I pretend to walk my dog longer than I need to so I can sit on a bench and call my mom

I'm a 32 year old woman. I have a good job. A house. A life that looks totally put together from the outside. Every single evening I tell my husband I'm taking the dog for a long walk. And I do. But the walk only takes about 20 minutes. After that, I sit on this bench by a little pond in our neighborhood and I call my mom. We talk for like 45 minutes. About nothing. About everything. She tells me about her garden. I tell her about my day. She asks if I'm eating enough. I lie and say yes. She knows I'm lying. We both laugh. My mom was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's two years ago. She's still mostly herself right now. But I've watched it start to chip away at the edges. She repeated the same story three times on Tuesday's call. I laughed all three times like it was brand new. I don't tell my husband the real reason the walks are so long because I don't want him to look at me with pity. I don't want this to become sad. These calls aren't sad. They're the best part of my day. I'm storing up every conversation like I'm filling a warehouse. I know one day the phone won't really make sense to her anymore. But right now, today, my mom still laughs at my terrible jokes and calls me her baby and tells me she's proud of me. So yeah. My confession is that I'm a grown woman who sits on a park bench every night pretending her dog needs extra exercise, just so she can talk to her mom. I'm not even sorry.