fake mashed potatoes

I guess that keeping my carbohydrates low to control my blood sugar is getting to me more than I realized. I made fake mashed potatoes and I thought they were great. The recipe calls for steaming a large head of cauliflower until fairly soft and pureeing it in the food processor. I added a tablespoon or two of butter, a couple of tablespoons of plain yogurt, and some salt and pepper. Next time I might add some fancy mustard. It certainly looked like mashed potatoes, but my husband thought it just tasted like cauliflower. I like cauliflower, so that didn't bother me.

forgiveness

I'm actually not uptight about where I am on the issue of forgiveness, but I got thinking about it after catching myself saying twice in the last few days that I don't want to forgive my abuser. I have trouble understanding that forgiveness doesn't have to mean saying "she did the best she could." But the more fundamental issue right now seems to be that I feel a need to see her as bad because then I am different from her. I don't feel very secure in saying I may have some of the same impulses inside me but I'm different because I don't act on them. The whole issue of the relationship between feelings and action is difficult.

spring break

I'm starting my spring break, and despite my complaints about not getting much of a break I feel the relief of tension. My daughter has the same break but her school offers daycare Monday-Wednesday. My husband and son have a different break, so I will need to continue to leave the house at 7:30 each morning to take my son to his school. I am a natural morning person, but an hour of exercise and then leaving the house at 7:30 is pushing it.

I have one set of tests to grade and two papers to finish writing, one on a woman scientist and the other on discernment in spiritual direction (for the spiritual directors training program I am in). After that I don't know what the next priority is.

change

I don't deal with changes in schedule well. My day got turned around today, and it really threw me. I was gearing up to let some stuff out, and now I have to wait several more days. I should have decided to do something for myself with the time, but the small idea I had wasn't absorbing enough to distract me from thoughts of all the things I need to get done.

mammogram followup

I got a call last week that there was some question about my mammogram and they wanted me to come in to have more xrays taken. So I went in today, and had two more views taken, then the radiologist looked at those, then they took two more views, then the radiologist decided they needed to do an ultrasound. They did the ultrasound and then the radiologist told me they didn't see anything suspicious, just some normal fibrous tissue. After going through so much it is hard to absorb the word that it is nothing.

When I first got the call to come back, my first thought was at least I have done everything right. This mammogram was just a year after the last one (and I haven't even quite hit 50). My thought was "If there is a problem I won't have to blame myself for what I didn't do."

post-tenure review

One week later, my post-tenure review package is done. It actually turned out to be less painful to have it come up a the last minute, instead of having it hanging over me for months. I'm very grateful to my friends who wrote letters for me quickly.

It is an example of the worst of the current emphasis on assessment. The process is like being back in elementary school--various documents must be in a notebook in a given order. I resisted the temptation to decorate the notebook. So we jump through this extra hoop, and what is accomplished? I asked a couple of people and everyone thinks that no one has yet been fired at this institution as a result of post-tenure review.

mountains

We went to Kanuga for our church's annual retreat and were there for the first spring weather. We took a family hike to Wolf Mountain, which has a view back toward Kanuga's lake, with a cross on the far side. The downside of the beginning of spring was that the gnats drove my daughter crazy. They didn't bite, but they were very persistent face flies. I think the black spots on my picture must be gnats in front of the lens.