1. While coming home from CostCo on Friday, I made an improvisational detour to avoid traffic and managed to actually arrive at my front door with only a single stop to consult my phone. Progress!
2. Virgil is really thwarting my attempts to get to know other people in our neighborhood. Whenever we encounter another friendly-looking dog-walker and I start to strike up a conversation, he tries to eat their dog.
3. Speaking of making friends, I’ve been going on a couple of friend-dates lately (lunch or coffee with other women with kids whom I met while out and about), and…it’s sort of…odd. Not bad, not at all – the people I’ve met have all been incredibly nice and welcoming, and I’ve been having a lovely time getting to know them – just…it’s extremely different than it was making friends the last time I was really thrown out of my element into a place where I knew nobody at all (which would be college, where everyone is on the same nervous playing field and bonding occurs through the sharing of crazy experiences rather than…coffee).
I mean, you should see me in the children’s library at StoryTime Hour: I literally sit in the corner helping Indy not destroy things and making moony eyes at the trio of Potentially Kindred Spirit Moms who seem like they’re having a grand old time hanging out in the Maurice Sendak section, and who are definitely headed somewhere super-fun for lunch afterwards with their adorably attired children. I haven’t worked up the nerve to say hello yet. It’s very pathetic.
A book I’m reading, Dan Gets A Minivan (which is HYSTERICAL and highly recommended, by the way) deals with this sort of wooing-of-other-couples that adult marrieds (especially those with children) do on occasion, wherein you basically meet someone with whom you’re marginally connected (whether through a friend-of-a-friend, or through the simple fact of geographical proximity), and then go on a “date” to try to figure out if you have anything in common other than the fact that you have recently procreated.
When it comes to making new friends, I’m anxious enough without the addition of all the “mom” stuff. By “mom” stuff, I mean this: the first time two moms hang out there’s this awkward dance: you talk about your children (because really, at this point having children is the one thing you know you have in common), but also want to seem “cool” and not talk constantly about your children, but worry that if you don’t talk constantly about your children your tablemate will report back to the cotillion of local mothers that you are Not An Attentive Parent, and also worry that you’re saying things about children that will offend the other mom (new-mom topics – by which I mean the care and feeding of a child – are a potential minefield of opportunities to say something in total opposition to a person’s basic value system), but also want to show that you’re not offended by anything she might say so you get all self-deprecating and weird…and then worry that boom, there you go: now she’s offended and/or completely alienated by your self-deprecation and general weirdness.
Anyway, that part has been a little tough.
But if my internal GPS is any indicator, progress is being made. Slowly. But steadily.
