Book Club

Tonight I attended my first book club meeting. A bunch of women from the ward (well and a few who aren't in the ward) started the book club I think about 2 years ago, but I was just invited to join this year. I'm trying to get out more and make more friends and mostly just have a night away from the kids now and then so I said I'd join.

They only meet every other month and I didn't go in January because I didn't even make it though the first chapter of the book. So this was my first time going.

For some reason that I don't fully understand I already feel a little out of place with most of these women. Probably because I have been in the ward for going on 5 years now and most of them still think I'm shy. Which really means they just don't know me at all.

So there was this other Nicole chick there whom I had never met before and she was one of the more outspoken ones, but in a good way. Like she's the type that you want to hate because she appears to be so perfect (funny, involved, talented, etc.) but she's just so charming and funny that it's impossible to hate her. So suddenly I found myself wanting to impress her, and at the same time prove to these other women whom I did know that I was not shy and that I was funny and fun to be around. I guess I was trying to make them like me. I don't know. I mean they must like me even just a little since they invited me to be in their book club. But anyway. So I find myself carefully calculating what I'm going to say to make sure it's funny and has just the right comedic timing and I also start becoming way more emphatic with my arm gestures then I normally am just to make sure I'm noticed. At one point I even tipped over my glass. Thank goodness it was empty.

And then I came home and wondered why I acted that way. I am not in Jr. High and I don't need these women's approval to feel good about myself. I don't even want to be like most of them. I mean I am not your cookie cutter Relief Society President type and I never will be. Don't want to be. So why was I trying to hard to impress them? I mostly just feel foolish now.

By the way, the book we read was Inside my Heart by Robin McGraw (Dr. Phil's wife) and it was a horrible book! The ONLY reason anybody published her book was because she is Dr. Phil's wife. And I had a lot of really good, opinionated things I was going to say about the book. And i was only one of 2 people there tonight who had actually read the book all the way through. So we literally talked about the book for 5 minutes and then spent the next 3 hours talking about kids and school and maturation programs at school (I'm one of the younger ones there with young kids so the others all have 11 and 12 year old kids.) and dentists (yes I related my dentist story) and just all sorts of other crazy stupid things that had nothing to do with the book at all.

So I have concluded it's not really a book club at all, but actually a club of burned out stay at home moms who just need to get away from their kids once in a while. I think we should actually start calling it that. Kind of flows off the tongue, don't you think?