thank you notes 5/13
i'm thankful that i now have a toothbrush in the top drawer of my desk at work and that i use it sometimes in the afternoons if my teeth or my mouth feel dirty. i'm thankful, in a way, that as i have gotten older, the sensation of my teeth or my mouth being dirty has become more and more unpleasant; i'm thankful, even though this is unpleasant, since it makes committing to oral hygiene, which is very important, easier, because it makes me feel instantly better to have flossed and brushed, whereas when i was younger, my mom had to force me to brush my teeth and floss because having crud and gunk on my teeth didn't feel that different than having clean teeth. i'm thankful that d found an ebay seller from which to purchase what we have decided is the best floss at a deep discount.
i'm thankful that the faculty member who is mormon wasn't offended when i did a literal spit take upon hearing the old testament deep cut middle name of his newborn son, but instead laughed warmly and said, "yeah, that's the usual reaction." i'm thankful to have heard about the genealogical debate that took place between his extended family in the days leading up to the birth because of a disagreement about the spelling of his grandfather's name. i'm thankful for the faculty member, who, when he saw me making my lunch protein shake, asked if i had heard of soylent and said he was interested in trying it and wondered if i would try some, which i actually would like to out of a general desire to try weird health things even though i find the work-worshiping ideology of the soylent industrial complex to be repulsive.
i'm thankful for the faculty member who urged two young boys with autism to get chocolate from the department chair's office and who, when they seemed uncomfortable going into the office, said "well, i definitely want one" and went into the office to make it less scary for them--i'm thankful that one of them said "okayyyyy, maybe i'll have one too" and went in and the other one followed. i'm thankful for the guy i saw in the locker room standing in front of the mirror and very carefully adjusting the way his baseball cap sat on his head. i'm thankful for the man on the riding lawnmower who was driving over the sidewalk by the library and using the exhaust on his mower to blow stray clippings into the grass.
i'm thankful for the hear app, which applies processing to the microphone input on your phone to turn the noise of the world around you into a pleasant ambient headphone soundscape. i'm thankful, since i can't always listen to music, for the "relax" setting on the app, which does some kind of resampling and harmonizing of the sounds of people's voices and then smudges them into a field of hazy pastel reverb, which makes it easier to concentrate and to ignore the voices of people who annoy me without completely closing myself off from the world. i'm thankful, sometimes, though, to completely close myself off from the world and listen to music. i'm thankful for the new radiohead album, which is i think might be my second favorite radiohead album after kid a, which will always be the best to me. i'm thankful for "present tense," which is my favorite song on the album so far, though i also like "daydreaming."
i'm thankful that yesterday afternoon in my free time, i made mindful_bot, which embeds small reminders to be mindful and reconnect with your body into your twitter timeline. i'm thankful that one of the messages it sends is "close twitter"; i'm thankful to remember how happy it made me when people used to say my old blog had crashed their browsers, which i saw as a feature, not a bug. i'm thankful that i bought some cool-sounding tinctures from steph. i'm thankful the kava tincture i made as a fun home science project seems to have turned out well and thankful that i think i'll make valerian next. i'm thankful for a wry joke someone made on twitter about vaping chamomile buds, which i first thought was a joke, but then kind of wanted to be a real thing and then discovered was a real thing (if not for the person making the joke). i'm thankful for the chance to report back to you on this if i don't die from it or some other ill-advised naturopathic decision.
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