Gossip

I've never been good at being part of a "group." By that I mean that most of my friends are not friends with each other. Rather than getting together with "the gang," instead I hang out with friends individually. The last group I was part of was my office, and there were lots of growing pains there. Finally, I decided to retreat from the office folks and not try to be friends with them.

Two and a half months ago, we moved to a new neighborhood. We happen to be just down the street from good friends. Let's see if you can follow this story: My friend A recommended our babysitter, AM, to us. She watched Tyler maybe a month ago and she was great. However, she hung out with us about an hour after we came home and talked, talked, talked. Among the things she talked about were how she's working so many hours this summer and how her mom really wants her to work hard. She and her family live across the street from A, and A and the mom, L, are good friends.

Are you lost yet?

Well, I made a mistake and mentioned to A some of the things Am had said to us. I had never talked to L, but I certainly didn't get the best impression of her from what her daughter said. A must have shared what I said with L, because when L dropped A's baby daughter off with me today (we're sharing babysitting while A is on vacation), L told me Am has been ordered to apologize to us this afternoon. L and her husband are absolutely FURIOUS with their daughter for spreading all this stuff about their family . Apparently, we only got part of the story.

So here I am, feeling partly guilty for ratting on Am to my friend A, and partly mad at A for going to Am's mom L. What a tangled web we weave! This just makes me more sure than ever that while the idea of having a whole group of friends in your neighborhood is nice on the surface, I'm not sure if it's for me. My problem is that if I had tons of friends with young kids in our neighborhood, I'd always get jealous when they'd hang out together and not include me.