E3 - Waiting for the wet shoe to drop

E-3. Time is so elastic, isn’t it. At the beginning of a campaign, even before it begins, the time yawns in front of you. You think you’ll never get to the end of the line. But you get busy and time passes and then one day you lift your head and it’s E-3.

Late on E-3.

I’m in the campaign office, waiting for central campaign to finish the last phone canvass. Then I have to print out all the voter records and get ready for E-Day.

It’s been an interesting week, up here in Cape Breton.

I’m staying in a town not far from Sydney. Everyone has cancer. Well, not everyone, but a substantial number of people with whom I am working my ass off in order to win a seat will not be alive when I come back to help them defend the seat.

That’s kinda scary.

It’s all environmentally-related.

The Sydney Tar Ponds I mentioned before. I won’t go into it again.

Waiting for the other shoe to drop.

It was my first anniversary in Canada on Thursday. I had been planning to spend it thinking highly intellectual thoughts about how much I’ve learned and how much I’ve experienced and how intense its been, blah blah blah, in what must be one of the most challenging, interesting and (at times) emotionally and physically stressful years of my life, but thankfully (for you lot), I was too busy to blog, and spent the day working in the office, with the usual crew of helpers, and breeze shooters, eating Mabel Davies’ egg sandwiches, answering the phone, sorting out the e-day packs, fund-raising, looking after sign locations, drives to the polls, recruiting volunteers, more volunteers, more volunteers, talking to the candidate, getting the foot canvassers out the door into the rain, going to Tim’s for coffee and TimBits.

Kind of ironic really. A circle of my adult life complete. The first really grown-up political thing I did. Being repeated for the nth time, but almost duplicated this time.

Right down to the Atlantic mist.

Except this time I get to hang out with a young female timber wolf. Who comes to visit with her owner every day.

And there’s Ebony the standard poodle. And Shandelle and Eoin the incredibly cute kids. And all the elderly members who stop in every day for a chat.

It’s a regular Sesame Street round here. The advance team for tomorrow’s rally arrived tonight and I could see the disdain in their eyes. I shall complain vociferously about it when all this is over.

This is what it is about. Groups of people getting together to create momentum for change. Maybe we’re not as glamorous as The West Wing, nor as media-interesting as a metro campaign, but we’re getting there.

Anyways, my campaign manager is pacing a hole in the carpet and we’re going to shut down the numbers soon and get started, so I’ll go for now.