I‘m feeling anti-social lately, and I think it might have to do with holiday “nesting.” While there’s no baby on the way (I’m eating as if there were), I still feel a strong pull to home, to snuggle with my sugarplums, making snowflakes and melting our own chocolate for cocoa. Usually, I’d take a bottle of wine with friends over glitter and craft glue—though ideally, who am I kidding, they’d be two in the same. But, here I am searching for “experience gifts for kids” instead of pulling clothes for a night out.

Tonight I’ve RSVP’d “yes,” to a “New to Boca” dinner, but I feel like staying home instead. Or, like stealing away to the movies. I think socializing, especially when jeans are involved, can take too much effort. Putting on makeup, particularly now, feels like a chore. I’m almost always happy that I go, and I’ve grown quite fond of some of the women individually, so I’m not sure what my problem is.

Maybe it’s this particular group of women. I never feel like I truly connect on these girl nights, probably because there are too many of us, too many different conversations at the table, dipping in and out. Yet the other night, with a different set of six women in pajamas, we had the best chemistry, each of us confiding and growing closer. I guess the difference is that these “New to Boca” nights feel like gloss. There’s no real texture, and we’re in a setting that doesn’t cultivate intimacy. I’m learning that I value intimacy and wisdom over “fun.” And I’m a fun fcuking person. Though, I imagine everyone thinks they’re fun. Maybe I’m no fun at all. I really don’t give five shits.

What I do care about, though, are experiences, making new memories. And you don’t go about making new memories by staying home on the computer. You say yes, even if you’re tired and don’t feel like getting dressed. You say yes because anything can happen. It’s why this holiday season, most of all, I want to give our children gifts of experience, for them to unwrap a box full of pirate costumes, with a wooden plank inviting them to a special Family Pirate Picnic at Pirate’s Cove Park (just a public park near our home with a pirate ship playground). It costs nothing but it means everything. I’m on the hunt for more treasures, for under the tree and otherwise.