The Art of Dog Walking

I promised her today. When I joined the Free World a few months ago, dog walks were supposed to be a daily event. They are most of the time...all through the long cold winter, EXCEPT when it was blowing snow or icy. And all through this spring EXCEPT when it's raining....or...more and more now...except when I ve filled up my daily calendar with events!

Yoga twice a week, a good thing I decide, having tea with Mom and or Aunts and or sisters or lunch with Mom and or Aunts and or sisters and or friends. There are weekly, often many times weekly charity and community functions and the occasional promising business meeting a.k.a dipping of the toe in the work force, albeit ever so gingerly and fleetingly...at this point.

My point is, like moving into a house with bigger closets, I am filling up by social space and the worst culprit, which I still maintain is keeping in "the loop", and "up to speed" is the square box on my new home office desk. I "go to work" every day around 9:30. My hours are usually 9:30 to 12:30, then, perhaps an hour or so in the afternoon, depending on the weather. Today it's sunny and warming up and my new boss is very open to cutting me some well-deserved slack.

She knows all this. Tilly knows that if I don't put on shoes right after breakfast, she has to wait until "after work". There is the look of anticipation in her eyes as I peruse the morning paper but... no shoes...no walk...not yet. It's 10:42 and she's given up on me, lying on the living room floor trying to lose her doggie disappointment in a late morning nap. But I do love my dog walks. It's one of the few times I really breathe, outside of yoga class. I think as we go, about what I have to do in the next few hours, days, weeks. I think of how wonderful it is just to walk and breathe and think ...and smile! Okay Tilly, let's go!!!