The disappointing weekend

Well, I tried. This past week, after much thinking, I decided it was time to try even harder at making friends in Milwaukee. Part of me doesn't see why I should bother, since I am getting out of here as fast as possible next spring/summer. In the meantime, however, it's just me, Paul, and Rick. Just like the last 3 years. Yay. It gets really lonely thinking that I only have 2 friends in Milwaukee, and they both moved here from Michigan with me. I especially want a female friend. I find myself telling Paul about fashion stuff or craft things, and I know he doesn't care. He tries, but sometimes it would really be nice to go shopping at Joann's fabric store with a female instead of having Paul wait in the car or stand next to me in the store awkwardly. It's impossible to meet anyone at work. I am an adjunct professor: I go in, teach in a random classroom, and go home. I don't have an office. I don't even know where the history department is. I don't know what other teachers look like. I only know my boss, and that doesn't count.

Anyway, this week I tried to think of some places where I could meet some new friends. I thought about what I liked, and came up with gardening. However, apparently Milwaukee isn't as passionate about gardening and herbs as me. (Another reason I cannot WAIT til we move to South Carolina: they LOVE herbs down there). I tried finding groups to join in the Milwaukee area that center on gardening somehow. Maybe I'm not good with google, but all I found was one older ladies' gardening group that meets in Whitefish Bay. According to their website, they are most likely rich ladies that stay at home in their pretty mansions and have a rather exclusive gardening club to deal with after their charity meetings. Or whatever it is rich ladies do. Anyway, it was clear from their website that you can't just come to a meeting. You need to be invited. So scratch out that idea. Then, I found a place called Sweet Water Organics. It is an aquaponics urban farm and they needed volunteers. So I decided that on Friday, I would go to their meeting and volunteer and meet like-minded gardeners. Yay! Then, Paul found an ad on Craigslist about a free Gardening Seed Exchange thing on Saturday. According to the ad, everyone with extra seeds or bulbs or divided plants can come to this exchange and trade seeds/etc. with each other. The only rule was that all trading had to be free. I was super excited. I was determined to use this opportunity to meet fellow-gardeners and maybe give blog information out to them or something (I have a gardening blog). In addition, Paul and I decided to just go to this particular church (that has a terrible website) and hope that there would be a young adults/couples sunday-school type thing. So there it was. THREE days to try to meet new people. How could anything go wrong?

Well, actually, it all went wrong:

Friday:
*I went to the orientation. I went inside the building's store, expecting to find fresh produce that would make me smile. I even brought a grocery list so that I could support them and get fresh veggies. Imagine my disappointment when I walked into an empty-ish room with a bunch of t-shirts and 1 grocery bag full of tomatoes and 1 plastic container of sprouts. How could this be a store for a farm? Where were the products? During the orientation, it became clear that they only really grow lettuce and sprouts, which they mainly sell to local restaurants. They needed volunteers to come in and cut lettuce and clean it and put it in packages or they needed carpenters to make more aquaponic frames. That was it. I did not feel passionate about being a lettuce factory worker. I wanted to join a group of people passionate about farming, NOT factory type work to make a profit! Blegh. So I left feeling rather sad. There weren't even many people in that building to try to make friends with! I counted three workers. All guys. So that attempt was a FAIL.

Saturday:
*I convinced Paul to take me to the Seed Exchange because it was in a part of town that makes me nervous. On the drive there, it started raining pretty hard. I didn't think anything of it, but when we got to the location, there was nothing there. A few abandoned stands. So apparently it was cancelled due to rain. How tragic. This one is probably not Milwaukee's fault but rather Mother Natures... So that attempt was a FAIL.

Sunday:
*We forced our shy-selves to go to the church. We got there a bit early, always great for the awkwardly shy couple. Right. We shyly walked up to the welcome desk where we were not talked to by anyone. We found the room number for a young adult/couples group. We shyly walked into the room. There was one lady in there. We awkwardly talked to the one lady for a few minutes and she suggested we sit at one of the tables. There were three tables. We decided rather boldly to sit at the same table as this lady. Others walked in the room and sat at the other tables. At the last minute, a visiting missionary couple sat next to us. So it was the lady, us, and two visiting people at our table. That was all. We never talked to the other table full of people who clearly knew each other. We did the lesson. We awkwardly got up and left. Blegh. So I can pretty much consider that attempt a FAIL as well. We decided we should try (desperately) to be optimistic and we are going to try that church group again next week. But we will arrive JUST in time or even a little late so it's not so bad (hopefully).

So, I tried to meet people all weekend long and nothing worked. It's really hard to keep trying when things like that happen. I think I will clear away the disappointment from this weekend now by watching football all day long with Paul and Rick. Just like old times. Yay.