Who says that!?

My husband and I just bought a house. We plan to be here for a long ass time, and I got past my commitment anxiety (a recurring theme) and decided I want to really put down roots in this community. So I started looking for opportunities to meet the neighbors. 

I prayed for some extra grandparents for my kids. My in-laws are wonderful, but my parents recently moved far away. Both of our next-door neighbors are grandmas, check!  And a sweet friend who is old enough to be my mom is just around the corner.

I also have been praying/ wishing/ hoping for friends for my husband and me. We both have friends, but we don't have many friends in common, especially couples. Sometimes I have to hunt a little to find my tribe. But finding another couple that we can hang out with comfortably, in which all four of us enjoy one another's company, without any sexual tension.... that couple is a needle in a haystack. Especially for a couple of weirdos like us--I'm very outgoing but I get bored easily with small talk, and my husband prefers the company of his FE motors to the company of human beings.

When we were looking at this house, I spotted my husband's new best friend (according to me)--behind the wheel of a late 70's Ford pickup in the driveway across the street. After we bought the house, the guy came over to help my husband move a motor in, and they got shop talking. His wife walked over to say hi. She is beautiful, red-headed, with a little girl about a year younger than ours. She smiles a lot.

Well, as an ambitiously friendly neighbor, a week later I washed a jacket that my 2-year-old had outgrown, and took it across the street. I was very excited to have somewhere to send my adorable little girl's adorable hand-me-downs. And I am trying to hold back my imagination, but I imagine this being the beginning of a beautiful friendship. 

But what do I do? I give her the jacket saying it's the first of many, if she wants. She thanks me and says "That's so sweet!" And then I run my mouth. "I don't know if you already have plenty, or if you also like to shop, but I love to buy girls' clothes. I have really nice hand-me-downs." It comes out in a tone like I'm bragging. She just smiled and thanked me again.

As soon as I got home, I said to myself, you idiot! Who says that!? "I have really nice hand-me-downs." What an obnoxious thing to say.  Then I remind myself not to over-identify (more on that another time) with the emotion of the moment and just forget about it. (Clearly I didn't, because here I am writing about it.)

You may also be wondering, yeah, who talks like that? Well, you'll sympathize a little more when I tell you, most of my life I have been on the receiving end of hand-me-downs, and they are often shitty. I am very pleased to be able to give very nice hand-me-downs, that do not have stains, holes, or worn out elastic.  I also wanted to reassure my potential friend that I would not be giving her junk like a lot of people do.

I wonder if she remembers what I said, or what kind of impression I made. Hopefully she has not thought about it nearly as much as I have. I wonder how we could get to be friends. But I should probably play it cool. I hate it when I try too hard.

I Don't Know

I've often thought I should start a new blog page titled What I Really Think. It would have many of the musings and thoughts that I write on Facebook and then quickly delete, worrying about what people will think and who I might offend.

What I Really Think would have my true opinions about all kinds of things--religion, politics, relationships, parenting... Usually I have thought it over from several angles, and usually people say I have an interesting perspective. What I Really Think would be cathartic, but I would probably alienate most of my friends sooner or later.

I have a dozen drafts on different topics, in the spirit of What I Really Think, but they always fall apart before I finish. I start to see the holes or the unanswered questions and abandon it before writing the conclusion.  Perhaps it's my laziness not to follow my logic through; perhaps I'm pretty terrible at logic and my opinions are crap. Or maybe it's my reluctance to commit to an opinion--I blame that on my Pacific Northwest culture. Open-minded and open-ended to a fault.

Well who cares. No one wants my judgments, do they? Occasionally people ask what I think, but more often they say, "That's a good question." Today it struck me--good questions are far more interesting than concrete answers anyway. Again, I'll credit Oregon culture, but isn't it more valuable to turn something over in your mind often, to continually examine, than to speed toward some conclusion?

So I'm going to start writing more honestly. Maybe if I don't have some polished gem of truth to write about, I can at least write about my process and my questions... and my little tiny speck of an ordinary life that is a whole world to me.