit the very rambunctious child of a faculty member. i'm thankful that she gave me a valentine filled with gummy hearts and that i quickly made her one using a clumsy web app that said "dear [redacted], only good girls get valentines..." with a picture of a rose on the front and then inside, beside a picture of a pink carnation, said "...but i guess i'll give you one anyway." i'm thankful for the drawings we did of each other with markers on pieces of printer paper; i'm thankful that on the back of hers, she wrote "I HATE JUSTIN" and then on the line below it "I'M JUST KIDDEN SORRY," which she then scratched out. i'm thankful that to get her back, i told her she could log into my computer and told her my computer password letter by letter for her to type in "i d o n t l i k e [h e r n a m e]. i'm thankful that this joke worked as i predicted, for the dawning realization as she recognized she was typing her own name and then went back to put together the other words. 

i'm thankful for the expedition we took to the mail room and how on the trip back, i walked us down a different stairway to the basement and then told her that we were lost and i didn't know how to get back to the office. i'm thankful that she snatched a catalog from the stack of mail that had a map on the back and said that this was a map that would show us the way back. i'm thankful that in a dark corridor on the way back, she said there was a sleeping tiger with a diamond under his paw that we had to steal. i'm thankful for our slow, quiet footsteps toward it and thankful for the intricacy of the scenario she had sketched out, in which we had to get ear muffs from one wall to put over his ears so he couldn't hear us and a heating pad to put on his back to lull him into a deeper sleep before she could lift his paw and pull out the crystal. i'm thankful that as she snatched it, i said "oh no, he's waking up!" and she shrieked and we ran away. i'm thankful that she put a university sticker on my cheek and said that it was a tattoo and it would stay there forever. i'm thankful that i negotiated with her, saying that forever was too long, and she said, "okay, not forever, only until you're dead." 

i'm thankful that i asked the visiting lecturer from taiwan if there was a nickname i could call him the way he calls me by the chinese nickname he gave me. i'm thankful that he told me the nickname he is called is dah-tO, which means "big head." i'm thankful for the moment we shared as he peed at a urinal and i washed my hands at the sink and he helped me through repetition learn how to pronounce it properly by raising the pitch of the final long "o" sound.