So, About That Trailer

Hey, y'all - 

We did a lot of truly wacky, questionable things in 2018, but this one is the cherry on the sundae.

Last spring, I was looking at real estate listings, because it's a weird hobby I have, and I came across a double-wide trailer for sale on a half-acre wooded lot, just up the hill from Seeley Lake. It looked like the kind of place a Hatfield or McCoy would've stumbled to their death after a knife fight, but I convinced your dad to go take a look, because this piece of land also cost about the same as a Volvo. 

The super-shady, pint-sized realtor (or as I came to think of him, "60 Inches Of Lies,") met us at the trailer to give us a tour. Y'all, I made it into the front room and quit. It was fifty years of hoarding staring me in the face. I said "I'll just wait outside." "You don't want to see the rest?" the realtor asked. "Nope," I said, "because as soon as we close, I'm going to light it on fire and kick it down the hill." But again: half an acre at the lake for the price of a Volvo. 

I texted my boss a picture of the place. He's from Vermont, where they call rednecks "woodchucks." As soon as the picture went through, he texted back: "A roof built on top of another roof? Classic woodchuck architecture."  There were gates made out of refrigerator shelves, doors made out of shower curtains and decks that led to other decks that led to a pile of rocks. But again: half an acre at the lake for the price of a Volvo. 

We held back $3000 in the deal, because if the owners didn't clear all of their stuff out, that's what I estimated it would cost us to have it hauled away to the dump. And let me tell you, they ran the clock out. 

Our plan was to demo the place when we had time, and build a cozy little cabin, where we could spend weekends, because we truly love spending time at Seeley Lake. Even Hagen:

Then, Grandpops decided he wanted to move to Montana; he'd been visiting a lot and had started to go native. 

"Have we got the place for you!" we said. So Grandpops moved in and started fixing the place up and made it actually livable and lovely, but still with the goal of tearing it down this coming summer and building something nicer on the site. You kids got your own bedroom and I scrubbed the kitchen and stocked it with enough gear to host a Lee family Thanksgiving, should the need ever arise. I'm sure Grandpops wondered why a dude living alone would ever need 12 place settings. 

There was just enough good weather left in the year to excavate the future build site and get the foundation mapped out.

I think it's all going to work out fabulously, especially since I've been married to your dad long enough that it no longer stresses me out to be in the middle of thirty-eleven building projects. 

Grandpops seems happy at the new place, and grasps the potential for what it could become. 

...and we've already got our weekend plans for next summer all lined up. 

Love,

Mom

A Year of Sibling Sweetness

Hey, y'all - 

Hagen came home from school yesterday with a tremendous tale of first grade woe. It went something like:

Hagen: "I didn't use my time wisely, so I missed out on recess and then when my class came back in, it was time to go to the "Proud Paw" store [Note: at school, the kids earn Proud Paws that look like dollar bills that they can cash in for prizes once a month at the store.] But I was last in line at the store and I didn't know what I wanted and I was still so sad about recess that I ran away from my class and started crying really hard. And then another teacher said "Should I go get Laney?" And I figured there must be lots of Laneys at my school - but when the mystery Laney showed up, IT WAS MY SISTER!!"

Me: "And then what happened?"

Hagen: "She hugged me and asked me where my class was and walked me back to the store and helped me pick out a prize and I got a game and everything is okay now."

Y'all, I can't tell you how often something like this happens. You two look out for each other in ways big and small, every day. You find ways to compromise and get along, and it's really astounding to watch from the outside. Hagen lets Laney be the teacher every time they play school, but if Hagen wants to be an astronaut, she'll make him a rocket seat and ask if he's "a go for launch."  She pushes him on the swing and helps him wash the windows and doesn't ignore him when her friends come around. She reads him stories and learns about his favorite Pokemon. I've only seen the two of you fight once, when Hagen needed some space. He decided he needed some boundaries, and was going to write up a list of rules about when it's okay to enter his room...and Laney helped him write it. 

I'm sure things will not always be this easy, but in the meantime, watching you two together is the great joy of my life. 

Love,

Mom

All or Nothing

Hey, y'all -

Here's the thing about Hagen:

He either wants to sit on the couch and accomplish absolutely nothing (why on Earth would anyone ever want to go outside? That's where the weather is!) or he wants to do something insanely fast that hurls his body down a hill like someone who doesn't know the meaning of the word "deductible."

So it was with skiing, earlier this year. We couldn't believe he'd even agree to get on the lift, but he did. After a few downhill runs with your dad holding him back with a rope - in a move I like to call "the thigh burner," Hagen said "I think that's about enough of the rope. Let's just go."

OK, then.

Our family has become a well-behaved Nordic gang, cruising down the bunny hill in a pack.

To me, the best part of that video is when you can hear Laney shouting "Nice work, bud!...Awesome!"

Hagen might be a great skier, but she's a hell of a sister. 

Love,

Mom

Returning Warrior Workshop (Let's Get Real For A Minute)

Hey, yall - 

At the start of the year, your dad was invited (Requested? Commanded? With the Navy, it's all a big grey area that your dad files under "Mandatory Fun,") to attend a Returning Warrior Workshop in San Diego. It was to be a time for service members returning from deployment to attend a fun (?!), informative event with their spouses to ease the transition back into civilian life. I was skeptical, but San Diego is always lovely and I figured we could slip away from the PowerPoints long enough for a real margarita. OK, I'm in. 

Here's the thing about Returning Warrior Workshops: As the comedian Ron White once said, "If you get a chance...pass."  I did not want to sit a hotel conference room table after the fact and talk to strangers about my feelings.  One of the reasons I will never go on a cruise (besides a persistent fear of the norovirus) is that I don't want to sit with people I don't know. Nobody from the Navy asked me how I was doing during the deployment, so asking me how it went after the fact is a little like locking the stable after the horse has gone.

Thor went to Afghanistan as what the military calls an "Individual Augmentee," which means he didn't go with a squadron, he was just one guy plucked at random to serve. Because of this, I spent his deployment feeling like the only person in the world going through it. There are no support networks, no way for spouses to connect, no one to share what they've learned. And the workshop was equally out of touch (I particularly enjoyed the final night, when they gave me a certificate for my sacrifice with my name misspelled).

So, with no better outlet at my disposal, here are a few things I learned during Thor's deployment that I can share, in case there's anyone else who might benefit from my experience:

- If you're shipping packages to the Middle East, don't send chocolate between May and October.

- Get an online account with the US Post office and you can print flat-rate labels with a $2 discount for APO/FPO addresses, fill out customs forms online, and never have to go to the actual post office again. On average, it takes 14 days for a package to travel over there, but you will not be able to track it online and will get an error message. Ignore it.

- Target is great for ordering household items (like a fan or a decent towel), but they won't ship food. Walmart is best at this, and ships any order over $35 free, even heavy stuff like cans of soup. I once ordered Thor ten boxes of cereal when they were having a sale.

- Speaking of food, it's terrible over there (lots of sketchy hot dogs, etc., and we should be embarrassed as Americans). In particular, Thor hated that the dairy products were so chemically treated that they no longer tasted like milk, so I got an Amazon subscription for organic milk boxes and half and half.  You know what else travels well? Flour tortillas. They have a two month shelf life and can be used with peanut butter and honey packets for a decent snack. He didn't have refrigeration for a while, so I found this great online store that sells individual packets of things, like salad dressing or parmesan cheese - in case he ever saw a vegetable, he could make it taste like something. These were his favorite treat, because you just need water.

- I learned after the deployment that the DoD will pay for a family gym membership while your spouse is deployed (which at the YMCA even includes child care). Had I known, this would have saved me about $700.

- Everything you've heard about the heat is true. Thor would wet scarves and keep them in the squadron freezer. Chafing is no joke, and this was the most useful product on that front.

- Internet isn't free. Speaking of things that should embarrass us as Americans - our troops have to pay price-gouging local companies if they want internet access in their housing units, vs going to the computer center, if there is one. This is such an essential thing for morale - being able to communicate with your family - I can't really wrap my head around it. Anyway, look into getting a VPN account so you can convince your computer it's still in America and you can have access to Netflix, etc.

- Whatsapp works better than FaceTime or Skype. If you have an iPhone, iMessage is an internet-based app that doesn't need a cell signal, so if you can figure out the wifi, you can text back home. THIS WAS HUGE for us.

- If you are a service member with small children who aren't big on talking on the phone, they're not going to be great at communicating with you this way when you're gone. It's natural to get your feelings hurt and feel like they don't care enough to talk to you. They do, but children aren't as good at processing what they can't see. Trust that the other side of this coin is that when you get back, they'll usually get back to normal in no time. Small children are like puppies that way. But DO find other ways to engage: Thor sent small things he found in the local market, or even on the sidewalk:

- Also totally normal: coming back from deployment and being angry at how things are run in the civilian world. I know it was tough for Thor to go from a reality where decisions were literally life and death to a bureaucratic office where nothing really matters, but everyone treats it like life and death. Thor had a pretty great outlook on this, which was: if civilians are sheltered and protected and have no idea what's going on, it means we've done our job. He's far nicer than I will ever be.

- You will learn (and be surprised by) who really cares for you by who checks on you and offers help in your time of need. A deployment is a great litmus test, and if you go a whole year without friends or even family members checking on you, you can cross those people off your Christmas list, guilt-free. And then give special thanks for the people who rose to the challenge and watched your children when you thought you were going to collapse or came over to pull a dead cat out of your hot tub. Bless those people.

Ah, well. We survived. We're stronger for it.

At least the margaritas were good.

Love,
Mom

Same Time, Last Year

Hey, y'all - 

Christmas 2017, we didn't have furniture in the new house, and just about everything we owned was boxed up in the old one, so it didn't make sense to add a tree to the mix. Instead, I gave Laney and her good friend Amya a box of lights and a roll of duct tape and told them to do their best work.

Hagen went through a pretty strong Jewish phase last year. Of all the holiday songs he learned at school, he responded to the Hanukkah ones the most. He made dreidels out of scrap wood in the garage. At the school's holiday sing-along, the kids were told they could wear their pajamas and stand anywhere they wanted. While most kids stood at the front of the room, Hagen stood right next to me, doing a dead-on impression of a menorah on the 8th night of Hanukkah. He was very method. Maybe he'll grow up to be a roboticist rabbi.  

We had lots of fun in the snow with friends, and your dad and I even cross country skied to one of our lunch dates.

We told Hagen he could pick anything in the world to do for his birthday, so he chose a night out at a sports bar.

A few nights later, we got to attend his favorite social event of the year: the tree-burning party at Miss Julie's house. 

The kitchen window at the new house overlooks the front yard, and one morning, I looked out and discovered that Laney had talked her dad into building an igloo. Laney and Hagen packed snow bricks into plastic tubs and Thor shaped them with a snow shovel.

HOW does your dad know how to construct a structurally sound igloo? I don't know.

Then - of course, because there's never been a Burbach who could resist a building project, no matter how unnecessary - Grandpops joined the crew. (Please note: I'm typing this a year later, and there are rooms in our actual house that don't have trim, but I HAVE had a by-God igloo in my yard and a camper in my backyard that your dad bought on Craigslist for $300 and the materials to make a viking boat in my garage and a trailer at the lake that we'll get back to shortly).

But look at that face - full of third grade enthusiasm. And look at Laney, too!

We decided not to let our unfinished kitchen or the fact that we didn't own a couch deter us from having an insanely fun Christmas party. 

By the next blog post, I'll be caught up to the correct year. Progress!

Love,

Mom