The Opening Act

Before today’s blog begins, I want to ask you to please join us on Patreon if you are able. For $5 a month, you help us keep this blog, our audio blogs, our videos and the work of 2 Traveling Dogs going. After fifteen years of sharing our lives and our dogs with you, your support matters more than ever right now as we wait for the rustico to sell and try to figure out what comes next. The full blogs and audio blogs will return Monday. We just need a few days to grieve our friend Lin, remember her and find our footing again. If you’ve ever thought about joining us on Patreon, this would be a wonderful time. Thank you for helping make it possible for us to keep showing up.

This is Fruitycake.

There are some mornings when you wake up and the world has the nerve to look exactly the same. The trees are still standing. The birds are still yelling about whatever birds yell about. The mountain is still a mountain. And apparently breakfast is still expected to happen at a reasonable hour.

But everything is not the same.

Our friend Lin died.

Even writing those words feels wrong. Too final. Too small for a person who occupied a very real place in our lives and in this strange little show we have been putting on for so many years. Lin loved our videos. She watched our adventures, our ridiculousness and the beautiful places we were lucky enough to wander through. She knew our US. She knew our stories. She knew US. And there is something especially painful about losing someone who wasn’t simply watching from the audience, but who had somehow become part of the show.

So today, we aren’t ready for the whole performance. Today is only The Opening Act.

There is a saying that the show must go on. I think Lin would agree with that. Actually, I think she would probably tell Girl Person to stop crying for five minutes, get some fries, order a pizza and then figure out what comes next. Because grief may be powerful, but so is melted cheese.

And we need to remember that.

One of the bands Lin loved was Glass Tiger, and a few words from “Someday” feel especially tender right now: “You and I, we’ll meet again.” Maybe that is one of the things we have to hold onto when goodbye arrives before we are ready.

Because we aren’t ready today.

We aren’t ready to explain everything we are feeling. We aren’t ready to turn grief into a lesson or wrap it neatly in an affirmation. Sometimes sadness does not need to become something productive. Sometimes you need to sit beside it. Sometimes you need to remember the person who is missing. Sometimes you need to cry until your face hurts and then eat french fries because your friend absolutely would have told you to.

Girl Person and Boy Person need a little time to do that.

For fifteen years, this blog has kept going through almost everything. We have written through beginnings and endings, adventures and disasters, moves and mountains, laughter and fear, dogs arriving and dogs leaving us. We have learned that continuing does not mean that something didn’t hurt. Sometimes continuing is how you honor how much it mattered.

And maybe today’s affirmation fits into this day in a way I didn’t expect.

September 24 | Boredom Is A Sign You Can Be Greater

TODAY’S AFFIRMATION

Boredom may be a sign that I can become greater. I will listen for the curiosity hiding inside the quiet. I can learn, create, explore or help instead of waiting to be entertained. Today, I will use one empty moment as an invitation.

Today, I don’t think that empty moment has to mean boredom. Sometimes an empty moment is simply the space left when something—or someone—isn’t where they used to be. And that quiet can feel enormous.

But maybe curiosity can live there too.

So today, instead of trying to understand all of this, we are going to try to see something new. Just one thing we have never noticed before. Maybe it will be a flower growing somewhere we have walked past a hundred times. Maybe it will be a different view through the trees, an old stone we never really looked at, or the way the light falls on this mountain place when autumn starts arriving. Grief has a way of making the whole world feel smaller, and maybe noticing something new can open it back up just a tiny bit.

We aren’t looking for something that will make us stop being sad. We aren’t asking today to suddenly become a good day. We just want to find one beautiful, interesting or ridiculous thing that reminds us there is still more here to see. Because Lin loved seeing the things we found. She loved our videos and coming along on these adventures with us. So maybe today we can look a little harder for her, too.

Maybe that is our opening act. We get up. We take Fruitycake outside. We look around. We appreciate something we didn’t appreciate yesterday. We let an empty moment become an invitation to notice something instead of simply trying to fill it. Maybe we learn something. Maybe we explore somewhere. Maybe we help someone. Maybe we just stand still long enough to realize there is something beautiful right in front of us that yesterday we were too busy to see.

Then we eat the fries.

We get the pizza.

We remember our friend.

And we allow ourselves to believe that even after losing someone we love, there are still things ahead of us that we haven’t seen yet.

The full blog and our audio blog will be back Monday. We just need these few days to remember Lin without trying to turn all of it into words. We need to sit with the griefs—not only this one, but the others that seem to have pulled up chairs beside it lately. We need to walk this mountain slowly. We need to notice the flowers. We need pizza. We definitely need fries.

And then the curtain will rise again.

There will be another blog. Another video. Another Fruitycake investigation that absolutely nobody requested. There will be more pretty places to show you because Lin loved seeing them. Maybe that is one of the ways we carry people forward. We keep doing the things that brought them joy, even when they aren’t here to tell us they enjoyed them.

The show must go on.

But not all of it today.

Today is only the opening act.

And this one is for Lin.

Fruitycake

P.S. We hate asking at a time like this, but while we take these few days to grieve, life here still has to keep going. We are waiting for the rustico to sell, fall is arriving on this mountain and we urgently need fall supplies, groceries and everyday necessities for Fruitycake and the persons. If you believe in the tomorrow of 2 Traveling Dogs, please help us get through this in-between time. Joining Patreon for $5 a month at www.patreon.com/2travelingdogsrescue is one of the biggest ways you can help us build something sustainable, or you can help with necessities at www.tinyurl.com/2tdnecessities, Venmo @travelingdogs2 or Zelle rachael@2travelingdogs.com. Every bit truly matters right now.

The full blog and audio blog return Monday. Until then, we’re going to look for something new to appreciate, eat the fries, remember our friend and let the opening act be enough. ❤️