Too Many Dates And One Very Important One

On By 2 Traveling DogsIn dog blog

This is Fruitycake. Before I tell you about Boy Person’s latest shopping expedition and the rather significant date that has appeared on our calendar, I would like to invite you to join us on Patreon for just $5 a month. You will get our weekday blogs, extra pictures, videos and the audio blog, where you can hear all about our adventures in this Italy place. Your support helps us keep telling these stories and working on our rescue projects as we prepare for what could be the biggest change in our lives in years. And believe me, after today’s grocery situation, we may need to hire someone to supervise Boy Person.

This is Fruitycake. Ever since Girl Person had her surgery, Boy Person has been taking on more of the grocery shopping responsibilities. Girl Person still cannot carry much, which is a rather inconvenient restriction when you live in a house that requires you to carry practically everything up a mountain. Groceries do not arrive at our front door. They arrive at the bottom of a very long walk, and then someone has to persuade them to climb several hundred steps. Also avoid wild pigs.  Also the snakes falling on you from rockers  Usually that someone is Boy Person. I have offered to help, but apparently carrying a stick sideways across the path and stopping to smell suspicious rocks does not qualify as useful assistance.

Now, Girl Person has always been the one who knows what we need, how much we need and where everything belongs. Boy Person is still learning. He goes to the store with the confidence of a man who has been entrusted with a very important mission and returns with the expression of someone who may have misunderstood several parts of it. I admire his enthusiasm. I question his quantities.

Yesterday, Boy Person came home with dates. Lots of dates. An unreasonable number of dates, in my professional opinion. Girl Person looked at them and asked the obvious question. What exactly was he planning to do with all these dates? Was he opening a date restaurant? Starting a date farm? Preparing for a shortage of dates across the European continent? And perhaps more importantly, where did he think he was going to put them all? Our little kitchen has limited storage space, and I have already claimed several strategic locations for emergency pizza supplies.

Boy Person apparently had no detailed answers to these questions. He had seen dates. Dates seemed useful. Therefore, he bought dates. This is a purchasing philosophy I can respect, although I personally would have applied it to pizza.

But the funniest part of this entire situation is that while Boy Person was busy bringing home far too many dates, we were also given one date we have been waiting a very long time to hear.

November 13.

That is the tentative closing date the buyer has given us for the sale of our rustico.

Girl Person has been waiting for this news for what feels like approximately fourteen dog lifetimes. We have had inspections, reports, visits, questions, more questions, waiting, wondering and enough nervous anticipation to power a small Italian village. And now, suddenly, there is an actual date on the calendar. November 13. Of course, it could change. Nothing is completely certain until the paperwork is signed, and we have learned that making plans in Italy sometimes requires the patience of a tortoise and the flexibility of a spaghetti noodle.

Still, a date is a date. Unless it is a date you eat. In which case, according to Boy Person, you should apparently buy several hundred.

Girl Person immediately began thinking about everything we need to do. Where will we go? What will we take? What will we leave behind? How will we move our belongings down this mountain? What happens to our rescue work? What will our next chapter look like? And, perhaps most importantly, how are we supposed to make all these decisions when we still have an entire kitchen full of dates?  Should we pack them?!

I watched her start making mental lists. Then I watched her make actual lists. Then I watched her look around our little rustico as though she were seeing it for the first time and the last time simultaneously. I know that look. It is the look of someone who is excited about the possibilities ahead but already missing something she has not yet left.

October 27 | I Can Outgrow A Place Without Hating It

Girl Person’s affirmation today is something I think she needs to hear as much as anyone.

I can outgrow a place without hating it. Because sometimes she talks about leaving this Italy place as though she is betraying it. As though deciding that living here has become too difficult somehow means the years we spent here were a mistake. But I have watched her love this valley through storms, sunshiney afternoons, broken things, beautiful discoveries and more trips up and down those steps than any reasonable person should be expected to make. None of that love disappears because we need something different now. We can be grateful for a chapter and still turn the page. We can miss a place before we leave it and still look forward to where we are going. And we can admit that something no longer fits without pretending it was never beautiful. Personally, I have outgrown several dog beds without holding a grudge against any of them. Although I would like to point out that Girl Person still hasn’t purchased a sufficiently large replacement.

This Italy place has been more than a house. It has been our adventure, our challenge, our sanctuary and occasionally our personal obstacle course. Where Brickle got us to. 

Girl Person has loved this valley with her whole heart, even on the days when living here has been harder than she could have imagined. Leaving will not be simple. But staying has become difficult in ways that cannot be fixed with determination, optimism or even a particularly impressive grocery delivery.

And that is where I believe Boy Person’s dates have taught us something important. You can plan to buy a reasonable amount of something and come home with an entirely different situation. You can make a list, have a destination and believe you know exactly what will happen, only to discover that life has other ideas. Sometimes you end up with too many dates. Sometimes you finally get the one date you have been waiting for, and suddenly you realize how much you still have to figure out.

We cannot control whether November 13 remains our closing date. We cannot control every detail of what happens afterward. We cannot even control Boy Person in the dried fruit section. But we can begin preparing. We can sort through our belongings, investigate possibilities, make decisions one at a time and start imagining a future that looks different from the one we have known here.

We can also remember that making a plan does not mean we have to know every answer. A plan is simply somewhere to begin. It can change. We can change. And perhaps that is not something to fear quite so much.

Girl Person has spent a lot of time worrying about what comes next, and I understand why. There are real decisions to make, real expenses ahead and real uncertainty about how we will continue the work that matters so much to us. But there are also possibilities. New places to explore. New animals to help. New stories to tell. And hopefully a home where the groceries do not require a mountaineering expedition.

As for me, I have begun my own moving preparations. I have selected my favorite stick, inspected my blanket and confirmed that my pizza expectations will remain unchanged regardless of our geographical location. I am also keeping a close eye on Boy Person because if he cannot be trusted to purchase a reasonable quantity of dates, I am concerned about what might happen when he starts packing boxes.

Maybe moving forward isn’t about deciding that the past was wrong. Maybe it’s about recognizing that the past was right for who we were then, and the future deserves a chance to be right for who we are becoming. November 13 may change, our plans may change, but loving this place and leaving it are two things that can be true at the same time. We do not have to control everything to begin moving forward. We only have to do the next thing we can do, with the information we have today.

And if everything goes terribly wrong, at least we have enough dates to survive until approximately 2037.

Fruitycake

P.S. We are entering a very important time for 2 Traveling Dogs. As we prepare for the possible sale of the rustico and our next chapter, we are also trying to build a future for our rescue work. Our This Is…Me project helps real shelter animals be seen, believed and rescued, but we currently have no sponsors. We are also developing new ways to help rescue animals, including Fruitycake’s Pawcast, and we need your support to keep these projects moving forward. We have decided to discontinue our weekend guides because they were not selling, and we need to put our limited time and resources where they can make the greatest difference.

If you believe in us, our work and our mission to Make Rescues The Breed Of Choice, this is an especially important time to stand beside us. We are not asking anyone to solve everything. We are asking those who can to help us take the next step. 

● Join Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/2travelingdogsrescue

● Sponsor a This Is…Me rescue story: 

http://www.paypal.com/ncp/payment/Q56YEJJTKXY96

● Help with groceries, necessities and fuel: https://www.tinyurl.com/2tdnecessities

● Venmo: @travelingdogs2

● Zelle: rachael@2travelingdogs.com

Our 2027 calendars, Under The Crow and 2 Traveling Dogs — Portofino, Italy, are also available. They may be our last calendars from this beautiful Italy place, and every purchase helps support what comes next.

And don’t forget Fruitycake’s Pawcast, our free weekday podcast for dogs, by a dog! We hope you’ll play it for your own dogs and share it with animal shelters. We would also love questions from your dogs for upcoming episodes.

Listen here: https://2travelingdogs.com/feed/podcast/fruitycakes-pawcast/

Thank you for helping us continue, especially during a time when so much of our future is uncertain. You are helping us make tomorrow a little easier, too. And I think that is a rather wonderful thing.

Thank you for being here, for believing that rescue animals deserve to be seen and for helping us continue this work. We will share more about our plans on Patreon as we figure them out. We may not know exactly where we are going yet, but we know why we are going.

And Boy Person, if you are reading this, please do not buy any more dates.