Many of us may or may not be new to having pets at home, but all of us are new to having pets at home during a pandemic. Some of us may be new to working from home. Others may be new to distance learning and spending the entire day and night with their children. I know, cave persons everywhere would be scandalized by this.
While I’ve had many different pets before, I’ve never been out of work this long, during a pandemic, with a distance learning child, and a mother-in-law on hospice. Luckily for us, my husband can still work and double luckily for us, he can do it safely and alone.
I seem to have picked up something akin to a tic in that I cannot stop it. I can’t stop taking pictures of our pets. Mostly our dog. Mostly when she’s sleeping, although sometimes when she’s making me laugh.
I took pictures of her in my chair, my husband’s chair, my husband’s office chair, on a rocking chair, the couch, the loveseat, under the coffee table, on the floor in every room in the house, against the wall in every room of the house, in the bathtub, under the kitchen table, and blocking doors. Usually, doors you want to walk through. We have pictures of her sleeping on my lap, my daughter’s lap, my husband’s lap, and our 95-year-old Grandma’s lap. She weighs 55 pounds. The dog, not Grandma.
You would think I have enough by now, but it’s become a compulsion. If it has a fuzzy face and it’s asleep or making me laugh, I have to snap a picture. There are worse things to be obsessed with, so I’m not complaining. On the other hand, my family’s on the edge. They enjoy my good photos but are sick of me saying, “Don’t move, I need to take a picture of that.”
I remind them 10-14 out of 2,000 photos are spectacular enough to sell. This only mollifies them for a little while.
I’m sure there’s others like me that feel the need to document everything by photo. The way my mind’s been working lately, I’ll take all the reminders I can get.
