snapshots of my week…

Last night we celebrated Le Chandeleur, a holiday with traditional religious underpinnings, but for us was a reminder to note the first signs of spring.  After an especially dramatic ‘winter’ at the Remy household, this was a lovely way to celebrate the return of the light.  And as is traditional, we celebrated with crepes (the one below being a ricotta-raspberry crepe, but we also made some equally yummy lemon-curd & fresh strawberry crepes):

The new semester began at Chapman last week so I’ve been far busier than usual. It feels good to have much to do, but it’s also overwhelming at times. Especially when we have major systems fail, as we did the first day of classes (ugh). Fortunately, I’m learning better how to troubleshoot problems with my IT team, and am becoming a better administrator:

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And to combat stress, I’m exercising everyday, including some paddling on the weekend with my team (Go Imua!).   I also did some impressive weightlifting with friends on Monday and my regular rock climbing stint on Wednesday:

With some of the residual stress from Toby’s death, I haven’t been terribly productive on my dissertation this week. However I do plan to work on it as much as possible this weekend, in addition to visits with friends both new and old. I’m finding that it’s important for me to make plans to look forward to–especially as those seed catalogs come in the mail and I remember (again and again) that I don’t have a garden to prep this spring, nor do I have my wee kitten to cozy up with in my big purple chair. In the past, the garden was what helped me keep death in perspective. When Paul, Sara, Linda, grandma, and Madge died–that garden kept me whole. I am missing that so much right now, because there’s so much hope in every peach blossom bud (and I still simply can’t believe that my peach tree is gone now, but I never have been able to face that patch of bare earth since the garden was razed)…