Today I took my first baby steps into becoming a functioning member of society once more. I decided to join a book club and last night was the first meeting.
I’m not really one for throwing myself into social situations, believe it or not, I’m actually quite shy and don’t like being around large groups of strangers. So, I spent most of the day trying to justify to myself why it was perfectly okay for me not to go to the meeting but in the end, I screwed up my courage and went for it. I drove to town and got there around 40 minutes early so I nipped into Paperchase to get a birthday card for my Dad, then headed to the bar where the meeting was going to be held. I ordered a coffee and asked the bar staff where the book group normally sat. The bar staff had no idea what I was talking about so I started worrying, of course. I took a seat with my coffee and decided to wait for a little while to see if anyone appeared. A man came over, addressed me by name and asked if I was here for the book group. Twenty minutes later, there I was sat at a table with 20 other people, all discussing the book. The people in the group were all around about my age, give or take a decade each way, and very friendly. I wonder if they could sense I was nervous as they asked a few questions about me and tried to get me included in the conversation. I had a really good time and I’m glad that I went.
Today is technically the last day of my holidays. I don’t go back to work until Monday but today is my last day off. It’s been good having a few days to myself, I’ve managed to get some of the ironing done and a bit of tidying up here and there. I’m fully on top of the washing at least. I’ve packed up the bits and bobs I have which I want to put into my library room once we get the bookshelves sorted out. I’m going to get a bunch of bookcases and a desk, I’ve already decided to commandeer one of the downstairs spare rooms for the purpose. We’ll still have two spare rooms which I’ll get beds for so people have somewhere to sleep when they stay over. Hubby has decided to start building a PC from scratch so he received his case yesterday. I’m hoping we’ll have the library mostly done by the time he’s finished building his computer. It’ll mean I’ll have my computer, which he’s been using as his main editing machine, back and it’ll have a home on my own desk. It’ll also mean I can hand over the room we call the ‘study’ where Hubby does his editing and his DVD collection lives, my books will be permanently moved and Hubby will have room for his ever-expanding DVDs. We’ll get the study sorted out, we plan on getting some drawer inserts for the existing units we have so Hubby can get his camera equipment all sorted out.