So far today we've welcomed my parents' dog for the rest of the week, which should be interesting. He's never met a cat before, and won't even walk past Cortez, although Cortez isn't doing anything but sitting there looking offended.

Miles is a sweetheart, but he's twelve now, a purebred English cocker my dad adopted when Miles was four and his owner was too elderly to keep him. They've spoiled him rotten, for one, and after they moved, he went a little neurotic -- he now gets into the garbage and last week found a bag of chocolate chips up on the counter, got it down, and managed to open it and eat it.

So now the trash can is inside the door to the basement, and the cats' food is up on the breakfast bar, and Miles is barking at the cat.

This might be a long week.

We had omelets for breakfast.

Matilda and I just had ham and cheese, but for JZ I did one with fresh baby spinach, roasted bell peppers and goat cheese.

Then I gave her a fancy English muffin (extra puffy!) with Devon Cream and strawberry jam.

Decadence, thy name is butterfat!

I have a question for people. Does anyone here have progressive or bifocal lenses? My eyes have turned the corner to middle age, and I need reading glasses in addition to the regular ones. Especially with all the reading and grading I do, it's a must. I just need to decide if I want to go the two glasses route (reading and regular) or the progressive lens route.

Matilda and I just had ham and cheese, but for JZ I did one with fresh baby spinach, roasted bell peppers and goat cheese.

Then I gave her a fancy English muffin (extra puffy!) with Devon Cream and strawberry jam.

Wow. That slightly beats my breakfast of a plastic cup of chocolate milk downed while standing.

Burrell, I have had progressives for years (tri-focals) and I like them. Personally, I would go nuts trading between multiple pairs of glasses and I'd be afraid of misplacing the "other" pair if they weren't on my face.

I've got trifocals, but I don't think I use them right--unless I'm not noticing my moving my head to see things. For reading in bed, I'll still take off my glasses because the book is generally within my uncorrected focal length.

edit: I do have some clip-on magnifiers that I use with needlework.

Wow. That slightly beats my breakfast of a plastic cup of chocolate milk downed while standing.

Come over to my house, Gud! I'll feed you fancy food.

I have progressives, and I am very happy with them -- when do longer stretches f reading I take them off - I think I need a larger lenses because I think the reading area is too small

Christmas was nice and low key. we ran around Sf for a while yesterday and I picked up the house from Christmas. Off to work at little later.

Thanks for the input. Still not sure what to do. Hrm.

Just caught up on 400+ Natter posts! (Thank dog for a slow workweek; we're only open three days this week and most people take those days off, so there's almost nobody here today.) I loved reading about everyone's Chrismukkah celebrations, and javachik might have made me tear up a little bit.

We had a really nice Christmas; we went to Oklahoma City to be with M's parents and grandmother, and my parents and brother flew out to join us as well, and everyone got along super well and seemed to all have a great time. That said, it was still a tiring and emotionally charged few days. Everyone is so thrilled about the impending Sprog, and we got tons of wonderful gifts for the baby (so many picture books! awesome!), but there's also, of course, a great undercurrent of grief for M's brother that still colors all the holiday events and traditions. Having my family there helped, I think; since everything is different now anyway, there may as well be some happy differences as well as the awful sad ones.

Thinking about the concepts of blood family vs. chosen family is interesting to me right now because we are considering asking M's brother's girlfriend T to be our baby's godmother. Since she would have been our children's aunt, she seems like a natural and obvious choice, and I think she would appreciate knowing that we still want her involved with our family in whatever way she wants to be. But I also wonder if the time will come when she feels the need to cut those ties in order to move on with her own life and find happiness with someone else, and I hesitate to ask her to make a commitment to us that she might find, years later, she does not want to keep. (To be clear, we are not asking her for any kind of legal or religious commitment; we just want to designate her as a special adult in Sprog's life, and encourage her to develop a closer relationship with Sprog than she might otherwise.)

Anyway, I'm not really asking for advice, just musing out loud about the idea of trying to create a chosen family, if that makes sense.