May

1: him noticing and decoding (and losing it over) my mannerisms
2: working on and recording our presentation together
3: improv parody song lyrics with my parents
4: playing Team Fortress 2 for the first time
5: napping between Zoom calls
6: vegan cheese wheel with bread
7: answering a question from the Q&A
8: bingeing It's Me or the Dog clips
9: flying crows silhouetted against a painted sunset sky
10: a quarantine-themed Mother's Day ecard
11: staying up til 5, sleeping in til 2
12: his cute face in a vulnerable moment
13: meeting up in person
14: Cosmonauts on repeat
15: cloud-gazing
16: Zoom hangout with some old college pals
17: parody videos of political debates
18: really embracing the Virgin vs Chad meme
19: former professors attending my thesis Q&A (and hearkening back to past classes I had with them)
20: grassland cactus jungle
21: cotton swirling in the evening light of the bosque
22: taste testing cake pops
23: texting with peeps on my birthday
24: the perfect joke about a shitty situation making me laugh
25: finishing the I Wish You All the Best audiobook
26: a walk together through the desert
27: people- (and dog-) watching in the park
28: midday snuggle sesh
29: Lies We Tell Ourselves
30: his sleepy, bedheaded focus
31: return to Mt. Taylor

April

1: getting bamboozled by a winding trail that I didn't realize looped back on itself
2: the kind of intensely intimidating guy being surprisingly approachable and nice to talk to
3: "Chasing Light"
4: coyote-spotting
5: the full range of crush craziness (dreams, teasing texts, mad butterflies, an hours-long video chat)
6: Dad unscientifically milking his tea and creating the effect of "a lava lamp in a cup"
7: actually completing a homework assignment with minimal procrastination during these highly-unmotivated times
8: metacognitive discussions (about vat-brains)
9: black lentil Everyday Dal
10: quoting and tagging each other in tweets in real time
11: a happy foot-shuffle when he says 'my dear'
12: entertaining my family with some dating-app drama
13: unexpected snow
14: chatting with my host dad (and seeing my host dog again ❤)
15: learning what parts of the brain are responsible for pattern recognition (and freaking out when a pattern is broken)
16: star patterns in tiny fruits
17: the juxtaposition of political discussion with cringey pickup lines
18: running through the beach sand for a hot minute
19: sharing music we like and music we've made
20: pushing myself to make progress on my thesis (even though I was up until 3 am)
21: riding a familiar route backwards and feeling like I'm on a totally new one
22: prepulse inhibition for the nervous freakout response
23: getting HyPeD about old 99L tracks
24: the sass, the suave, and the sweet
25: getting a shoutout from 99L on the livestream
26: a video-call date ("weird, but nice")
27: little bug hitching a ride on my arm for the first leg of my trip
28: spooky marimba
29: staring and smiling at each other instead of playing Words with Friends
30: making graphs in Excel for my group project