Sitting outside in the winter, waiting for the sun to get around an emaciated tree.  There’s still snow in the shade.  Piles of dirty, used snow.  Snow that was once cotton ball fluffy.  Old snowmen and snowballs and snow angels, all discarded now.  The community has made its opinion known.  A few days of heavy powder is all they can handle. They’re out today.  Wandering in light jackets, removing layers.  They’re ready for warmth.  They're ready to run along the river without their fingers freezing and falling off.

How long will it last?  This is an indecisive community. Spring will come with its buffet of flowers and honeybees.  The sun will shine for so many days before the masses of half-hearted people turn on the weather again.  They’ll decide that they’ve had enough.  They’ll fold up their beach towels, fold their arms.  They’ll pray for snow.  “The grass is always greener” has never been truer than it is in this wishy-wash town.  

Maybe this is how it always is.  As far as weather is concerned, this is the first place I’ve lived that has had it.  Four solid seasons.  Weather that can kill you if you’re unprepared or careless.  The older the population the more disenchanted, it seems.  Good weather is never good enough, or long enough.  You’d think they’d learn to appreciate it while it’s here.

Welcome to the age of short attention spans.  Blame the constant stream of information, mostly useless.  Unfortunately, there’s a lack of short tempers and short skirts.  The edge has been filed down here in the pacific northwest.  

Apparently New York still has some bite to it. The east coast has managed to hold onto the short tempers and short skirts.  For how long, who knows?  With the clear-cut gentrification, sweeping away the culture, hauling off the conflict, one neighborhood at a time, it allows too much space for a new breed of over-comfortable, under-appreciative twats.  They move in before the rats have moved out.

This is a wasteful bunch.  More money than sense.  More bark than bite.  New York rats will grow fatter than ever.  The people will have to coexist.  Rats are quick to learn the scent of an easy mark.  New York might have enough of a sharp edge to survive.  If rats ever invaded this place, the entire city would pick up its skirt and run away screaming.  

Maybe that’s what we need here.  A plague of sorts.  If the wolves moved down from the mountains, to keep people’s heads out of their phones.  They’d be forced to be aware of their surroundings.  They’d learn to appreciate the sunshine and the snow.  So long as they’re not being eaten, asshole first.

Rats might be a better option.  A more subtle invasion.  Sneaking along the floorboards, hiding out in nooks and sewer systems.  Rats would outbreed the exterminator industry.  Wolves might be too easy to shoot, trap, and poison.  What the rats lack in ferocity, they make up in numbers and vileness.

If I had it my way, this city would get invaded with both.  Discomfort might make us all a little more communal.  Niceness only goes so far in a place like this.  It stops at the end of the block. It ends with strange faces and anything unfamiliar.  Niceness exists here, but mostly in the verbal form.  Everyone is relatively safe.  There’s no need for action.  There aren’t enough wolves to hunt us.  Not enough rats to chew through the souls of our comfortable shoe inserts.

But who am I to call out a soft city?  The sun made its way around the tree.  It’s working through the light cloud cover.  I’m using free wifi.  Punching words into a fancy laptop.  Drinking coffee.  Soaking it all up with half a smile on my face.

If the rats and wolves ever do come — they should start at my house.  We’ll work up an appetite together.