It's been awhile I know...the holidays are insanely busy by nature, which tends to wipe me out on a good year, much less a more challenging one.  Considering my grandfather passed a way the week before Christmas RIGHT after the Cookie's strabismus correction surgery, and this has definitely been one of the latter, harder ones.  Grief and celebration are strange bedfellows who never seem to fit comfortably under the same blanket - and so the holiday and the new year were an odd mix of parties and tears.  Gifts were exchanged along with a lot of memories and the result was somehow exhausting, comforting and bittersweet all at once.  That said, Cookie's walking now ( :P )  and life, as always, goes on.