thank you notes 5/6
i'm thankful that one of the visiting lecturers successfully defended her dissertation this week. i'm thankful that every time i've seen her since, i've greeted her as "dr. [her_name]" which never fails to make her grin. i'm thankful for the other visiting lecturer, who, while scooping ice cream into a small styrofoam bowl, made a joke about the muscles in his arm not being strong because he doesn't jerk off and thankful that he said afterward, "this joke is probably not appropriate for the workplace, but because we are friends, it's okay," and i laughed and told him that it was okay. i'm thankful that he and i sat together with my coworker and some faculty members at the staff picnic eating mediocre hot dogs and bantering about various things. i'm thankful he has a campus visit for a teaching job in south carolina, even if him getting the job means we won't get to hang out anymore, which he expressed sadness about.
i'm thankful for the student who is a lifeguard who came into the office all gussied up for her graduation photos to describe how she had bedazzled her cap for the ceremony. i'm thankful for the student who asked me what she could get me to thank me for being so helpful to her over the past few semesters and thankful that when i said i would accept a hug she smiled. i'm thankful for the student who asked me to tell her instructor that she'd passed her certification exam that day and how i knew he was in his office and he would want to hear it from her and she wanted to tell it to him, so i told her that she should go in and they got to share that moment. i'm thankful for the new staff member in the dean's office i met and how i taught her how one water fountain in the hallway dispenses clean cold water and the other one dispenses room temperature water with a weird aftertaste. i'm thankful for these students, but also thankful that as finals week ends, town has already become so much more peaceful.
i'm thankful that the office accountant's birthday is today and that she took the day off. i'm thankful that last week, she mentioned in passing to me that it would be her birthday today and that she would take that day off and i wrote a note to remind myself of it. i'm thankful that last week i had put a reminder in my to-do list to make her cornbread, which is one of her favorite foods. i'm thankful that i forgot to do that in the hubbub of the week, because between the staff picnic and the large amount of strawberry shortcake and ice cream my boss ordered from the boys & girls club fundraiser, we had plenty to eat anyway. i'm thankful that instead, yesterday before she got into work, i used typeA4 to print out a giant sign reading "I'D TELL YOU [HER_NAME] IS A YEAR OLDER, BUT SHE'D KILL ME - ANONYMOUS" and taped it up in the hallway. i'm thankful for the amusement variou people got from it and for giving them an opportunity to share a nice moment with her and thankful to have heard her belly laugh when she first saw it. i'm thankful for the sweet liquor that cut strawberries express when you coat them with sugar.
i'm thankful for the americans, which continues to blow my mind. i'm thankful that the 4 hour peter bogdanovich documentary about tom petty is now on netflix and thankful to imagine slowly rewatching it in the bath. i'm thankful for how the documentary helped me to rediscover and appreciate his music, which i had become tired of because my parents overplayed it when i was younger. i'm thankful for this tidbit about the friendship between robert rauschenberg and janis joplin. i'm thankful for the new spotify app UI, which makes navigating much faster and more efficient, which is really valuable when working out. i'm thankful that our ps4 wouldn't boot up last night after dinner, even though that is troubling, because i took a bath and played music, which i probably wouldn't have done if i had gotten sucked into a game. i'm thankful that the seller we ordered our second air conditioner from issued a return, but thankful that d and i decided it wasn't worth the hassle of repacking and shipping it and are just going to keep it.
i'm thankful that while retrieving my prozac bottle from an inside pocket of my backpack, i found a wad of cash that my grandfather had given me when we visited north carolina for my other grandmother's funeral last fall and that i had forgotten about. i'm thankful to remember how d and i spent some of the money on overpriced raw oysters and beers at an airport restaurant while we were waiting to fly back to indiana, which felt like a tribute to life. i'm thankful that in two weeks we'll be in minneapolis on a pseudo-vacation. i'm thankful that d made chocolate chip cookies earlier this week and for the way they make a few moments every evening feel like a pseudo-vacation.
i'm thankful to have learned from the season premiere of keeping up with the kardashians that like me, kim is not usually very interested in the cuteness of animals (i'm thankful that this is the primary difference between d and i, the intensity of our interest in cute animals). i'm thankful, though, that like me, sometimes an animal is so cute that even kim can't resist it. i'm thankful that kourtney seems to inadvertently revealed that she has never watched ellen in describing her fear of finding out she has to dance on television. i'm thankful for the scene of scott and kris at cooking class and for their relationship, which feels very genuine to me. i'm thankful for how they go to lunch and she's reading the entire menu out loud and he looks increasingly annoyed and then just tells kris that her reading the menu out loud makes it difficult for him to read it himself. i'm thankful for later when he is sitting with khloe in the living room of his new house looking out over his view and khloe tells him with this view that he can never be depressed and there's a pause and he says, "well, i'm depressed." i'm thankful for kendall's fury about rob regifting an ipad pro to blac chyna. i'm thankful for kris's climactic real talk dinner table outburst, which i described to my mom after being kind of rude to her (what felt to me like) condescendingly lecturing me about my health, even though i know she was only doing it out of love and because she is my mom. i'm thankful that i apologized to her before we ended the call and i'm thankful that she accepted and we told each other we loved each other before i hung up.
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