(re-run)
Yesterday I went to the play Hamilton in San Francisco. I left my house at 9:45 a.m. and returned home at 7:15 p.m. That’s nine and a half hours that I was gone. I carpooled with a friend to BART, then joined up with two other women, and after a twenty minute BART delay we headed for San Francisco. It was a rainy cold day (when is spring coming, anyway?).
We got off at the Civic Center stop at 12:18, with time to get into the bathroom line before the 1:00 show. An older guy took our photo and accidentally shot a couple of videos for good measure. We settled in for the nearly three hour show and sat on the edges of our seats for most of it. Hamilton is a fast-moving play done mostly in clever rap/hip hop that teaches us history, entertains us, and gets us to thinking about this country and how it is changing. The mostly-white crowd watched actors (mostly of color) represent the very white founding fathers of 1776. The woman seated next to me has now seen it four times. When it was over she turned to me and said, “Now are you hooked?”
I might be hooked, but here’s the thing: my dogs didn’t get fed at their usual time. They were locked in the hallway and bathroom for the day while the contractor put another layer of mud on the sheet rock. I got home four hours after their dinnertime.
If only there was an app that could feed the dogs while I am gone. Since the dogs fight over food I would need the app to drop a gate between the dogs to separate them. Then it would need to pour the dry kibble into their slow bowls while keeping them apart. Then the app would need to raise up the gate so they could both have access to the doggy door that leads to the back yard.
My friend tells me there is an automatic feeder bowl that dispenses food at a pre-set time. But that doesn’t solve the problem of keeping the dogs apart when they eat. It’s only a matter of time until someone thinks up a way for singles like me to leave her dogs alone for close to ten hours without feeling guilty about it.
I know; they’re just dogs. But one is now snuggled on my lap as if to say, Hey, you were gone and now you’re back and I am so happy. The other one is snuggled up in the chair next to me, glad to have been fed.
I am out too many nights this week, but none for as long as today. The dogs survived, and they won’t remember tomorrow that their dinner was late.
Dogs are like kids, but they’re not kids. They can be left alone so that I can go out and keep up with American culture.
(I wrote this post a year ago. Never take anything for granted.)
Hamilton is the epitome of American culture. Go see it as soon as you can.
FIRST DATE, WORST DATE EVER! 