Please don’t skip by this message today. The full version of this blog and audio version is only on our Patreon page. $5 a month is all we ask for your support of this blog made possible since 2011. We volunteer our time and energy and all resources. Help us by joining Patreon at www.patreon.com/2travelingdogsrescue
This is Fruitycake.
I would like to begin Monday’s blog with an official announcement from the Under The Crow Real Estate Department, of which I am apparently now Director Of Mountain Transportation And Elderly Relative Services. If you are considering buying our rustico, we are very happy to see you. We will show you the waterfall. We will show you the mills. We will show you the house. We will show you the land. Girl Person will probably tell you seventeen stories you did not ask for, Boy Person will explain something involving rocks or water, and I will sniff you thoroughly enough to determine whether you are qualified to own my former pizza-eating areas. But I am begging you. Please. Stop bringing your elderly parents up this mountain. This is not an old person home. There is no elevator. There is no golf cart. There is no little tram with refreshments. There is a mountain. A very real mountain in this Portofino place. And apparently Girl Person and I are now expected to push people up it.
We had three prospective buyers come to see the rustico, and I would like to say that each one had a very different showing technique. The first was a woman who apparently mistook a rustico showing for a qualifying round at the Olympics. She came flying up here in record speed, looked around and then left even faster. I barely had time to properly investigate her shoes. Girl Person and Boy Person had spent all that time getting everything ready, and suddenly WHOOSH. Woman arrives. Woman sees rustico. Woman disappears. I believe there are migrating birds that spend more time here. We did not have to measure anything. We did not have to escort anyone up a mountain. Nobody was 86. In retrospect, this was the easiest showing we have ever had, and I did not appreciate it nearly enough at the time.
Then came the prospective buyer from that France place, otherwise known around here as The Antique Doctor. He brought his elderly father with him, and these two did not come here to perform the Flying Woman Method. Oh no. They came prepared to investigate Earth. The Antique Doctor had papers printed. He had questions. And he measured everything. Every room. Every wall. Every building. Every mill. Every opening. Every thing that could possibly have a number attached to it. They were here for THREE HOURS. At one point I started sucking in my stomach because I was convinced eventually someone was going to measure me. I expected him to put a stethoscope against the house, take the rustico’s blood pressure and announce that the diagnosis was severe oldness complicated by an acute case of waterfall. Then, after approximately three hours of examining every known object in this Italy place, he and his dad wanted to climb up toward another road to investigate another way into the property. Of course they did. Because apparently everyone who comes here sees a mountain and immediately thinks, “I wonder what is up there?” I can save everyone some time. MORE MOUNTAIN IS UP THERE.
And then came Sunday. By this point, I foolishly believed we had experienced every possible variety of rustico showing. We had Speed Showing. We had Medical Examination Showing. What could possibly be left? I will tell you. Bring Your 86-Year-Old Parents To A Mountain Showing. Sunday’s prospective buyers arrived with their parents. Their 86-year-old parents. Both of them. Now, I respect my elders. I am a rescue dog with manners. But when I realized what was happening, I looked at Girl Person and Girl Person looked at me, and I believe we both had the exact same thought: WHO IS GETTING THEM UP? You have to understand something about this rustico. You walk up a mountain to get here, which means eventually you must go back down that mountain to leave.
Somewhere during Sunday’s showing, the prospective buyers went off to look at more of the property, and somehow Girl Person and Fruitycake were left with the two 86-year-old parents and the assignment of getting them up the mountain. I do not remember this being mentioned in the real estate listing. Girl Person has enough trouble getting Girl Person up this mountain at this point. I have four legs, which gives me an advantage, although I prefer to use those legs for sniffing and locating pizza. Yet there we were, staring up the trail and realizing our assignment was basically: Push Them Up The Mountain Please. Girl Person was watching every step they took. I was watching Girl Person. Girl Person was watching me like perhaps rescue dogs are issued some secret elderly-person mountain transportation certification. We are not. I briefly considered determining which end of an 86-year-old person you are supposed to push, but I decided this was probably not the weekend to find out.
So that was our prospective buyer experience: one woman who came and went so quickly I am still not entirely convinced she wasn’t a hallucination, one Antique Doctor from this France place who measured enough of the property to reconstruct it from memory, and Sunday’s prospective buyers who brought two 86-year-old parents and accidentally turned Girl Person and me into mountain sherpas. By the time it was all over, the persons were done. Not regular done. Rustico done. There is a difference. Regular done means you are tired and you go to bed. Rustico done means you sit in a chair staring into the distance and begin questioning every decision you have made since approximately 1997.
But underneath all of that exhaustion is something important. Two of these prospective buyers seem serious. They came here. They walked the property. They saw the buildings, the mills, the waterfall and the reality of what owning this place would mean. And now the persons have been told that they need this week to think about it. So the showings are over, at least for now, and we have entered what I am calling The Thinking Week. Somewhere, The Antique Doctor in this France place may be sitting at a table surrounded by approximately 4,782 measurements. Sunday’s prospective buyers may be talking about everything they saw and whether they can picture this becoming their place. And the fast woman may already be halfway up another mountain somewhere. I wish her well.
Meanwhile, Girl Person and Boy Person are here waiting. And waiting is hard when you are this tired. They do not hate this place. I wish everyone understood that. They love it. That is part of what makes this so difficult. You can love something and still understand that it is time to let it go. You can stand at the bottom of your own waterfall and think it is one of the most magical places you have ever seen while simultaneously knowing you never want to carry another bag of groceries up this mountain again. You can be grateful for a chapter of your life and still be ready to turn the page. Both things can be true.
And maybe that is why today’s September 14 affirmation from our workbook feels like it was waiting for us this morning: “If You Resist Love, It Makes You Weaker, Not Stronger.” The affirmation says, “If I resist safe and honest love, I make myself weaker, not stronger. I am allowed to receive care without suspicion or apology. Letting love in takes courage. I will remain wise while opening my heart.” I think Girl Person needs that one today. Maybe Boy Person does too. Maybe all of us do. Because when you have been tired for a long time, sometimes you start thinking being strong means doing everything yourself. You stop asking. You stop expecting anyone to catch you. You convince yourself that needing encouragement means you are not strong enough. But perhaps strength is also being able to say, “I am tired. Please stand beside me for a while.” Maybe letting people care about you does not make the mountain disappear, but it makes you remember that you are not climbing it alone.
The persons just want to move forward now. They want an answer. They want to know where we are going next. They want to get back to this America place and put their energy into what comes next for 2 Traveling Dogs and our rescue work instead of putting so much of themselves into simply maintaining life on this mountain. They want to take everything we have learned over fifteen years, everything we learned traveling to rescues, everything we have learned living in this Italy place, and everything we just learned from visiting the shelter in Como, and do something bigger with it. Mostly, I think they are tired of living in between. Between staying and leaving. Between one chapter and another. Between “maybe” and “yes.”
So if you are part of our 2 Traveling Dogs family, the persons could really use some encouragement during this waiting week. Tell them they can make it a little farther. Tell Girl Person there is another chapter even if she cannot see exactly what it looks like yet. Tell Boy Person that perhaps installing a chairlift would increase the marketability of the property. Tell us you are hoping with us that one of these people who spent so much time walking, measuring, looking, climbing and thinking realizes that this strange, beautiful, difficult rustico is supposed to become theirs. Sometimes you need other people to believe there is a finish line when you are too tired to see it yourself. And today, we are going to try to be brave enough to receive that love instead of pretending we do not need it.
Because the persons are ready. I am ready. I suspect the suitcases are ready. The only one who may not be ready is the rustico. And maybe that is okay. Sometimes a place can mean everything to you and still be a place you have to leave. Sometimes moving forward means waiting for someone else to walk through your door and see their beginning exactly where you are seeing your ending. And sometimes moving forward apparently means standing on the side of a mountain in this Italy place on a Sunday afternoon wondering how you and your dog became responsible for getting two 86-year-old people back to civilization.
So this week, we wait. We hope. We let people love us. And we could use your encouragement more than you probably know. Maybe this will finally be our week. Maybe one of those phones will ring. Maybe somebody will say yes. Until then, we will keep doing what we have done for a very long time now: put one paw and one foot in front of the other and keep going up the mountain.
And to any future prospective buyers reading this: We would LOVE to meet you. Bring your questions. Bring your measuring tape. Bring your dreams. Bring your checkbook. Just maybe leave Grandma and Grandpa somewhere with a cappuccino.
Fruitycake
P.S. I need to say something serious before you go. We need support this week in order to continue our volunteer rescue work. Support has almost completely stopped, and there is simply no way for the persons to keep paying for groceries, necessities, Fruitycake necessities, transportation, the website, creating our rescue content and everything else that allows 2 Traveling Dogs to keep doing this work without help. We want this week to be the week we finally get an answer about the rustico and our direction, but we also have to be able to make it through the week in front of us. If support does not come in, we will have to stop some of what we are doing because there simply is not money to continue it. If you believe in what we have done for the last fifteen years and what we are trying to build next, please help us this week. Five dollars matters. Ten dollars matters. Joining Patreon matters. Sharing our work matters. Right now, all paws truly matter.
Necessities, groceries and immediate help: www.tinyurl.com/2tdnecessities
Patreon — join for $5 a month: www.patreon.com/2travelingdogsrescue
Venmo:
travelingdogs2
Zelle:
Please help us get through this week so that while we wait for an answer about where our lives are going next, we do not have to stop the work that gives all of this a reason in the first place.
