It's Official: Friends Wanted

While the bloom is not quite off the rose in terms of me loving our new house, I have, nearly four weeks in, realized that I cannot survive unless I make friends. 

The friends I left behind in Chicago and those from my home town have assured me that I will have no trouble.  But there's a key difference between now and when I met them. Now, I work from home and I'm not in school. 

Nearly all of the friends I made in Chicago were people I met at work. And even when I left to work from home, they still invited me to happy hours, birthday parties and any other excuse to raise a glass. 

So far, we've only been out to dinner with one other couple--the Dr.'s boss and his wife. (Yeah work!). But surely I can't rely on them for all my socializing, although I did find them to be refreshingly irreverent academic types that I would love to get to know better. 

I suppose I'm not helping my cause by sitting at the computer. I've heard this advice repeated several times so far: "Get involved in the community." But, how exactly does one "get involved" in the community? I suppose I could volunteer for something. Join a church. Put an ad in the paper. How would it read? 

"MWF seeks S or M F for friendship, no really just friendship." 

I did go to the gym the other night. It's the facility the college students use. I didn't feel too out of shape to be there, which was nice. Most people were wearing T-shirts and sweatpants rather than the brightly colored spandex that graces many a tooshie in a city gym. I did feel a little old though. And everyone else seemed to know one another. 

I'm not a particularly shy person, but this is more difficult than I expected. Yesterday, the woman who helped us open our new bank accounts in town called, probably because she noticed I hadn't even bothered to activate my debit card yet, and I almost invited her out to lunch. In the end, I decided against it, lest I come across as creepy. 

My mom is coming to visit this weekend, and I'm so excited to see her. But it probably won't help in my quest to "get involved." However, she may be game for the square dance held at the barn across the road every Saturday. Then I'll find myself in a new dilemma: What does one wear to a square dance?