Musings on Friendships

This is going to be a long middle of the night post since I can't sleep. The rain is pouring outside and I'm downstairs checking email in the middle of the night & reading friends' blogs and wishing I had something more exciting to write about. It's the season when X-mas cards are pouring in and slowly making their way out of my house. We are sending 70 of them this year, down from 85 last year. I trimmed the list because there are some people I haven't heard from in awhile and some whose addresses I don't have. If we get a card from them in the next few days, then we'll write back. No newsletter this year, we had a quiet year of good fun but in small nice ways, nothing spectacular to announce. No new baby, new dog, new condo, new job. Same as ever but not interesting to write home about.

Anyway, sadly of these 70 people, a whole bunch are out of town and even of the semi-local ones, some friends have moved to the 'burbs or otherwise deserted LA. This year we got invited to exactly 3 holiday parties, and one was my office one, and one hasn't happened yet. (Thank you, R & V, we had a great time!) It's been fun reading about other people's adventures on their blogs and in their holiday cards, but I feel left out that I'm not having more of a social life.

I guess at this point in my life and family status and whatnot, I'm lucky to have some good friends I can call at the last minute and just have dinner with (thanks, H & B!) and it's nice to see my parents as much as I have, but I do miss parties and get-togethers and it's especially hard to hear about them on the outside looking in. Maybe I need new friends with similar geography & family demographics. In other words, people who will invite us over with Lauren and we won't have to drive for an hour to get there. It's really hard to make new friends though, and I wish I could just adapt my old ones and say "have kids or just get used to ours! Don't forget about me, I still exist! I'm not going to stay awake until 2 a.m. doing shots with you* but I do still have a phone! Call me!"

*This makes it seem like I used to have this wild partying lifestyle which is a bit misleading. (Yeah, me and Paris and Lindsay out clubbing!) But at least I did get out! And go to bed later than 11:00 p.m.! And talk about adult things with adults!...Ah, the days!