Greg and I took Eleanor and Abe on a walk last night. Greg pushed the stroller, and I held Abe’s leash. A few blocks from our house, Abe turned and started to pull me backward. I looked and saw a rottweiler running toward us. No owner in sight.

I’m not generally afraid of dogs, but Abe is terrible around bigger dogs. In his younger days, he used to like all dogs, but somewhere along the line he became defensive toward big dogs, so I always panic when we come upon a loose dog.

I immediately handed Abe’s leash to Greg, knowing that he would be better able to control Abe. The rottweiler gave Abe a sniff, and Abe, in his brilliance, began to bark and snarl at the rottweiler. Yes, Abe, let’s pick a fight. Good thinking!

I, being nearly as smart as Abe, grabbed the rottweiler by his collar. It was like trying to restrain a bull. I should point out that this dog was larger than your typical rottweiler and most definitely outweighed me (because, you know, I could certainly handle your standard rottweiler). His tags didn’t have an address but did have phone numbers and a name. Ivan. Of course. What else could he be named? Attila, perhaps?

Well, Ivan turned out to be a teddy bear. He was so happy to be petted that he didn’t give Abe another look. Ivan began to drag me across the street toward a house. I followed, figuring he must be taking me to his home. He galloped right up to the front door, and I rang the bell. A teenage girl answered, and Ivan pushed past her and ran into the house. Hurrah, Ivan was home! But when I looked back at the girl in the doorway, her eyes were dinner plates. No, wait, this was not Ivan’s home.

“Are you missing a dog?” I asked, my voice filled with neighborly goodwill.

“He’s not ours, but I know who he belongs to, and I can return him,” she said.

And so I’m happy to report, this is not the story of how Abe got eaten. Though it may be the story of how a neighbor’s house got destroyed.

All last week, I desperately wanted cinnamon rolls, but they needed to be homemade. I’m a food snob. I make no apologies for that. I finally got all the ingredients together and decided I would prepare them Saturday night and bake them Sunday morning for breakfast. But by the time we put Eleanor to bed Saturday, and cleaned up our every-counter-is-covered kitchen, and picked up the toys from our tornadic toddler, I knew that the couch was the only place I wanted to spend the evening.

So, no cinnamon rolls. But, I just happen to be married to a good man. And that good man got up before 6 a.m. Sunday. Hours before sunrise, I tell you, and made cinnamon rolls. When I came downstairs, he asked me which pans he should use for baking, and I pulled out two pans because he had made a recipe for 18 rolls. Had I advised him previously that I would only be making a half-recipe? Yes. Did he listen? No. Well, actually he did listen, but how could a person ever have too many cinnamon rolls? We definitely needed 18 rolls.

I was a little nervous about this cinnamon roll production because Greg spends very little time cooking these days. He used to do some baking, but now he usually entertains Eleanor while I cook and bake. And the last time he tried to make cinnamon rolls, the dough never rose. I didn’t want to discourage him though, so I stayed clear of the project. The recipe directions told him to put the cinnamon rolls pretty close together in the pan. The photos, however, showed that the rolls should be put at least an inch apart to give the dough space to rise. Greg didn’t look at the photos.

I’ve done enough baking to know that any dough you put into a hot oven will expand. Greg has done far less baking. But he is a man with an advanced engineering degree. A man who has breezed through advanced chemistry and math courses.

Yet somehow, he missed the part about the expanding dough. He squeezed every single roll into one pan, so tightly packed that the poor things suffocated. I do feel short-changed because I had so longed for that puffy, buttery roll. And I feel even worse for Greg because he spent three hours preparing these emaciated things. They’re still edible, but they’re not the lofty cinnamon dream I wanted. Greg says he likes them because you can eat multiples and it hardly seems like you’ve eaten anything. But isn’t the point to taste every artery-clogging droplet of butter?

Two couples we’re friends with moved to new houses last week, so I knew it was time to get into my own kitchen and whip up something for them. When I saw a photo of a snickerdoodle cupcake, I knew that was the thing. I also planned to take some to the neighbors who recently moved in behind us.

I got the recipe from Martha Stewart, and I will just go right ahead and tell you that I don’t trust her. Not because of that whole jail thing but because the first recipe of hers that I tried — back in college when I was just getting started with baking — failed. I spent nearly six hours making this layer cake with raspberry filling, but the filling never thickened, and so I ended up with a cake massacre. Soggy layers and red running everywhere. Luckily, the boy I baked it for eventually asked me to marry him, so not all was lost.

Anyway, this recipe makes a lot, so it took me much of an afternoon to bake them all in my one cupcake pan. I decided I would frost them Saturday right before we drove around to deliver them. I didn’t use Martha’s frosting recipe because I don’t have a candy thermometer, so I found a recipe on Smitten Kitchen instead. My first batch of frosting came out so-so. But my second batch. Oh my. Some of us took our shirts off.

It was wonderfully glossy and tasted so good. But why did I make two batches of frosting? Well, as we were getting ready to make our second cupcake delivery, we learned that our friend John had gotten a concussion while shopping at IKEA. Yup. So he would not be eating any cupcakes because he would be sitting in the emergency room instead. By Sunday, he felt ready for cake.

I had left a few cupcakes unfrosted in our fridge and decided that I should make more frosting so the cupcakes wouldn’t seem quite so stale. Having spent parts of three days assembling cupcakes (while fighting off a cold, too), I finally tried one. Ho-hum. Yes, I didn’t like it that much. The thing is that I adore snickerdoodle cookies. And this cupcake didn’t seem a good approximation. Whereas snickerdoodles are really just sugar cookies dusted with cinnamon and sugar, this was a cinnamon cupcake. Yesterday, I gave the snickerdoodle cupcake a second chance. My cold was disappearing, the kitchen was clean, and Eleanor was at the baby-sitter. Under these more favorable circumstances, I really liked the cupcake. I still don’t think it resembles a snickerdoodle cookie, but it’s a good cinnamon cupcake. And if nothing else, you must try the frosting. It would be divine on chocolate cake. Or just on your fingers.