Grandma's bake sale for Jesus? No. Just...no.

Question: How difficult is finding an organization to join that combines socialization and volunteerism?

Answer: Easy-peasy.

Question: How about an organization that's not bible-centric, doesn't revolve around bake sales/penny carnivals and appeals to anyone under 80?

Answer: Yeah. Good luck with that.

I'm at a crossroad right now. I have 2 jobs which both require me to interact with people all day...co-workers, students, sales reps and clients. A big part of my job is to be friendly, chatty and personable, all of which I enjoy doing (most of the time) but by the end of the day, I'm all chatted and friendly-ed out and am quite happy to go home and not interact with humanity (with the exception of my son)...I ignore my cel phone, make sure my IM is on stealth mode and find myself less than inclined to get my ass out the door and socialize with the couple of close friends I have, let alone make an attempt to go out and meet new people. I used to be social. I used to enjoy going out in public, getting involved and actually doing shit in a group. I'm not sure at what point enjoying time alone turned into complete social apathy, but it did and it's far beyond time I actually did something about it.

So last night I decided to quit procrastinating (which in itself is amazing because I'm a procrastination master, who lives by the code "Fuck it. If it doesn't kill me, cause me bodily injury or grevious grief, I'm putting it off until later. Way later") and find some kind of group to join, which would force me to give up this self-inflicted hermitude and get out and meet some new people while assuaging some of the guilt from my present lack of doing anything to help out in my community.

Much easier said than done.

I have a relation who is/was a member of the Masonic Lodge, so I thought I'd check out the female arm of that organization, the Eastern Star. Their website was pretty vague about what they actually do, besides charity work and meetings that sound like a cross between a Wiccan coven ritual, church service and city council meeting, so I called the masonic relative to ask about it. His reply: "That is NOT for you...all the women that belong to Eastern Star have one foot in the grave. It's full of really old women"

Nope. Not happening.

I reconsidered joining my son's school PAC. But just for as long as it took me to remember the 5 years on his elementary school PAC, where I got in way over my head by the 4th year and ended up with 4 committee positions at once including Chairperson which meant I was living and breathing fundraisers, milk programs, government grants and attempts to get more parents to volunteer so 90% of the hard work would stop falling on the same 6 people. After that hellish year I swore I would never go to another PAC meeting again and would not feel guilty about it at all because already I put in my time, plus more. So scratch the school stuff. Besides, that was all work and next-to-zero socializing...maybe if we had made the meetings BYO wine, we would have had more fun. And a better turnout.

I looked for other social-type clubs that do some community service, but I have yet to find one that doesn't involve Jesus, crafting/baking/sewing (none of which I really enjoy, unless the crafting involves tampons, the baking involves cake soaked in liquor and the sewing doesn't involve me at all because I fucking hate sewing) or being a grandma.

Where the hell are the clubs for middle-aged single divorced mothers of teenagers, who enjoy occasional recreational drinking, complaining and making sarcastic fun of pretty much everything, and just enough community service type-shit so we feel all virtuous and not guilty about the wine-fueled rant-and-hysterical laughing sessions?? Besides blogging, that is.

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