Oh, I am such a grown-up. It's just a lost cause.

I attended a meeting last night to start the process of becoming a Girl Scout leader. Which means that I have a child old enough to be in Girl Scouts. Which means I'm willing to be involved in her life even at the cost of dealing with other people's children for long stretches of time. Which means I'm all cute and dedicated, Mommy-wise... but ugh, so grown-up.

The meeting was held in a church basement, in between AA meetings. It was pretty low-key and reasonably well-organized, and totally, completely, wildly overwhelming. The number of details that a Girl Scout leader is responsible for just amazed me - it's not just showing up and doing arts and crafts, it's finding a meeting place and writing a contract with the site to be able to meet there, filling out lots and lots of paperwork, being responsible for the troop's checking account, fundraising, planning... a lot of stuff. I'm sure it's manageable by normal people; they don't require that I have an MBA to apply, and I sure seem to be able to remember Girl Scout leaders in my past who were barely functional enough to tie their own shoes. Just a lot to try and take in all at once. Especially while still trying to reconcile myself as someone who attends a Godsmack concert one Thursday and a Girl Scout leaders' meeting the next.

It'll also be good for me, to meet new people and get Emily hooked up with new friends and generally be social once in a while. We're busy a lot with school and that sort of thing, but we don't do a lot with people outside work or school and I'd like to feel a little more a part of the community, since we've lived here a year already and the one friend I had made in town has moved an hour away. Just doesn't seem right, somehow. Other people know how to make friends and set up playdates, how come I can't?

I had forgotten, and was forcibly reminded last night, of a certain style of interaction that can happen when too much estrogen accrues in one space. We're all polite and smiley, and yet there's an edge of sarcasm and a tendency to overstate things, and an insistence on finding things funny when they weren't intended to be so. Just nerves and each person trying to find their own place within the group, I think. There are worse ways to spend an evening.