I Blame Cliff Mass

At last, a truly beautiful Spring day! Seattle is loveliest in the Spring; cherry and apple blossom everywhere, lilac , the air full of fragrance, the sidewalks dappled with color, hearty, some might say foolhardy locals in short pants walking their shivering dogs through the slating rain, as fierce, arctic winds shake the ice from untended winter beards and balloon the ladies' windbreakers into drifting bipedal buoys as they're buffeted from wet yams to sad greens kept from blowing away by perilously balanced jarred jams at the ridiculously optimistic Farmers' Markets, all in search of tulips without the blooms blown off... It's a mixed bag, Spring, here in the great Northwest. So when an actual sunny Spring day, with the temperature fighting up into the sixties actually comes along, after a week or more of soaking rain, the place just goes nuts. Boats are dragged from the garage, bikes sport unlikely family groups 'round weirdly becalmed bodies of standing water, mad women rush their tomato seedlings from the piano bench out into the strange and glorious light. That miasmic trench in the neighbors yard is suddenly bright with limp pansies. People rush in their tiny electric cars to the surrounding countryside to finally collect a queen for their apiaries. Stories about raising urban chickens in your condo are rushed to the Lifestyle pages. Everyone capable of motion rushes out, out, out into the streets, the parks, dockside, up trees, like lemurs, to great the glorious return of the sun.

And why not? How long has it been now since Spring came in by the accepted calendar? Well, this year, not so much. Even for Seattle, Persephone's return to life this year has been a damp, dispirited affair. As a recent immigrant, I still find it inexpressibly touching, watching the elderly Norwegians strolling bare-kneed, in open toes, through the soaking mists of March, the college kids with blue lips lookin' all casual on campus, in their sleeveless Ts, thin baggy shorts and flip-flops, risking hypothermia, at noon, on an April trip to Fred Meyer, for charcoal, for the forlorn Hibachi that is still a frozen birdbath on their mossy dorm balcony. So when the sky is but a cloudless baby-blue, and the insufferable crows are not the only birds brave enough to risk actual flight, on a day like this that might almost be mistaken for summer in Finland, why not just rush out and spend the day worshipping Apollo? After all, tomorrow's weather forecast is yet again calling for stock-footage from the Retreat from Moscow, so why not just pretend that this loveliness might last?

Because, starting at four o'clock this afternoon, we will be starting our annual physical inventory at the bookstore, that's why, you bastard.

Don't get me wrong, I am no great believer in the out-of-doors. Mountains, of which we here in Seattle have more than our share, like lakes, forested public lands and the like, are all glorious manifestations of nature's staggering beauty, and as such, so far as I'm concerned, just made to be contemplated from the safe side of an outsized picture window. Long pointless walks to remote and disappointingly furnished places with indigestible provisions -- also know hereabouts as "hiking" -- is, I'm sure, a perfectly harmless way for middle class people to take regular exercise and not think about gas prices for their SUVs or their subprime mortgages, and therefore a win for community mental health. (Though, as with Winter mountaineers and other such weekend adventurers, one does rather resent the constant carping about the cost to the public purse of fat, heart diseased smokers like one's self, when one's taxes are also paid without a murmur so that idiots in clumsy footwear, and or their faithful house-pets, can be rescued by police helicopters from the inaccessible culverts into which they've slipped while out for a walk in a rock-slide-zone.)

Get the picture?

Nevertheless, even evil old house-spiders like me can not always resist the temptation to put a tentative leg out on a day like this, maybe risk an unhealthy SPF level, and, in the proper straw hat, spend a little time out by the stone patio, admiring the surviving shrubbery, taking the air... Hey, I'm human.

But to contemplate this lovely day, knowing that sooner rather than later I will be counting discount DVDs on spinners, one row looking so very much like the last as to confuse and frustrate even a brighter eye than mine, well that just spoils things a bit.

I've nothing against doing mindless counting. I confess, I actually take some satisfaction from knowing that, thanks to a major investment in newish, handheld technology, again this year, for the second time, we will be doing our own counts of our own stock, and not relying on the zombies. In a strange way, I actually look forward to the beeping and the clicking and the concentrated effort of the whole crew working together toward a common and worthy goal. (How else to know with any certainty that keychains will not be counted as textbooks or one, clearly marked remainder recorded as representing the whole contents of a shelf in History? So much better now, believe me.) And this year, we will do better. We know the process. We've practiced. We're seasoned. And, frankly, there are fewer books. Only time that seems a good thing, today. Besides, a primitive, dusty little brain like mine is made for the simple, repetitive arithmetic of one plus one plus one plus one. I actually kinda enjoy doing something simple well -- in a nice, well-lighted, warm indoor environment, with a surprisingly tasty catered buffet in the breakroom and the soda machine open.

But now why today? What vicious jape of the Gods could have required that today of all days be the statistically improbable confluence of sunshine in Seattle and counting all the Dover sticker books ever made to torment me?

Ah, Fate.

Look on me then, my fellow Northwest mortals, playthings of fickle financial calendars, and the black arts of the seemingly harmless, yet secretly misanthropic Cliff Mass -- he serves a Dark and Angry God -- and remember, tempus fugit, you lucky sonsabitches, so don't forget today to stop and smell the lilac, while we count erasers in the windowless basement until midnight.

Ah, Spring!