how about a little cheese with my whine?

Any New Englander knows, you've got about 4 minutes from the time the first leaf falls until the time the dead of winter has locked you up and is laughing at your pasty pouty face.  Say what you will about the beautiful foliage, cozy sweaters and apple picking.  I know what it means.  It means I will soon be stuck inside with two. . .small. . .children.

just me, you and mall pizza, mom.
that's it for fun in the winter.

So, I have to get out of here.  As much as I can until then.  And I have no idea where to go. 

The last time I lived here I was 18.  You can imagine that the places I frequented are not what I'm searching for now.  Then, I wanted to take my parents car and stay as far away as I could for as long as they'd let me.  Now, I want to take my car (okay, my minivan, are you happy?) as far as I can for as long as they'll let me. 

And here's what it comes down to: I have no friends.  Ouch.  There it is in black and white.  I mean, sure. . .I have friends.  I have lots of friends (repeated for my own self assurance). 

But I don't have any friends in a boat that looks like mine around here.  A boat where this imaginary friend and I could watch our children play together while we drink wine and talk about the rising price of coffee.  You know, a friend who also understands that because wine contains fruit, it's appropriate at any time of the day.

And I'm not really sure how to find a friend like this, either.

There's the mom clubs or the informal groups of moms that travel in packs like wolves.  ::sigh::  Never had much luck with those.  And if you've forgotten, refresh your memory here.  Suppose I could try again.  I've reached out to the local mom's club and they promised they'd send me something.  That was two weeks ago.  They must have recognized my name and decided to lose my address. . .


"let's say we'll send it, but we won't send her
any mom club info.
 Gwar har har!"

There's the library, I suppose.  But even in my old itty bitty town there were so many more events and activities for little ones. This library just has books.  Imagine that!  Books.  Hmph.

Back to square one.  How do you do that, really?  You know. . .make friends when you're a grown up with other grown ups?  Do you just walk your babies around town and try to make eye contact with any other moms walking babies that you run into?  Try to make a quick 2.5 second decision if they look crazy or if you want to say 'Hello. Be my friend.  I'm not crazy, either.'?



Trust me.  Around here you'd get much more crazy.

Lots of moms make friends on the interweb.  I'm terrible at that, too.  I'm on twitter and facebook all the time.  Even signed up for websites like the Bump. ::shudder::  It's still weird.  You write a little something and wait for a response.  I usually don't get one. 

It's sort of like I know you all are talking and you're already friends but I'm just going to be over here eavesdropping and every now and then I'll interject with something that I've spent way too long thinking about and really hope you think is funny and witty and then wait for you respond.  A'cause I wanna be your friend.  And I don't even know you.  And you're probably a Twitter bot, anyway. 

You can see how that doesn't really work for me.

I've heard of moms that carry business cards.  How about that?  With your name, and kids names and contact info.  Sort of a . . .call me for a playdate. . .on a card.  Sounds sort of cool.  If it worked that way.   With my luck I'd end up having to change my name and go into witness protection.  Again, it's that kind of town.

What do you do to meet people? Do you even have that problem?  Or is this just like the time I went up to the cool girl in 1st grade and told her she could have my lunchbox if she'd be my best friend?  True story.  Do lunchboxes still work?  I'm not beneath offering you a lunchbox. . .

I'm just finding it pretty tough to get out and meet people.  Not that I didn't find that tough before, but I finally quit whining and started to get involved in the community and met some great people.  Not sure what was different then and not different now.  Maybe it's that this is my hometown.  And I'm not a kid anymore.  And those friends that I had when I was here last have grown up, too.  Maybe that's why it's intimidating.

Today, in the grocery store, I saw a girl that I went to school with.  She was just the coolest thing when I was a brand-new Freshman.  She was a Senior.  She never talked to me.  But I remembered her.  And today, she was screaming at three, very disruptive children; herself a hot mess, clearly just out to do the groceries, hoping not to see anyone she knew and leave as little a path of destruction in her wake as she could.  And even then, I turned around and went down a different aisle.

And I was even wearing mascara.  Which, any of you that know me knows. . .makes me invincible.

I'm just not there yet.  I'm not ready to do that whole "oh hey enter name here, so nice to see you." Yet, I'm willing to scour the internet for mommy friends or join a group of moms that get together for the sake of saying they did something that day.

So I packed up the kids and we went for a nice, long walk.   Here are some pictures from a little walking path in town:



you know, now that I'm really looking at this,
it's pretty weird that they painted a yellow line down
the middle of a walking path.



Cole is "helping"

And, as I seem to be constantly repeating lately, I'm so thankful that I have family around here.  That has been making everything much easier.  We enjoyed a day picking apples this week, complete with a hayride in a "skracktor!"



beautiful little family farmhouse



not interested in taking pictures with mom, at all.



clearly not pleased when our hayride tour guide
stopped to tell a story


And this isn't one of those many times where I forget to take pictures of the 2nd child;  Matilda was with my sister most of our outing.   And Cole runs fast.

At the end of the day I know that you are a loving, warm, comfy place for me to whine and that I'll smarten up and get out in the world and figure it out.  Just like I've done in a million times before.  I just like whine.  Just ask Bill.