In one of my last posts,  I talked about the changes that my family and I had been going through. All good but there had been many changes in a short period. I also spoke about how hard it is to meet people when you don’t have kids to draw you to events. Fortunately, I was given the suggestion by a few people to join a local “newcomers club”.

I did it! I looked on line and found a local club and joined. This may not be the case everywhere but this club is very active and has many different activities that you can join. I have gone to several coffees and two book club meetings so far. It has been great. Everyone knows what it is like to be new and is very helpful. There are people who have been members for 15 years! The group obviously has been a great friendship builder for people. Interestingly, the group is not just for newcomers. They also welcome women who have retired and perhaps had not made local friendships while they were working.

One of the other changes – our new grandson. I am over the moon about him.

I also have been going to the local library book club. I enjoy that book club. I think it is a hoot. Okay, the books have been good but the meetings are so entertaining because of the participants. The first month I attended, we had read The Marriage of Opposites by Alice Hoffman. One of the themes of the book was about the main character not always going along with society’s norms. During this part of the discussion, one of the women (completely out of the blue) stated that Princess Diana was murdered by the British Government because they were not going to let her marry a man of the Muslim faith. Seriously, you could have knocked me over with a feather. I am sure I sat with my mouth open catching flies. Another part of the book was about slavery. During part of the discussion on that it was brought to light that one should never buy shrimp from Aldi. I guess it has something to do with slavery. (Please, you don’t have to write and tell me about this issue. I promise I would never buy shrimp from Aldi.)  Let’s just go with the discussions at the library book club are interesting and entertaining.

Also, I have read books for both book clubs that I might not have read and I will be telling you about them in upcoming weeks.

So things are going well in our “new life.”

We did recently take a vacation. If you have read this blog before, you may remember that I rank vacations by how many books I read. It is a good vacation – in nine days I read 6 books. A little slower than usual but I had two book club books to read and they were not my usual popcorn books. So I have plenty of books to tell you about in the next few weeks.

Thanks to those who suggested joining the local newcomers club. It was so helpful!