Steve believes the world is full of friends. He's always taking rental agents cake and making friends with his mechanic and offering his canning recipes to the person ringing him up at the grocery store. As long as you're not a dentist or a sports star, Steve will be your friend. (And he'll even make exceptions for dentists.)
I'm far more reserved. Once in college, I was standing outside my classroom with my friend Amy while she chatted with someone from our class. I was just waiting for Amy, not participating in the conversation, but not in a hurry to go or opposed to the conversation. A few minutes in, the guy talking to Amy turned to me and said, You just really don't like me, do you? Huh. Shyness is sometimes misinterpreted. It doesn't usually matter, because I make friends, just more slowly than the Steves of the world.
Since getting married, I find making friends quite tricky, though. I'm not sure what to do with other married people's kids and husbands. There's not enough room in our apartment to invite a friend AND her three kids over. And I don't have as much time to invest in other people as I did pre-baby and pre-spouse.
My favorite solution to this problem is for all my existing friends to move to town, BUT since they're surprisingly resistant to this plan (what? you don't want to spend 2 years getting a visa to move to a different country so you can pay $5/lb for butter?), I'm very happy that I was ushered into Girls' Night almost as soon as we moved here.
Girls' Night is the genius creation of my friend J. (I have a Canadian friend!) It's a group of women who get together about once a month for a female (and very small baby)-only evening. Sometimes we make smoothies at someone's house or we go out for ice cream or we hold a baby shower. Last week we watched the Relief Society broadcast and made nachos. I keep recommending this style of girls' night to my single friends who are moving to new areas, because it's so much easier than organizing dinners or parties or making friends in other ways.
Girls' Night How-To
- Set up a Facebook group.
- Invite people you like to join. There are about 13 people in our group, but we usually only have 4-6 attend at any time. We range in age from 22-50ish and we all have different marital/family statuses.
- Approximately whenever you feel like it, post something like, Hey, I need a girls' night. I'm thinking games and dessert next week. What night works for everyone?
- Anyone who's interested comments and helps figure out a time, location, and food plan.
- The end. Easy social life achieved.
6 comments:
Here we have Rook clubs. The Lynndyl/Leamington area alone has 4 Rook clubs. Each club needs 12 people. Once a year you host. The other 11 months you go to someone else's house. The only way an opening comes up is if someone moves or dies, or you can start your own club. Some people think it is about playing cards--not true. It is about a girl's night out. Funny story: At a rook club full of octegenarians (in a neighboring town), one of the members died, but the rest of them kept on playing with a "dummy" hand, because the person wasn't going to come alive again, so they may as well finish their hand until the mortician showed up. The End of my ramblings.
I feel famous, getting a mention on your blog.
I also enjoy girls' night out, but sometimes the talk tends to be a bit potty training/childbirthingish for me. The last six months Jaren and I have started something new--we meet with two or three other couples every month for a couples night. IT IS SO FUN. I had no idea how much fun it would be. We mostly meet at someone's house (kid-free) for dinner and games and talking, but we've gone out for dinner or dessert as well. Once we went to a Rockies' game, and I believe Steve and I have the same feelings about that venue. It was still fun. SO FUN.
Try it. IT IS SO FUN. Did I mention that?
PS Guess what else is so fun? Having a live-in babysitter who works for peanuts. (Not literally. Our house is a peanut-free zone. But she babysits for a Redbox movie and the sheer pleasure of being in charge.)
Also, you should know that all my children like to ooh and ahh at Howard's pictures. We love him. If you moved next to me, Gracie would babysit him, too. AND you could join our couples group. AND I seldom pay more than $1.50/lb for butter. BOOM.
I need friends. You have maybe inspired me.
Moo--My grandma used to be big into the world of bridge. I assume it's a similar scene, although possibly they stop play for a death at the table.
Amy--See my big problem at the moment is that The Bairn still frequently wakes up at night and then SCREAMS if I'm not there. We left him with my parents (for less than an hour!) after putting him to bed, and everyone was miserable when we got home, so that's still tricky. A live-in babysitter would certainly help with that.
I'd be all on board with living near you and having babysitting and cheap butter, but SOMEBODY insists on having a job and stuff. Boo.
Eliana--I need MORE friends, but this is a good start. It takes all of the rejection and 98% of the work out of the process.
This sounds like a fabulous idea. Although I think I will need to increase my number of Facebook VA friends to really make it work.
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