The Universe Wants Me to be a Hermit

I did it. I took the plunge. After four and a half months of avoiding human contact, while wallowing in my loneliness, I joined a local mommy group. The reasons it took so long are many-fold:

1) With the exception of one year of Brownies when I was in fourth grade, I've never really been into joining clubs to make friends. I never pledged a sorority, avoided networking events, choosing instead to make my friends the old-fashioned way: individually, over time, based on conversations that led to the discovery of mutual interests.

2) The names of all these groups (Mommy & Me, Punky-Moms) annoy me. So how could the group not?

3) To further #2, I always imagined that these "playgroups" are filled with content, glowing, stay-at-home mothers who believe that life before children was a barren desert. They talk about themselves in the third person (usually calling themselves "mommy") and compare notes on the undeniable brilliance of the 3-month-old-world-leaders-to-be. They tssk disdainfully at anyone who actually wants to go back to work and bask in the joys of 4am feedings.

All this went squarely out the window after I realized that if I maintained the status quo, I would never meet anyone who was with child, not working and able to socialize. That, and a friend of mine met up with some of these Uber Moms and found them to be (gulp) normal.

So with trepidation in my heart, I signed up for a demo class at a local kiddie gym and prepared to blog about my fall to the dark side. But that was not to be.

This morning, Otter, who's always suffered from a "goopy" eye, woke up with it caked together and red. Though both Bree and I were pretty sure it was just irritation from having it constantly wiped, even the slightest chance that it was pink-eye needed to be addressed. The last thing I wanted was to be ostracized by my new mommy friends for infecting their little angels on our very first meeting.

The doctor was called, the symptoms described, an appointment promptly made. In theory, it all looked so promising: I'd go to the doctor's at 12:15, find out Otter wasn't a leper, and be able to make Tiny Tykes Gym (or whatever it was called) promptly at 1. In actuality, it went a little bit differently:

We got to the office at 12:10. We sat in the waiting room for 20 minutes before being asked by the nurse why we were there (huh?). We explained goopy eye, and sat for another 20 minutes before being told that the doctor filling in for our doctor was running behind (no shit) and would we mind seeing yet another doctor. We didn't mind. Other doctor spent a total of 7 minutes with us, assured us that goopy eye was fine, there was NO infection, and handed us a prescription for antibiotic drops (again, huh?). We left at 1:10, with no communicable eye diseases and too late for gym-ing with mommies.

Later today, I got my start date for work - which will make it impossible to join all the stay-at-home mommies for socializing. I can only draw one conclusion form the day's events:

The universe wants me to be a hermit.