Peg Kerr's Journal

Every July 6 for the last 36 years, I have eaten strawberries and cream for breakfast.

This past Tuesday, July 5, was my 36th wedding anniversary. We spent our wedding night at the Sofitel and the next morning, I included a portion of strawberries and cream with my room service order. They tasted so incredibly delicious to me. Well, perhaps it's not so much that they were particularly delicious, but that I was so incandescently happy. I decided right then and there that I would always have strawberries and cream for breakfast on July 6, to remember that moment, that demarcation of my first day as a happily married woman.

This July 6, however, besides being the day I ate strawberries and cream, was significant for another reason: it was the first day I outlived Rob in age. I spent my entire marriage four and a half years younger than him. But it has been four and a half years since he died, and from now on, this date would mark another demarcation: from this day forward, I would be older than him, older than he had ever been...without him.

This Wednesday, July 6, was also notable for something else: after a mere five days of planning, my nephew and his fiancée got married in a small and simple ceremony at my sister's lovely lakeside home. My nephew is the first one of Fiona and Delia's cousins on my side of the family to marry. A new threshold has been reached for this generation.

As I pondered this, I started thinking about the Roman god Janus, the god of thresholds, of transitions, and of marriage. Janus is a two-headed god, looking back in the past and forward into the future. And so I took a picture from my wedding day that the photographer referred to as a "ring picture," as the position of our hands was meant to show off our wedding rings. I never particularly noticed the rings in this picture though; I just saw how incredibly happy and in love we looked. I used my bridal picture for one half of the Janus head, and a picture of myself taken yesterday, on July 6 for the other half of the Janus head. Not as young, not as incandescent. As you can undoubtedly see, it's been 36 years.

Also pictured: the strawberries I had for breakfast yesterday morning, and the hands of my nephew and his new wife, showing off their new wedding rings.

Oceans of love to both of you, my dears. May you enjoy a lifetime of incandescent love and happiness...and all the strawberries and cream you can possibly eat.

Janus



Click here to see the 2022 52 Card Project gallery.

Click here to see the 2021 gallery.

I took a vacation this week, but I didn't go anywhere in particular. Last week at this time, I also took a staycation and spent it through boxes from Rob. This year, I did not put much in the way of demands on myself. This was partly due to the fact that I am facing fewer boxes, and partly due to the heat. It hit 100° and I don't have central air.

(Jane Austen: "What dreadful hot weather we have been having! It keeps one in a constant state of inelegance").

I did knock off a few gardening tasks, cooked, puttered around, and read. And I met Patricia C. Wrede, one of my writing mentors, for a story conference on the new book, which was gratifyingly successful. I mentioned the mental breakthrough I'd had last week. This conference with Pat was another one. Pat and I had worked together in a novel writing group a couple of decades ago, and she's the midwife for my first book, the one who led me through a series of questions that helped me figure out the plot of Emerald House Rising.

I've often said that for the decade or so that I was writing short stories, the way that story creation worked for me was that I would get one idea, and it would be like dropping a seed crystal into a supersaturated solution: with that one idea, an entire story idea would bloom in my mind, and I would write it down. That was the reason I had such a difficult time switching from short stories to novels: I just had no experience at working the story idea out. Pat helped me/showed me how to do that, asking me leading questions that helped me grope my way to uncovering the plot. We did it again at the Good Earth restaurant this past Wednesday, and I'm sure the waitress was baffled by a series of excited exclamations coming from our table as pieces of the plot started falling into place:

"That's who wrote the letter!"

"Ooo! Ooo! The Aquamarine's consort--turns out, she's a dear friend of Lady Claudella!"

"But of course, THEY ALL WENT TO TERGOLIA!"

I've worked out critical details of one character's family tree, and what happened to the various members is a lot of the engine for the plot. The story, in part, is about inheritance, and about actions taken in the hopes that a certain consequence will happen--and then something else, entirely unexpected, takes people off in different directions.

I love these moments in the creative process of writing a book--call it synergy or illumination or inspiration or...I just wish they happened more often.

Thanks, Pat!

Image description: The background is a (very faint) image of a cave, illuminated by an opening through which sunlight pours. Overlaid over that image is a tree with fantastically shaped roots, with sunlight shining through its branches. Over the patch of sunlight a hand hovers, holding a golden puzzle piece. At the foot of the tree branches is a crystalline gemstone structure.

Illumination



Click here to see the 2022 52 Card Project gallery.

Click here to see the 2021 gallery.

The weather in Minneapolis is in that perfect sweet spot: not too hot, not too cold, not too humid, no need to shovel snow, no need to mow (I have a mowing service), garden is nicely established.

Yes. Porch season has begun. On days I work from home, I'm now taking my computer out there and working on the porch.

There was a porch in my first childhood home, and I loved it so much, that I insisted we buy a house with a porch. Didn't get the fireplace or the built-in buffet, but I got the porch.

I have a deep affection for my porch. During the years that my house was so chaotic because of all of Rob's stuff, I insisted that at least the porch must be cleaned off at all times. Sometimes when the house was driving me mad, the porch was my only oasis. I put pots of flowers out there and hung blue lanterns that I lit with candles at night, and I would take my newspaper and coffee out there to read in the morning. It is beautifully shaded by a hugely overgrown evergreen bush. Fiona used to climb the branches to get up to her haven, the porch roof. Several home contractors have told me to cut it down. Too big. Too close to the foundation.

I don't care. It shades the porch splendidly, and it's staying.

I got a beautiful flowered bamboo tray to take my plate, silverware, and coffee cup out when I go sit on the porch. It is such a simple luxury that gives me an inordinate amount of pleasure.



I used an older picture for this: the seat cushions are different, and there is a different rug, blue with white stripes. I tried to cut them in with editing tools, but it didn't quite look right. So...not quite contemporaneous, but you get the idea.

Image description: Peg has her feet propped up on a glass porch table, which holds a pot of flowers, a coffee cup, and a newspaper. In the background are wildflowers from Peg's bamboo tray and two moroccan lanterns lit with candles.

Porch



Click here to see the 2022 52 Card Project gallery.

Click here to see the 2021 gallery.

This collage attempts to depict a mental state: rumination - the state of turning thoughts over and over in the mind. The word is derived from the class of animals known as "ruminants," of the suborder Ruminantia: cloven-hoofed, cud-chewing quadrupeds such as domestic cattle, bison, buffalo, deer, etc.

Of course, it would be nice if one could dwell on wonderful things that makes one happy. That's not the way it usually works for me.

In my experience, it's about the state of mind you get into when you can't stop yourself from dwelling on all the ways in which you are the absolute worst. All the things you have to do and haven't done, all the people you've hurt or offended or annoyed. All the foolish, all the clueless, all the inept, all the embarrassing. Over and over again. Chewing the cud, as it were.

It's tied to depression, naturally.

Minds are annoying, occasionally. Mine certainly is right now. (But I rather like this collage.)

Image description: A sketchified woman (Peg) holds her hand to her temple in the lower right. She looks sad and preoccupied. Above and behind her arises a chaotic thought cloud, indicated by disorganized lines and symbols. A black and white cow stands to her side, eyeing her quizzically.

Rumination



Click here to see the 2022 52 Card Project gallery.

Click here to see the 2021 gallery.

I'm stressed out, as evidenced by the fact that I've read 14 books in the last seven days. I'm trying to dive into fiction to forget everything hovering ominously over me.

One source of stress is something that Elinor Dashwood is not talking about, so I'm not going into it.

The other is that I have been contacting contractors about replacing my roof, which is twenty-six years old. No leaks, but...it's time. And painters, because the upper dormers were not done by the painter I hired to repaint the house last year ("too tall, we don't paint that high"). Oh, and there's evidence of squirrel nests in the eaves. That has to be dealt with, too. And that is very, very expensive.

I talked with my financial planner, and...well, let's just say the last two years have been the two most expensive years I've had in a row in the almost thirty years I've lived here in the house. This is definitely exceeding my home repair budget for the year, and she has raised the question that maybe I should find a new job.

Plus there's reviewing contacts, and actually signing them without Rob, my resident lawyer, to look them over and advise me. One thing that really sucks about being a widow is making huge decisions, financial decisions, alone. I can ask for advice (and yes, I have looked into getting nonprofit help since I'm low income and struck out everywhere), but it's different to be asking for advice, but not making the decision in concert with someone, a partner, who has the same financial stake in the decision that you do.

I feel flooded by uncertainty, painfully aware of all the risks. Is this a necessary step for me to take? Have I found the right contractors--plural? If I sink this much money into the house, how will that affect my future money needs, my retirement?

I am, as I have remarked in the past, a Gryffindor with high-security needs. It's enough to make me break out in hives.

(No, I'm not asking or hinting for money from anyone. I just have to figure it out myself.)

This card came together very quickly: the images came easily to my mind, and I put it together in about fifteen minutes.

Image description: Against a background of roof shingles, a woman sits with her hand quizzically set to her chin, her face covered by a cloud, with question marks over the cloud. In front of her is a squirrel holding a nut, with a dollar sign over it. (The squirrel with the dollar sign over it is both a reference to the possibility of squirrels in the attic--expensive to remove--as well as a symbol for retirement, as in saving your nuts for the winter).

Risk



Click here to see the 2022 52 Card Project gallery.

Click here to see the 2021 gallery.

I got an email from LiveJournal noting that April 27, 2022 is the 20th anniversary of my setting up my LiveJournal.

So I've been thinking about this, and about what starting to blog on LiveJournal and later Dreamwidth opened up in my life.

As I had noted in my very first entry, I had kept a daily personal journal for 25 years at the time I started my LiveJournal. So I was very familiar with the process of writing about my life.

What was different and what proved to be almost seductive was that for the first time in 25 years, I got reactions to what I was writing.

I wrote about my family, about parenting, about my fandom obsessions, about writing, about my struggle to cook for my family. I wrote about politics. I wrote about all our family rituals (May Day, 12th Night, etc.). I wrote about my karate journey, from white belt to black belt. I wrote about depression. I wrote about whatever I was thinking about. Eventually, I wrote about Rob's illness and death.

Twenty years ago was a more innocent age, and I would probably make different decisions about how frankly I spoke about things if I had known then what I know now when starting to write. But for the most point, opening my life in this way has been a blessing, and I have made so many remarkable friendships. Online friendships ARE real ones.

The background of the collage includes text from my very first entry, and the color green is the green I used in all the icons I created. Otherwise, it shows various things that have cropped up in my journal over the years. I certainly didn't have room to include them all. I think I may create a separate Soulcollage card for "Blogger." Edited to add: And I have done so, here.

Blogging



Click here to see the 2022 52 Card Project gallery.

Click here to see the 2021 gallery.

This is slightly late, because I ordinarily do my collages on Friday during my Zoom with my coffee group. This past Friday, however, I was getting ready for Minicon instead. (Minicon will probably be the subject of this week's card, which I’ll do on this coming Friday.)

Anyway: a week ago Friday, I went to the doctor's for my annual checkup and rather rashly decided to load up on three vaccines at once: my second Covid booster, my ten-year tetanus booster, and the pneumococcal vaccine. And lordy, lordy, it absolutely wiped me out. I could barely get off the couch all weekend, which I expected, but I didn't expect to be pretty much useless for the entire week. I was totally exhausted. I lasted barely a half hour at my writing group meeting on Wednesday night, and then the critique group ordered me to go to bed and kicked me off the Zoom.

I tried to comfort myself by reasoning that my immune system was revving up, doing what it needed to do to get ready to handle All The Things. But good heavens. That was rough.

The text on the pillowcase is from a button I once gave Rob (I used to give him one on his Christmas stocking every year).

Image description: Background: a muscular woman with her back to the camera lifts weights. Foreground: a woman lies in bed, holding glasses in one hand, covering her face with a pillow with the other. Overlaid on the pillow are the words "It may look like I'm doing nothing, but on a cellular level I'm really quite busy."

Immunity



Click here to see the 2022 52 Card Project gallery.

Click here to see the 2021 gallery.

I've been feeling, I dunno, vaguely fretful this week. The weather has turned cold again [c'mon, spring, where are you?] The news is so awful. I mean...setbacks in abortion rights, trans rights, corruption on the Supreme Court, inflation, the pandemic dragging on, the war in Ukraine. It is SO AWFUL.

My ability to deal mentally with SO MUCH AWFUL seems to have worn thin, to say the least. I was talking with a friend about how I seem to be short on spoons. (If you are not familiar with Christina Miserandino's Spoon Theory, the metaphor that uses spoons as a unit of cope, see here.) It's as if, I groused, there is a thief going around nicking my spoons or something.

So I've been diving into Bridgerton Season 2.

And I was thinking of that conversation, and why I found Bridgerton so comforting, as I noticed, well, all the spoons as I was watching the show. (After all, one character or another is always drinking tea. Soooooo many spoons).

And then I suddenly remembered, I actually do have some spoons. When I was growing up, my Nana (my mother's mother) gave me a differently patterned silver spoon on my birthday every year. I received twelve spoons before she passed away. It's a slightly odd custom if you think about it. I suppose the assumption would be that they would be useful to me once I established my own household, perhaps for serving tea to company. Perhaps she also gave me the spoons in a range of patterns with the hope that I might like one and choose it for my own when I became a bride and registered for gifts. It was a gift that hinted at the social class of my Nana's generation, a world more extravagant and financially comfortable than my own.

Here is a picture of my spoon collection. You can right click on the picture to open the image in a new tab and then double click on the photo to see the spoons up close. I am particularly amused by the spoon I received in 1968, the fifth from the right--it perfectly embodies late 1960s Flower Power.



Bridgerton shows a beautiful and appealing world that's comforting to escape into: where everyone is rich, and people from vastly different backgrounds (including races) are accepted. But there still are strains and struggles, and people fumble around trying to figure out relationships, especially love.

I started thinking about the parallels in my situation to the character of Queen Charlotte (frequently shown with a silver spoon in her hand, either to stir her tea or snort snuff up her nose). Queen Charlotte ostensibly has everything, but she's not truly happy. She is someone who (ironically - how meta) is also seeking escapism. Her husband George III is mad, and so poor Queen Charlotte tries to assuage her misery over her marriage and her restlessness with extravagant entertainments. She is also obsessed with the news, in her case the Society Papers of the mysterious Lady Whistledown. Queen Charlotte often fumes in anger about what she reads...but she always craves to read more.

A couple of extremely creative women, Abigail Barlow and Emily Bear, have actually written an unofficial Bridgerton Musical, releasing the songs on TikTok as they worked on them, so successfully that the resultant album has been nominated for a Grammy! Here is their song about Queen Charlotte, "Entertain Me." (I've bought the album, and it's awesome. Highly recommended). Edited to add Sunday night follow up: This album WON the Grammy for Best Musical Theater Album.



For this week's card, I have Queen Charlotte, framed by wisteria, seated drinking a cup of tea. In her other hand, she holds a copy of Lady Whistledown's Society Papers. Behind her is a semi-translucent close up of Lady Whistledown's Society Papers ("Extraordinary People. Extraordinary News.") Hovering above Queen Charlotte's head is a tiara formed from twelve silver spoons.

(With this card, at thirteen weeks I am a quarter of the way through the year.)

Spoons



Click here to see the 2022 52 Card Project gallery.

Click here to see the 2021 gallery.

Even though the equinox isn't until this Sunday, we have definitely and noticeably turned a corner toward spring. Thank goodness.

The temperature which was sub-zero so recently has now shot up to the 40s, 50s, and 60s. The dirty snow is melting away.

I am watching one ebbing snowbank in my background with particular interest because when it disappears entirely, I know that bulbs will soon be making their appearances: crocuses, daffodils, tulips, and hyacinths.

To help me with my impatience, I bought a bowl of bulbs, which now sits on my table. The first miniature daffodil has already opened.

Bulbs



Click here to see the 2022 52 Card Project gallery.

Click here to see the 2021 gallery.

I tried going back to work this week. It is not going as well as I hoped.

Monday was my first day back at work since my accident on February 9. I'd hoped I'd be able to work my usual eight hours, but I assumed at least I'd be able to work four.

I barely managed to hold it together for three. And only by turning off the lights over my desk. It seems that the fluorescent lights are causing me difficulties.

Tried working a half-day Wednesday, my usual day off, to make up for not being able to manage a full day on Monday. On Thursday, I developed a crippling headache and so had to take sick time for that half-day of work.

My employer is supportive, but ugh, this is so frustrating.

I am doing screens more--well, I have to, to make this card. Partly that is because I couldn't ignore the war news out of Ukraine, which is terrible, and so I am on Twitter more. I still haven't resumed books, which feels like I'm being punished--before the accident, I was reading a book a day.

So: I am doing more screens than I should, and I am not recovering as swiftly as I hoped.

To be honest, I'm really not doing great. Two years of pandemic isolation, living alone, and now this. I'm lonely and bored and cabin-fevered and oh, I wish at least I could be out on my porch or outside in my garden (but of course if I could, I wouldn't have been slipping on ice, would I?) My walking group stopped meeting due to Omicron. I have been eating for comfort, so I'm at my all-time highest weight. I feel stupid, listless, logy, and gross. Depressed and worried about the news. Depression is a common side effect of concussion. No wonder.

As I was thinking about how to design this card, I looked over the pictures I had taken in the past week, and one thing leaped out at me: I routinely send Snapchats to my girls in order to keep in touch with them, and I habitually download them before sending them. One thing I noticed is that in all of them, I was squinting. I've been light-sensitive, and I'm often tired and/or in pain. And the world seems overwhelming, so I've been instinctively half closing my eyes.



This also seemed like a metaphor. Looking at the news on Twitter about Ukraine is awful, and it hurts, both physically and mentally to read it. But I'm drawn to it, to know. Just as I crave to get back to reading books. So I look, but with my eyes half-closed.

I used a visualization of a woman in profile, her skull semi-transparent to show her brain activity. That layer is itself semi-transparent, too, with an underlayer of a visualization of brain theta waves (the deepest brain activity, present in meditation and healing). Over that, I scattered pictures of my eyes, registering various degrees of pain.

Edited to add: I had just decided to call my doctor about my concussion to see if I needed another follow up. And while I was on MyChart, I clicked on the bill for my concussion diagnosis/care so far.

Understand: they did a diagnostic test (CT scan) and then did nothing more than talk to me and send me home with a prescription for Aleve. No brain surgery involved, in other words.

The bill is one and half months of my take home pay. And I'm insured.

I HATE the American health care system.

I have another appointment scheduled for March 10. More bills.

Squint



Click here to see the 2022 52 Card Project gallery.

Click here to see the 2021 gallery.