thank you notes 8/29

i'm thankful to have been better this weekend about making provisional notes in my phones of things i'm thankful for. i'm thankful that i've let this habit go since i started my new job and thankful to recognize how important it is to the process of writing notes to you, thankful for how noting a thing i noticed makes it a thing, graspable, with substance, and not just another cloud of vapor floating through my day. i'm thankful for the times when i look into the sky and see shapes in the clouds.

i'm thankful to have watched the first episode of the new season of the great british bake off (i'm thankful you can, if not british, use a vpn to watch it here). i'm thankful for the show, which is so beautiful and soothing: i'm thankful that instead of american cooking shows, which are primarily about wringing false drama from the question of whether certain people (many of whom are not nice people, or who are playing not nice characters) will fail, bake off is about hoping these nice people will succeed and then feeling happy when they do. i'm thankful that the greatest drama is about if there's enough space in the freezer to chill your cake before applying a mirror glaze, about how deeply lemon drizzle penetrates the moist interior of a layer of sponge.

i'm thankful i had a nice long run out in the sun. i'm thankful that even though it was hot and wet, i still ran outside rathern than on the treadmill, which was a good change. i'm thankful for podcasts, which keep me from going too fast to endure the distances i want to go and which entertain me while they do that. i'm thankful that i did a proper yoga session last night for the first time in a while and thankful that it was nice. i'm thankful that i finally did fish pose correctly after always struggling with it in the past.

i'm thankful that today is the day at work when i get to step away from the support queue for a few hours and work on other projects. i'm thankful to have submitted a request to take a vacation in october. i'm thankful that i was reminded to do that when i was trying to play bakeoff on d's computer and a gcal reminder about "REMIND JUSTIN TO REQUEST TIME OFF" popped up and i was made briefly aware of the emotional labor d was doing in ensuring that i asked for this vacation time in time for us to actually take a vacation and thankful that i paused the video and filed the request immediately. i'm thankful to look forward to taking a vacation then (or sometime) and thankful for weekends that feel like little vacations, which this one did.