thank you notes 4/7
i'm thankful to have survived one of the more dangerous bike rides i've taken so far. i'm thankful that the storm didn't look that bad from inside the building, but that i understood its force better when i stepped out onto the loading dock and a gust of wind knocked me back a step. i'm thankful, as i unlocked my bike, for the way that its metal frame felt briefly like a sail. i'm thankful that i had taken my glasses off and put them in their case in my backpack before i left the office, because they would have been more trouble than they were worth in the storm. i'm thankful that my route home was directly into the wind, even though this was quite unpleasant on a number of levels, because in riding through it i proved to myself i could do it and it wasn't really that bad. i'm thankful that i was more careful about braking earlier on the slick streets than i have been in the past and, because of that, didn't get into any scary intersection situations of having to emergency brake by putting a foot down on the street.
i'm thankful that the wind was blowing the rain so hard that it hurt and thankful that rather than experience it as suffering, i thought calmly about how this was a novel sensation, that i had never experienced rain that felt solid and stung me, and then thankful that i looked down in front of me and saw tiny white pellets strewn across the street and realized that the rain felt solid because it was, because it was hail. i'm thankful, in a way, for the hail, since even if it was painful, it didn't soak my clothes the way rain would--i'm thankful that though i was wet by the time i got home, i wasn't so wet that i needed to take a shower. i'm thankful for my bright orange ultra light down coat from uniqlo, which increased my visibility to other drivers and kept me (relatively) warm and dry. i'm thankful that when i got home, d was in the kitchen washing dishes and she was able to bring me a towel in the mud room so i could dry off. i'm thankful that though it was supposed to rain during my commute this morning, it didn't. i'm thankful that the carved out chunks of fourth street, which were always jarring, were filled in with fresh asphalt.
i'm thankful, even though it reflects poorly on me, to recognize that i so wanted my coworker to have made a mistake on this list of references she was converting from AMA to APA for a faculty member's tenure review yesterday that, in a rushed glance through them, my petty subconscious made me see mistakes (repeated references, which in an alphabetical reference list aren't necessary) that weren't actually there. I'm thankful i considered just fixing the "mistakes" myself before I got to my half of the task (converting the in-text citations from footnotes to parenthetical references), but thankful that i then told myself that the reason i should go over and tell her about what she'd done wrong is so that she would know the proper APA style for tasks like this in the future, even though i know (and on some level, knew then too) the real gross reason is i just wanted to point out the "mistake" to her and display my intellectual superiority. i'm thankful to reflect on the shittiness of this in writing not for absolution from you but in the hope of catching myself before behaving in that way again and as a reminder to be more kind.
i'm thankful for the karmic retribution of my red-faced embarrassment when, after i told her about the "mistake" she had made, "just for her reference," she looked at me in a confused way and said that she was pretty sure there weren't any repeated references and thankful that then when I looked at the reference list again, with greater care, I saw that what at first looked like repeated references were actually slightly different because they were citations of different packages (abstracts, posters, presentations, papers) of the same research, all in proper citation format. I'm thankful that i admitted that i was totally wrong and pointed out the good job she had done and i'm thankful for her graciousness in accepting this.
i'm thankful for a nice facetime with my mom and dad while i assembled our dinner burritos (brown rice, american cheese, greek yogurt, sauteed onions and peppers, lazy guacamole, and a mixture of chorizo, ground pork, and minced portobello mushrooms (which were on sale and which i thought (correctly) would function as a good filler)). i'm thankful that my mom has a new job prospect, since the hotel where she works was bought by new owners last year and things have been kind of tenuous and crazy for her since. i'm thankful for how smart she is and how everyone at her jobs always likes her and depends on her. i'm thankful for the sacrifices she made in terms of dropping out of college and the workforce to raise my brother and i and thankful that i've expressed that to her as an adult, how grateful i am for her sacrifices, and thankful that she said that she was very happy to make the choices she made and thankful for the time we were able to spend together when my brother and i were young (which i am very thankful for too).
i'm thankful, when she was talking about the application process for her new job, for our laughing reminiscence about me getting a job in the meat department at winn dixie the summer after my freshman year of college, drinking gallons of cranberry juice cocktail to help me pass the required drug test as she scowled at me, and then quitting after one miserable day where i was left alone with dangerous machinery, had an i love lucy style encounter with the industrial plastic wrapping machine, and broke my glasses when i put them in my pocket because they were covered in steam from the high pressure hot water hose i was using to clean blood and pink bits down the drain in the floor and where, in sum, i realized that i really, really did not want to work in the meat department at winn dixie. i'm thankful that at the end of our call, d held the camera so my parents could see as i finished our burritos with salsa verde and ribbons of sriracha and they oohed and aahed.
i'm thankful i made myself do yoga last night even though i wasn't really in the mood and thankful that though i briefly tweaked something in my neck while in fish pose, it went away quickly. i'm thankful for our recent discussion about why cow pose is called cow pose, since i have never seen a cow arch its back. i'm thankful for the discussion we had about using the force to pee without having to get out of bed and yoda's penis and for this cartoon of yoda peeing i found, which made d laugh. i'm thankful for the discipline we have shown in not eating gigantic slices of the chocolate cake, which means it might last through the week. i'm thankful to have watched on snapchat blac chyna and rob turning their car around and stop on the side of the road to buy multicolored popsicles from an ice cream man. i'm thankful i finally found the bottle of my preferred stomach medication that i thought i had lost or accidentally thrown away but was just behind an old magazine under the bed. i'm thankful that it felt important to find it because i've been having more stomach problems lately, after a brief respite from them, but then thankful that as it turned out, i slept really well last night and didn't even need to take it.
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