This is Fruity. Before I tell you about the wind trying to blow us off the mountain and my persons trying not to lose their minds, could you help us out? For just $5 a month, you can join our Patreon family⁠ and enjoy our weekday blogs and audio stories while supporting our rescue mission. Between lawyers, paperwork, my veterinarian appointment and the anxiety monster working overtime, we could really use you right now. Your support helps us keep going, keep helping dogs and hopefully keep pizza on the menu. Thank you for being part of our story!

This is Fruitycake. We are in chaos mode over here at the rustico. It’s like when you put a delicious pizza in the oven and have all the ingredients and toppings that you want. You hope that it comes out cooked perfectly. But you just don’t know if the oven is gonna be too hot. Yeah. We feel cooked right now. Pushed to the anxiety monster limit. Not an acceptable pizza topping.

And then there is the wind. Oh, the wind! This Portofino place apparently decided that we were not experiencing enough excitement, so it sent a windstorm through the valley that made us wonder if Under The Crow was going to become Over The Crow. The trees were bending, the branches were shaking, and the wind was howling through our old house like it had a personal disagreement with every single thing standing upright. At one point, I think all three of us wondered if we were going to be blown right off this mountain. I have never seen Girl Person look so seriously at the walls of a house before. I was considering whether my ears might qualify as emergency wings.

And isn’t that just how life feels sometimes? One minute you are worried about being cooked, and the next minute you are worried about being blown away. Somewhere between those two possibilities, you are supposed to remember to eat breakfast, answer emails, make important decisions and act like a reasonably functioning member of society. Girl Person says she is running out of room in her brain for any more worries. Boy Person is trying to keep everything organized, and I am doing my best to provide emotional support, although I would like it officially documented that I also have concerns about the pizza situation.

We have so many things happening right now. There are lawyers and notaries and documents and questions that lead to more questions. We are trying to get everything ready for the sale of our beloved rustico, and every time we think we have reached the bottom of the paperwork mountain, somebody hands us another mountain. We are doing everything we can to keep moving toward our next chapter, but the uncertainty is exhausting. There is a difference between knowing what you need to do and knowing how everything is going to turn out. Right now, we only have the first part figured out.

And then there is my veterinarian appointment this Thursday. Girl Person is nervous about that too. I need my vaccinations updated, a full examination and the paperwork that will help us prepare for our travels. She wants everything to go smoothly. She wants me to be healthy. She wants to know that we are doing everything correctly because I am the most important part of this journey! Can the wind just fly us all over?

I was thinking the windstorm was trying to teach us something. Because no matter how hard that wind blew, the trees kept moving with it. They bent and swayed and made all sorts of alarming noises, but so many of them remained standing because they were willing to move. They didn’t waste their energy arguing with the direction of the wind. They adjusted. They held on with their roots. They trusted that the storm would eventually pass.

And maybe that is what we have to do right now.

We have spent so much time trying to prepare for every possibility. What if the paperwork takes longer? What if the veterinarian needs another appointment? What if the lawyers ask for something else? What if our plans change by a few days? What if the oven gets too hot? What if the wind blows us all the way to France before we have packed our suitcases? Or Brazil? Or England?  The anxiety monster loves these questions. It takes one little worry and turns it into a buffet of disasters that haven’t even happened. And unlike a pizza buffet, nobody leaves feeling satisfied.

Girl Person wants to trust the process, but I think sometimes she believes trusting means she shouldn’t feel afraid. I disagree. You can be nervous and still believe things will work out. You can be exhausted and still take the next necessary step. You can be uncertain about tomorrow and still find something wonderful about today. Trusting the process doesn’t mean sitting around waiting for everything to magically happen. It means doing the work that is yours to do and accepting that you cannot control every person, every answer, every delay or every gust of wind.

And this brings me to something important in our November Affirmations Book. The affirmation for November 3 is “I Can Appreciate A Chapter Without Repeating It.” I think this is exactly what my persons need to remember right now.

November 3 | Today’s Affirmation

I Can Appreciate A Chapter Without Repeating It.

I can appreciate what has brought me here without demanding that my future look like my past. Today I will practice gratitude through one honest, manageable choice.

Sometimes humans confuse gratitude with obligation. They think that because something was wonderful, they must keep doing it. Because a place changed their lives, they must spend the rest of their lives there. Because they worked so hard to build something, leaving it means that all their work was wasted. But I don’t think life works that way. Every chapter has a purpose, and sometimes its purpose is to prepare us for the next one. We can take everything we learned here and use it to do something even bigger for rescue dogs. We can honor Brickle by continuing the mission he helped begin instead of trying to recreate the life we had with him.

We have already come so far. Think about everything my family has experienced here. We arrived with dreams and plans and a senior dog named Brickle who helped lead us to this extraordinary place. We learned how to live without the conveniences we once thought were necessary.

Now we are being asked to use those lessons. We cannot control how quickly every document is processed or how every appointment unfolds. We cannot make the wind stop blowing simply because we have had enough excitement for one lifetime. But we can keep showing up. We can answer the next email, attend the next appointment, gather the next document and take care of each other while we do it. And perhaps most importantly, we can stop treating every unexpected delay as proof that something terrible is going to happen.

I don’t know exactly when all of this will be finished. My persons don’t either. We have a date we are working toward, a great deal of hope and a rather impressive collection of paperwork. We also have each other. We have survived harder things than a complicated week. And if the wind starts blowing again, I intend to stand firmly on all four paws, preferably somewhere near the kitchen where the pizza is being prepared.

Maybe that is what going with the flow really means. We don’t have to love the uncertainty.

After all, the wind doesn’t get to decide where our family belongs. Love does. Purpose does. And a certain very handsome dog with an excellent sense of direction toward pizza does.

And I think that choice for my persons today is to keep moving forward without demanding that every answer arrive immediately. To appreciate this beautiful, complicated chapter of our lives while allowing ourselves to be excited about what comes next. To remember that leaving a place does not erase the love we felt there, and that trusting the process means believing we can build something meaningful again, even when we don’t know exactly what it will look like.

And if all else fails, I suggest we turn down the oven, close the windows and order a pizza that somebody else has to cook.

Fruitycake

P.S. If you believe in our family and the work we are doing to help rescue dogs, we could really use your support as we navigate this next chapter. Every bit of help makes a difference, especially with my veterinary appointment, travel preparations and the everyday necessities that keep our mission moving. You can help with our necessities⁠, join our Patreon family for $5 a month⁠, sponsor a real shelter dog’s This Is…Me story⁠, or get our November Affirmations Book⁠ and follow along with us each day. Thank you for helping us keep going, even when the wind blows.