My family left me alone this weekend. No, not like that.
My wife is a new member of the Asbury University Alumni Board. I did seven years on the Board myself, including a term as President. So, I’m a little jealous. But, it’s her turn.
So this weekend she went off to Kentucky for a meeting, as well as to visit our son who is in his final year there as film student. The younger son went halfway on the trip and spent the weekend with his grandparents in Southwest Virginia.
I stayed home because I had rehearsals, plus it’s just easier with the neurotic dog. We took him to the kennel for beach week and he got a little stressed out by the other dogs. Rather than opt for the tranquilizers again this soon, I decided to stay home.
And just as an aside, Nic is a rescue dog. We don’t know his whole back story, but it’s obvious that he was abused. He’s very skittish. Any sudden action startles him. He doesn’t bark, well except in his sleep.
I don’t know what the people who had him before did to him, but to paraphrase Maude Findlay, “God will get you for that.”
Anyway, my weekend consisted of trying to get some work done around the house and trying to learn my lines. I got less work done because of the shoulder (more on that after Tuesday’s appointment). But I did get some work done on my lines.
That is between caring for the cat and the dog.
Here’s how the weekend went. To get the full impact, you have to understand that my office is upstairs, and that the dog will not come up the steps. He can, but won’t.
So, every time I went downstairs, the dog acted like he was having kidney failure. It didn’t matter that we’d just been out. Twice. He had to go again. Well, he didn’t have to. He wanted to.
As long as I didn’t come back downstairs, or even when I stayed downstairs to work lines in the living room, the dog was fine until he really had to go again.
But, every time I went out with the dog, the cat was coming in or out. When the cat came back in, he’d beg for food, because of course his dish was empty.
I’d feed the cat and head back upstairs which, of course, made him want to go back out. In the meantime, the dog would eat the cat’s food.
When I could no longer stand the cat crying to go out, or when I heard him knocking things off the kitchen counter, I’d go downstairs and let him out.
Which of course meant the dog thought it was time to go out. So, we’d go out and the cat would come back in with us.
To an empty dish.
This was my entire weekend.
They obviously missed and needed their other humans.
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