playdate

Today, I really missed my mom friends. We moved to a new state last spring, and I haven't made a real effort to find my community here. I need to though, because today at the Children's Museum, I felt like such a loner. I'm not - I'm friendly and easy to get along with, but It's hard for me to make the first effort. But there were moms there in bunches, and I overheard one of the mom's suggest to the others that they go to her house and the kids could string popcorn, and I just kind of wanted to cry. Or invite myself along, with my wonderful, lovely son in tow, to play with their kids and I'd pick up some white wine on the way.....
I'm so tired today, which is having a huge impact on my mood. For some reason, two nights ago, I woke up at 2:30 a.m. and could not go back to sleep. It didn't affect me much yesterday, but today I felt like I was lugging around a bunch of bowling balls. I was slow and distracted, and emotional. Not bitchy emotional (a rare blessing), but I just felt things really deeply today. As opposed to all those other days, when I'm just a hard as nails, a tough customer, etc....
I've thought about putting an ad in Craigs list or something. "Friends wanted for liberal, middle-aged parents and lovely, bright six year old. We like bluegrass and good food and we play well with others." But then I think it sounds too much like dating, which I was never any good at, and with the whole family involved it would just be too complicated. So I guess we'll have to go about this the old fashioned way. We'll just have to, um, find our people. I know it takes time - good friends are so rare, it should take time. But I'm just so out of practice at making new ones. Before Joe-Henry, I had the theater, and you were all kind of thrown together for a short while, and some of them stuck, and some of them didn't, and the ones that stuck you just hung onto forever. But now that I don't have that defining me, it's so much more open ended and awkward.
I watched my son play in this little theater at the museum, and he didn't interact with the other kids much. And I had imaginary conversations with other moms, but nothing out loud, and I thought, "well, sure, he learned that from me." God bless him, he had a blast ("I was the director mom!"), and it didn't bother him, but I know he must feel the lack of special friends. He has pals at school, but no one that comes home with him, no one he talks about a lot, no one he wants to invite over after school. In LA he had lots of those friends. Playdate pals, and true, deep friends. So did I.
I'll make new friends here, I know I will. The thing is, it feels strange to be making new friends when I have such great friends already. But they're not here, and I am. I need to model that behavior for my son, that "Hi, my name's Anne, what's yours?" behavior. I'm just not there yet.
But I can see it from here.