Friday, October 01, 2010

Won't you be my neighbor?

The other day I did something uncharacterist , I invited a neighbor over for dinner.

I am very introverted and it sometimes takes a lot of mental prep to get out of my shell. I am used to be a homebody and being alone. I never had a large group of friends but a handful of close ones. And most of them live on the east coast and our lives sometimes make it hard to connect. It was (and still is) hard to make friends. I have a rough history of people who I considered friends turn and decide not to hang out with me anymore...Kids can be cruel. so that has left some scars and had made the saying "once bitten twice shy" more and more relevant as I got older.

When C moved in and we met, I said to myself (in my head) she seems nice and is someone who I would like to know. Then wedding planning and my intorversion (is that even a word?) took over. A few weeks ago, we had a condo meeting and she happened to sit next to us and we started making small talk when she mentioned that Tim Gunn was coming to Chicago and as I was about to mention that we should go, the meeting began. She had to dash as soon as it was over.

So I sent her an email asking if she wanted to go. She was onboard and started to work out the logistics only to realize that she was going to start a class that day and could not go. But we made tentative plans to get together.

So the other day, I pulled the trigger and asked her over to dinner. She accepted and we made plans. On Wedensday she came over with a cheese tray and a lovely bottle of wine. It was a bit awkward at first but, we soon warmed up and began to laugh and chat. I was so glad to have company since Hubs was travelling and it was nice to just get to know somebody.

She dropped me a note telling me how much fun she had and invited me over next week for drinks and a movie night.

The next part of my plan is to have her and her husband over to hang out with us I feel a game night coming on.

2 comments:

Non Sequitur Chica said...

That's great! I'm glad that you had fun with your neighbor as it's nice to be able to walk somewhere with a bottle of wine as opposed to having to drive to see friends! Maybe this good experience will allow you to break out of your shell a bit more?

kilax said...

That is so cool that you are getting to know your neighbor! We were really close with a couple in our neighborhood (who moved :( ) and we loved spending time with them.

It can be hard to reach out to meet new people. Friendship is A LOT of work.