Packing, Again

We are... in transition.

We have to move out of the Lake House this month. Where we'll go, we're not sure. We had planned to live with Trevor's parents for the few months it'll take to get into the new house, but we've been considering renting a house from friends a few blocks from the remodel. I love this idea, as it'll keep us where we want to be (downtown, and just a stroller ride from Trevor, who'll spend every extra second at the new house, and we'll miss him), but it's not free and I know that makes a difference. Especially since our summer jobs have recently morphed into fall jobs (which is not making the remodel any smoother, let me just mention).

So we don't exactly know where we're going, but we do know that it's another temporary living space. I'm not that kind of girl, so every night as I pack one more portion of we-won't-need-this-for-awhile stuff, I talk really quickly to Trevor, wringing my hands and darting looks around like I'm a confused preteen.

So I've scheduled trips for practically every weekend; I'm pretty sure it's some psychological effort to run away from the impending move into uncertainty. I should be planning trips for June, July and August, to keep us busy while Trevor works on the house and to be independent from the in-laws' house (assuming we do live there; of course we love them and they love us, but anyone would get tired of having an entire family living in their house for that long).

Trevor has taken the girls to the park so that I can work on packing, but I wish I were with them instead (another effort to pretend we're not moving again). Marta keeps asking if we can go "home to the Cedar Creek house," and Berit comes up with stories all the time about what we did there and how much she loved it. I miss it; I miss the girls having their own rooms with their own beds and their own things (even if the furnishings here are far more lovely that anything we'll be able to afford for at least another decade). I miss the security of knowing what was ours, and what we could do with it. I don't like hiring cleaning people to sweep up behind us as if we were never here.

The thing is that we are so lucky to be moving on, to have been here, to have places to go, that it seems wrong to feel strange about it. It's just the children, that's all. I want their lives to be flawless, to never know adjustment or change, though I get it that those things make them into better big people. I know we're lucky that this is all we have to worry about. We are infinitely blessed, and looking at the dark side just makes it easier to do what I want to do today -- be with the kids at the park instead of packing, for instance.

Anyway, onward and upward (or somewhere, at least). And clean sweeps behind us to make room for messy little girl bedrooms ahead.

It Takes So Little...

Our house on the lake doesn't have a mailbox, so we've purchased a post office box in the village. I originally thought this would be a teensy pain in the butt, because on Cedar Creek we loved running out to the mailbox together to discover the treasures inside. Sometimes, when it was especially cold or snowy, that trip to the end of the driveway was the extent of our outdoor excursions for the day.

I have absolutely fallen in love with the post office box. The post office itself is a small room, really, that is largely unstaffed but is surrounded by P.O. boxes. My secret dream job is to be a mail carrier, walking to each unique house and meticulously emptying my bag as I chat with neighbors and enjoy the outdoors. I would now settle for a small-town mail clerk, I believe, with the room full of different-sized doors and a satisfying angle of letters in each one.

The most exciting part of having a P.O. box in Walloon Lake is that sometimes, after turning the key to your own special room of mail, you might discover another key is waiting for you. This new key has a number on it, and you get to search the room for a bigger P.O. box with the same number and open that, which will have a package in it for you. A package! Behind a locked door! For which you have the key! Which you found in your own little locked box!

Each time this happens to me, I think about the ridiculous amount of joy I feel and wonder how incredibly happy I could make the world if I were able to bottle that excited energy I have while I'm racing around, looking for my treasure chest.

Once, I happened to run in while the post master was working. I had a little card in my box that told me I needed to sign for a piece of mail, so I ran up to the desk and rang the bell. I heard her in the back working on something and so, after waiting three whole seconds, I rang it again. She came out and I'm not kidding, I nearly jumped over the desk and hugged her.

"HI, I'm Lisa Doublestein and I have a P.O. Box rightoverthere and I found this yellow card in it and -"

"Oh yes, box 618?"

"YES, GOOD JOB! That's me! Well, that's me and my husband, Trevor, we just moved here, just for the winter, really, though we're not new in town - well, we're new in the village here but we lived in Petoskey, well my husband actually summered here in the village most of his life - that little pink cottage? On West? I think it's West. You know, that little pink one? Anyway, he also builds on the lake so he's out here all the time, so it's not like we're exactly new. We're staying in a house he built, actually, out on North Shore."

"Hi. My name is Terri, and I'm the post master here."

"Oh GOSH, so good to MEET you Terri. I'm sure we'll be seeing lots and LOTS of each other."

"Mm-hm. I see you with your little ones every now and then."

"YES, we see you, too! That's why I wanted to introduce myself. They're Berit and Marta and sometimes we even see you walking back from lunch, you must love being able to walk home for lunch, we always wave but you didn't know us so I wanted to introduce myself." (Realizing what a complete fool I'm being...) "Um, bye. See you next time."