Why'd I Do That?

I joined Facebook about a year and a half or so ago. Not exactly first to jump on the bandwagon but it feels like I've been around the Facebook block a time or two. I like a couple of the games, and I admit I like the pseudo voyeurism that it provides. I get a sense of what friends and acquaintances are doing via status updates and it does provide a sense of (virtual) community that I wouldn't otherwise have. So yeah, I like it for the bridge it seems to provide between people I wouldn't ordinarily mix it up with.

When I first joined, of course I started looking for my peeps. Friends, bloggers (usually one and the same) and family. It's that last group that was a big fat goose egg. I couldn't find anyone, not even any of the umpteen cousins I have. Nor could I find any of Chris' family, so I thought I'd check periodically and/or ask people about it.

Fast forward my forgetful brain to earlier this week and I searched for my BIL and other inlaws and was surprised to find scads of them. I instantly started clicking Add as Friend, Add as Friend! I was high on the prospect of getting lots of family (who are scattered throughout California, Illinois and Virginia, to name a few) connected this way.

It only took until the next day to see that my requests had been confirmed by my BIL and SIL and others. But those two are the ones that really struck me because as soon as I saw their profiles, I knew I'd made a mistake and I couldn't stop asking the title of this post. Why'd I do that?!

Understandably - and let me repeat that... I totally get it - their profiles are crammed full of pictures, stories and comments about their nine month old daughter. My heart was instantly in my throat and yet I was glued to all of the gushing and sweetness until I could barely breathe and that was only my SIL's page. When I clicked on Chris' brother's profile, the tears came when I saw the photo he'd posted as his profile picture:




















I dunno if you can see without clicking to make the image larger, but the datestamp from the camera is New Year's Eve. And I thought about all the things my BIL could've been doing New Year's Eve. Or what I imagined he used to do on a typical New Year's Eve. The parties, dinners, evenings out with friends. And I wondered if it struck him on that cold last day of the year as he snapped this photo how he wouldn't have wanted to be anywhere else but staging a photo of his enormous shoes alongside his baby girl's tiny ones.

It was then that I wished I hadn't even looked for them, hadn't found them, hadn't added them. But of course it's too late for that without invoking some big story about why I may be ignoring them. They may not even notice, it's not like they're particularly close to us or anything. But it feels like I just coaxed yet another big fat elephant into the room and it's getting pretty dang crowded in here.

Not to seem too pathetic in the irony department, but here's a photo I took of Indi the other day that sums up a good part of her waking life. When she isn't glued to my side, she can be found looking out the windows which, luckily for her, go down to the floor. She ooches her nose around the sheer curtains and just sits there, her head turning this way and that as she checks out the neighborhood.

















This week marks five years of this blog being out there. Sometimes more out there than I'd wish, but hey, that's the way it is. It sort of seems as if that nice round number calls for getting a little sloppy and mushy. So much water under the bridge, after all but I can't focus on those oceans right now or I'll lose it.

Toodles.