It's snowing. In Seattle. On Christmas. This is simply ridiculous. It almost definitely means that my friends won't (be able to?) drive across the lake to watch a movie tonight, but who knows. I don't remember the last time it actually snowed ON Christmas.
I have to admit, my head's in a pretty weird place right now. Every year, someone seems to give me an incredibly depressing book to read just before Christmas. This year, it was The Kite Runner. Brie just came in and told me, "I'm never giving you another book." I barely put it down since she gave it to me, Sunday afternoon.
Five years ago, when Riley was still at Lake Tahoe and we all went there for Christmas, I was reading American Gods. I remember going out in the middle of the night, and walking up into the woods a little ways. It was bright the way snow makes the night bright. Everything contrasted. It was absolutely terrifying.
This is a pretty crappy Christmas post. I think these are supposed to be warm and toasty and full of cheer. I'm not very good at cheer. I personally prefer melancholy, so I'll see if I can't negotiate the middle and go with a factual update.
Due to some unforeseen expenses, I find myself about to enter the poorhouse early. The result is that, unless my boss can find room in the budget to pay me for a few weeks, I'm gonna have to leave the campaign before the caucus. Which sucks. But I'm holding out hope that something will happen.
When we get back from Christmas break (all four days of it, which is an eternity compared to what they get in Iowa), we'll be exactly one week from the first contest. Iowa, in the latest census, has a population of 2,900,000 or thereabouts. Approximately 130,000 of them are expected to turn out for the democratic caucus, and somewhere around 80,000 for the republican version. There's plenty of wiggle room after Iowa, of course, but the likelihood seems that around 200,000 people are going to choose the set of next presidential candidates. Pretty strange to think of, really.
And now it's snowing in Seattle. And sticking. It's almost like I'm back in Colorado, or New England, at Christmas. I guess I'm glad that if I have to be subjected to winter, at least I get snow. It is beautiful when it's falling, before it turns brown from exhaust, or turns to slush or crystallizes into a layer of jagged ice. I guess you can say that about almost anything new, really. It comes in shiny and clean and then something makes a mess of it and then you lose interest, and eventually it becomes a nuissance and you just want it gone. But I won't have to be here for that part. I'll be here to watch it fall silently, stick to the ground, coat the bare red trunk of the big magnolia that still has green leaves. I'll go out and throw a snowball to Henry, and watch him try to find it, four legs each going its own direction. And then tomorrow, I'll get on a plane, and go back to Vegas. On Thursday, I'll go back to work. I'll go back not knowing if I'll be there for a month or a week, but I'll go back and it'll be one week till Iowa, one week till we actually have something tangible to work with, or through, or against. One week until we see if the country really wants to change, or whether the racists and the nostaligists and the apologists and the corporate lobbyists get their candidate, or whether the rest of us get ours. And I don't know what or where or for how long my role will be, but I do know this much: for the first time in my adult life, I'll be looking forward to returning to work. And I won't have to watch the snow turn dirty and it won't melt into the bottom of my boots. It'll just stay a white Christmas, soft, silent, clean.
