Driving Eve Back to Hamilton

 11:00 a.m: Eve smooches Lucy a hundred times and Matt once, and we head out.

11:30 a.m: we decide we will only listen to musical soundtracks the entire drive

11:31 a.m: Legally Blonde soundtrack

Nicky Snelson (not a typo) belts out her songs while skipping and honestly, HOW?

12:45 p.m: Waitress soundtrack. Eve says it will never not freak her out that people will look at a book or or movie and just say "I shall make a musical out of this." Like, here's this whimsical story about a woman who suffers domestic violence regularly, unexpectedly becomes pregnant and has an affair with her doctor - FIRE UP THE PIANO AND BASS. A botched sex reassignment surgery? I HEAR VIOLINS. The Evil Dead? Urinetown? We are here for all of it, to be clear. 

1:00 p.m: we stop at an On Route, along with four thousand or so of our closest friends. It's Sunday! What the heck is going on. Everybody wants to spend the last week of August on the road?

1:10 p.m: we place our Burger King order at the kiosk and take turns going to the bathroom.

1:12 p.m: I am stretching my legs and idly staring at a pile of paper Burger King crowns on the counter and wondering if I should steal one.

1:14 p.m: Update: Eve has returned from the washroom and stolen a crown. 

1:15 p.m: There is a Coca-Cola Freestyle machine. My usual selection is half Diet Coke, half Cherry Vanilla Coke. Both of those are unavailable. I do something that I think is Diet Root Beer but is actually Diet Cream Soda, and then panic and push some other button at random. This decision will haunt me.

1:16 p.m: we procure nutritionally questionable food and return to the car and the highway.

1:25 p.m: I taste the drink and make the face and noise that Buffy makes in season 6 episode 5 after taking a shot. 

2:00 p.m: Hamilton soundtrack

We talked more about the Hamilton phenomenon when Zarah was here. Back to the 'what all the fuss is about', and then the inevitable backlash. As Zarah said, it's not meant to be non-fiction. It's a story, the way much of American history is a story, with the proviso that Lin-Manuel Miranda is not claiming that his story is true. And it's clever! There is wordplay, and there are callbacks, and the music is hella catchy. But I think this about many musicals that I see. Why did this one blow up? Impossible to say for sure, but sometimes things just do. And while it's a great musical (in my opinion), no one person or work of art can bear as much as people started to put on this one. Some people are mad because he hired black actors to play white historical figures. Others are mad because people are acting like this is revolutionary. It's all become so desperately overdetermined. 

2:20 p.m: I take another drink and Eve asks if I want her to dig out the cooler for a Diet Pepsi. Stupidly, I say no, and take another drink of the cough syrup/industrial soap/cherry scented outhouse deodorizer concoction I have inflicted on myself. 

2:43 p.m: we stop for a bathroom break. As we're trying to merge back onto the highway, a car in the lane we're merging into (with plenty of signal warning) speeds up and nearly forces us off the road. I lay on the horn with the full force of my not-inconsiderable weight. Eve says "they know they totally deserved that, they've got nothing to come back with." 

3:00 p.m: Still Hamilton soundtrack. 

4:30 p.m: We are approaching Hamilton and I get a little sad realizing we take a whole different exit to get to Eve's place now.

4:45 p.m: We do what the building management told us to do, which is to pull up in front of the building, put on our hazards, unload the car and take everything up in the elevator. This feels highly illegal and dangerous, but it goes off without a hitch (the 'hitches' I was envisioning being getting a ticket or stuff being stolen. Okay, honestly, Matt told us we could bring in a giant load and just leave some of it in the lobby while we took what we could up in the elevator. That was never going to happen. My worldview tends to oscillate between sappily idealistic and so cynical I wouldn't trust a baby.) The elevators are fast, everyone we encounter is friendly and helpful, and Eve, as usual, is stronger than I expect, so I don't have to damage my back. She sticks all the bins on the little dolly and gets them in, and I roll all the duffel bags.

We stand around feeling overwhelmed, then decide we should make her bed first so she can sleep there tonight if she wants to. 

The comforter is impossible to get out of its cloth bag.

"Not to shame you, but we might have to cut you out of these jeans, girl!"

After that we decide to go get dinner and then regroup. We waffle on whether to look for a place nearby or go to our default (Jack Astor's) and we decide to go familiar for now because we are tired and will absolutely suffer decision paralysis and end up crying. 

Favourite Broadway Musical? Thing you unpack first when you move?