Up your nose with a rubber hose, Facebook!

I hope Pea doesn't let Facebook fill her with jealousy.

A question for all you new and relatively new parents out there: is it just me, or does Facebook sometimes appear to be a tool, developed by the baby-less bourgeoisie, to remind us baby-raising proletariat of all the fun, mischief and debauchery that we left behind to happily raise our families?

Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of Facebook.  I check it every day and love that I can keep in touch with friends from the past and family I can't actually recall ever meeting. I never check my real email account anymore and I'm constantly engaged in a friendly game of Scrabble.   

But earlier tonight, as I browsed the photos of a friend who is visiting several European oasis's (is that the plural of oasis?), something terrible occurred to me - I haven't travelled for my own personal pleasure in quite some time.  

Then I browsed the profile of our bestest friend, who invites us every year to her cottage for an amazing weekend of swimming, sun, moderate alcohol consumption and board games.  We couldn't go last year and the timing didn't work out for things this year.   

Then I saw a weird add for people with foot fetishes.  Irrelevant.

Then I saw a status update for a friend who is attending a concert I would have liked to go to, and I tried to remember the last concert I attended.  I drew a blank.  

Then I wept.

Indeed, the parents out there will know two things:  

1. Employment Insurance doesn't make you feel insured against anything.
2. Becoming a parent turns your whole life on its ear.

And so, with less money and a completely new reality, the Pod and I are trying hard to maintain some semblance of what we were before Pea arrived.  

We still hang out with friends in the evenings, albeit far less frequently.  We still hit the local amusement park, albeit with a stroller and fewer big people rides.  And we still bang out a "dinner and the movies evening" from time to time, although we usually eat at Subway and we rarely know what we want to see without having to look up the latest releases on the internet.  

So, a note to you, baby-less bourgeoisie: you can have your Caribbean getaways, vodka-soaked patio evenings and Tuesday cheap nights at the movies!  Who cares if I don't get to travel as much as I used to... every day is a trip with Pea!  The cottage will be more fun when we next experience it through her eyes and I hear Raffi is AMAZING live!  (Foot fetishes are still irrelevant.) 

In the end, I'm just fine with Pea, the Pod and a walk around the block.  

I may now know what I want my Pea to become, but I hope she doesn't let Facebook fill her with jealousy.