Being a dog-person can be very consuming. Dogs hope to capture our attention while we are home though we might want to do other things. The issue is with the “other things”. Almost all of these can become all-consuming. Bloggers can get hung up on numbers of followers which in turn, compels me to “demand” better content from myself more often. Or, in growing roses and reading rose-club magazines, I start to devote more time to care for, and to want more, roses leading to less time for other things. And with dogs, we need to walk them, spend time with them, take them to groomers and vets, and as I am reminded today, to go shopping for biscuits and bags of dog chow.
Where I once had “only” the dogs, my gardening, and blogging as pastimes, I added baking last year. Unlike blogging or gardening, baking is uncomplicated by bored dogs being underfoot. Cookies, cakes and bread do not hold their fascination.
After a year of watching baking shows with my spouse, and eating less healthy than we did before the pandemic, we started our “Mediterranean”-style cooking recently. Baked goods are still coming out of the oven, but I now bake with less guilt. Baking is much less a “consuming” passion. So I was able to mix together a batch of pecan shortbread cookies uninterrupted last night.
Today is Sunday and we had lunch with friends after our Zoom church service. It was an opportunity to share the baked goods. Although I still have chores to do, roses to tend and to finish this blog post, there is a dog-walk they need. Oh, and I need to walk off those darn cookies that somehow made it back home.
It's a Dog's Life 