My new, crunchier Meetup Group!

After waiting two days to be “approved” by the team leaders, I found out just now that I have been accepted into a new Meetup Group for stay-at-home-parents. Hooray! Actually, it’s mostly for SAHM’s, but, hey, at the end of the day, we’re all doing the same thing and mostly dealing with the same issues, so…I can hang with the ladies just fine.

Unlike my rocking once-a-month Meetup Group on the Westside (last month we went to the beach in Santa Monica and Greta and I had so much fun we ended up staying all damn day!) and the other, less-awesome group that dumped me, this new Meetup Group has over 375 members! Yikes! The coolest thing about them though is that they meet all the time in all different parts of the city, Glendale, Pasadena, Los Feliz, Burbank, the Westside, you name it, they’ve had a Meetup there!

The only thing I’m a little worried about is that the group is called “Crunchy Moms”, meaning, all-natural, organic-eating, cloth-diaper-using hippie moms and dads and little hippie kids. Now, coming from Santa Cruz, that is totally cool with me, I mean, I can get my hippie on with the best of them, but, I dunno how genuinely crunchy we are as parents.

Sure, Greta eats healthy stuff, we recycle practically everything we use, we try to buy safe, green toys when we can and hello, we drive a hybrid! So, that should count for something, right? Judging strictly from their pictures and profiles, the group seems to be populated with some very cool, totally non-judgmental chicas on all ends of the crunchy scale, so, hopefully, we’ll fit in just fine.

Oh, and did I mention that there are exactly two other SAHD’s in the group? Yep, two other dudes like me (one of them is even a writer!) in a group of 375 members. Hmmm…I’m either gonna love this group to death or they’re gonna burn me at the hemp log stake for letting Greta play with Barbies. Either way, it should be an adventure…

Dumped by my Meetup Group…

Had kind of a crappy day today — hooray, my every other day sucks philosophy proves true again! — you know the kind where you can’t figure out what to do with yourself? And your child won’t listen to any kind of reason or logic and/or do anything you want them to, and you kinda just wanna crawl back in bed and hit the RESTART button? Well, that was today in spades.

And then, about midway through the day, it hit me…today was Thursday. See, Thursdays used to be the day my newest Meetup Group of super-cool SAHD’s would get together at the park with the kids and vent and chill and laugh until the sun went down, or, you know, someone had to go home. It was always the highlight of my week, and then, something happened. One Dad said his kid’s nap schedule had changed so he couldn’t come in the afternoons anymore, another said he had to do the kid-exchange with his wife before heading to work and the hour just didn’t work for him anymore either. And so on and so on…

But as the SAHD’s dropped from the schedule like flies, I kept RSVP-ing and showing up with Greta at the park. Sometimes Meetup members showed up, sometimes they didn’t, but, it was the perfect time for us — for the record, 2:30PM is like, my favorite time to do anything…not too early, not too late. The perfect time! — so, we kept going. Until last week…

That’s when the captain (or the founder, or, whatever they’re called) of our Meetup Group sent me a snippy e-mail stating that he was thinking about disbanding the Thursday get-together because, and I quote: “As it is, that time is no longer convenient for me, or anyone else but you, for that matter.” Ouch! I was like, hold up now, did I just get dumped by my freaking Meetup Group?!

My wife says it’s no big deal and to just keep going to the park at the same time every Thursday, but, I dunno, man, part of me feels like that is the last place I wanna be on Thursdays at 2:30PM. Oy, I can see it now…me and Greta walking around the park in our faded, tattered wedding dresses, full-on Miss Havisham-style: “Where have all our lovely friends gone?” Nope. Not gonna do it.

Our captain did ask me if there were other times we could get together and I suggested a couple, but, the total radio silence on his end since that initial e-mail has pretty much confirmed things. I was stone-cold dumped by my Meetup Group, yo. Urgh, and how totally pathetic is that?

So, I reckon Thursday afternoons are just gonna keep on sucking for a while…or, you know, until I start my own “Fuck Your Meetup Group Meetup Group” on Thursdays at 2:30PM at the same park. Hmmm…come to think of it, that might be kinda fun!

Isolated…

Had lunch with a fellow SAHD today, one of my favorite dudes from my monthly Meetup.com Group, and he told me that he was moving back to where he and his wife came from at the end of the month. Grrr…suckage! I mean, great for him and his wife and kid, but, shitty for me and Greta and the rest of the Meetup guys who really dug him.

Anyway, he was talking about how hard life as a SAHD was and how it was even harder in a new city where he didn’t know anyone and then he used a word that I think perfectly encapsulates life as a SAHD. He said that sometimes, he just felt really “isolated”. Holy shit, are you kidding me, dude? That’s how I feel like, five times a day! And I’ve lived in this city for almost twenty years and know plenty of people.

So, I ran home and looked up the exact meaning of the word and, my favorite definition was: “having minimal contact or little in common with others”. Yep, that’s the word for it alright. There are good days and even great days, but, when the bad days hit back hard, we are all isolated on baby island, dude. And, I’m sorry, but when that happens, not even the cutest, most loving kid on earth can take the place of good old adult human contact.

And that’s why those of us who do have shit in common (namely the day-to-day upbringing of our children) gotta stick together and not be moving home and shit. Urgh, anyway, best of luck on your new adventures, amigo…we’ll miss ya.