thank you notes 8/1
i'm thankful that last friday was the first day of work where i felt like myself at the end of it rather than an empty shell. i'm thankful that at the end of the day, i said to d, for the first time, "today was a good day." i'm thankful to know that this good feeling was probably mostly because our volume of tickets was probably the lowest it had been since i started, but then i'm thankful for that, and to hope that maybe the volume will be generally lower this week. i'm thankful that in a week, there will be a new employee starting on my team and so we'll have someone else to answer tickets and i won't be the newest anymore. i'm thankful that my team members liked an idea i had about improving our workflow and thankful for another aspect of the flow i sped up by working around a third party app with a slow UI. i'm thankful that though i feel apprehensive and nervous about work, i also feel excited about some of the things i'll do today—i'm thankful for the contrast with my last job, where for the past year or so i never felt apprehensive and nervous but also never felt excited about the things i was doing.
i'm thankful that it wasn't too hot on saturday and d and i had a nice long walk across town in the sunshine. i'm thankful for her new sun hat and thankful to have seen her grab the brim when the breeze threatened to pull it from her head. i'm thankful for the conversations we had about whether an actor we dislike can ruin a movie for us and preferring third person narration to first person in books and about christian science. i'm thankful that when we passed the christian science church, we were inspired to read the wikipedia to learn more as we walked. i'm thankful it was a fascinating religion to read about, to have learned that it's not that christian scientists avoid treating illness with modern medicine because they believe those illnesses are a result of sin, but because they believe that the material world is all an illusion. i'm thankful we stopped at cvs to pick up d's prescription. i'm thankful for the new running and bike shorts i bought at the sporting goods store and for the varieties of loose leaf tea and tisane that i bought little baggies of at the grocery store.
i'm thankful for the big bowls of fettucine we had for dinner on saturday after our long walk. i'm thankful for this pasta-based remix of "flawless." i'm thankful for the "think-thin" maple-almond protein bar i brought with me on my long bike ride on sunday, which was very tasty. i'm thankful for blueberries and for i'm thankful for yogurt covered raisins, even though i ate too many of them and felt over-sweetened for the rest of the afternoon. i'm thankful for the portobello "burgers" i made for dinner. i'm thankful for the maple, lime, soy, and fish sauce marinade i made for them. i'm thankful that our oven is fucked up, since it's taught me that i can cook so many things faster and without heating up the whole house by using it. i'm thankful that i didn't bother to soak the sweet potato "fries" i made, which is always a minor ordeal and which didn't really make a difference in how they cooked or tasted. i'm thankful for potato rolls and melted cheddar.
i'm thankful that i finished contact, which was too long but improved a lot near the end. i'm thankful for the descriptions of what it might be like to travel through wormholes. i'm thankful that carl sagan is sentimental but that it is a big-hearted american hopeful sentimentality that i like to encourage in my heart even though it is often beaten back by the truth of the world. i'm thankful that after i finished, i let myself start the second novel of the expanse series, caliban's war, even though it won't excerpt well here or probably provide much content. i'm thankful to read for myself and my own pleasure and not for you and yours (i'm thankful to write for you and yours). i'm thankful for the pleasure of sliding into a familiar (but not too familiar) generic narrative.
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