Ready, Set…, not so fast

I am moving back to Buden, Portugal. Theresa and I have been in a visa process with the country for almost two years. Feels more like 10 years. The process of visa approval is chaos and it will get done.

Meanwhile we have decided to return. We get 90 days in the Schengen area before we need to move on. We have a couple of scenarios for what we might do as we near the 90th day. We depart on February 12th with our cat Nala.

We have eaten most of the food in our house. We have boxes packed that are ready to ship to Budens. We have plane tickets, passports and all the other stuff essential for living in another country. Off we go.

All good until yesterday when our veterinarian told us we could not leave on February 12th as we planned. He told us they had made a mistake entering the date of the prior vaccination. That meant that Nala must stay in the US for twenty-one days before she can travel to Europe. That mistake kicked our departure date out to February 26th.

We were a few days from departure, from nice weather and a wonderful place to live and then full stop. We are still catching our breath and we will be fine. Still the come down from the anticipation of a positive change of life style has set me back. All this happened about fourteen hours ago. I’m a bit off center and unsure of what I do today since all my packing plans are not useful for another three weeks.

This post is more of a dump to help me organize my thinking to get through this small dose of chaos. We will sort it out. We are, after all, moving to Portugal and not a war zone. What is true is that all change and transitions come with three questions that wise people always address. Failure to address these questions often leads to frustration. I’m not interested in being frustrated so I will take on these three questions with some rigor today and tomorrow.

The questions:

Given the change in our plan to move to Portugal:

• What do we need to keep?
• What do we need to add?
• What do we need to leave behind?