Friday, February 29, 2008

Walking away....now.


Wave Goodbye
Originally uploaded by pattycakemelting
I just made the decision to end a relationship with a working-moms social-networking group on meetup.com. It was bittersweet because I actually fought pretty hard to get into the group. They advertised themselves as being pretty exclusive, so I had to write a bio, send several emails, and pay a small fee to join.

After having been to a handful of their gatherings, I found that I really didn't connect with them; maybe they already had well-established relationships between each other, I don't know. Honestly, it's hard to connect when you have to keep wrenching your kids out from underneath stacks of teetering chairs where they're playing hide&go-seek. And the dog-thing, too. Everybody had dogs in their houses or wanted to bring dogs along; I'm allergic and Rosie is phobic, so that just was a bad match. (I do heart Hank & Tina though!! Or, actually, what I heart the most is that the Os are very considerate of my/Rosie's quirks and don't insist that we just need to get over it because their dog is "friendly.")

The other thing that killed it was the distances. DC is sprawling, and Fairfax County is the sprawling-est. All the locations were within FxCo, but many took over an hour to get to, and I'm just not doing that on a weekend, unless it's GUARANTEED fun. With peeps that I love.

That makes a big difference; I do love my friends and adore hanging out with them. I will focus on my pals that are nearer and dearer to my heart. While extending my network is not a terrible idea in theory, it was disappointing. They came around with a request to renew the fee, and it was just not worth it.

Goodbye to you, meetup.com ladies, have fun.

3 comments:

  1. You'd think that just being mothers in the same situation would allow for proper bonding, but its just never that simple, right? I don't belong to any mothers groups. I have tried, but I just don't know very many moms who I have enough in common with outside of motherhood to make relationship last.

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  2. What's that line about not wanting to belong to any club that would have me as a member? It would have to be a really cool club for me to get in on it, like barbecuers who do creative anachronism, or some kind of target shooting/karaoke club.

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  3. Dogs--sounds like Naperville AKA little perfectville. UGH! Is this working Mom's or working dog owners? Definitely not worth the travel time. You have lots of friends--who needs it! I think it was Groucho Marx who said the line about not wanting to be a member... Abe Lincoln -- said something about not pleasing all of the people all of the time. Just like little perfectville, I am sure there were some worthwhile moms there.

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