Peg Kerr's Journal

I noticed that my backup drive was continually failing to back up. After monkeying around with it for awhile, I took the drive and laptop into Best Buy, where they diagnosed the problem: I had waaaaaaaaay too many files on my computer.

Oh.

So I started culling files and music off the computer. It was both unnerving and satisfying, but I managed to kill several gigabytes worth of data, which meant I got the automatic backups going again.

Inspired by this, I attacked several other sources of clutter. I emptied several more boxes of legal files left in the garage by Rob (no, I'm still not done going through them). I took a box of hardback mysteries to Half-Price Books (only got $5.00 for them, but at least thirty more books are out of the house). I culled through my closet and took some bags of clothes to a thrift store (I took particular grim satisfaction in stuffing a sweater Kij had given me into the garbage bag. Why had I kept it so long? I have no idea).

I still have much too much stuff. But this week, at least, I beat it back. At least a little.

The design shows some of the things I cleared out this week. I overlaid those images with a scythe, both to indicate cutting things out of my life and as a veiled reference to the concept of Swedish Death Cleaning.

Lower center: A half-open laptop. Directly above: hanging files. Above that: stacks of books. Above that, stacks of clothes on shelves. Overlaid over all: a scythe.

Decluttering



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I attended an ordination last weekend, and the pastor explained during the announcement portion of the services that out in the narthex, there was a table containing bags with sticks of chalk and a piece of paper explaining the tradition of doing a house blessing at Epiphany. We were all encouraged to take them home. I was intrigued, as I had never heard of this custom before, and I took home the bag with the chalk and read the paper.

It said:

For centuries, Christians have celebrated the season of Epiphany by chalking their outside front door with a blessing. You are invited to try it at your home.

The Traditional Chalk Blessing:

20 † C † M † B † 25

Surrounding the blessing is the date of the new year (2025). The crosses between the letters symbolize Christ.

CMB has two meanings. It signifies the traditional names of the three magi who visited Jesus (Caspar, Melchior, and Balthazar), and it stands for the Latin phrase "Christus mansionem benedictat," meaning "May Christ bless this house."

Reading about this tradition got me thinking about my house.

Rob and I moved into this house in December 1992. I realized, counting back, that I am almost at the exact point where I have lived half my life in this house.

I thought of a song I've loved for years by one of my favorite artists, Peter Mayer, "Houses of Winter," which imagines homes as almost sentient entities, watching over the people in their keeping. ( The Houses of Winter )



When we moved into this house, I was seven months pregnant with Fiona (convenient, because I wasn't expected to lift anything heavier than a waste basket on moving day). I brought my babies home to this house and raised them here. Rob and I loved each other here, and it was my anchor when he died.

This home has sheltered a family. Now it is just me.

I have often wished I come up with a proper name for the house, as some of my friends have for their own homes, but nothing ever quite seemed to fit. Yet it has a personality. It was built in 1916 and has beautiful bones, but it is whimsical and sometimes temperamental, too. The furnace in the basement is original to the house, an octopus monstrosity that crouches in the darkness, tentacles reaching in all directions, hemmed in by asbestos, greedy as hell for natural gas, yet as reliable as could be desired. The electrical system is barely adequate. The floors slope toward the midline, the tile floor in the bathroom is cold, and the light switch in the bedroom says 'NO' instead of 'ON' because it was installed upside down. The less said about the paneling installed in the hallway and two of the bedrooms, the better.

The house regularly demands tribute in expensive repairs: a new roof. Drain tile in the basement. Regular repainting. The walls are threaded through with cracks in the plaster.

I have tried to make my home more my own as I have been slowly cleaning out Rob's stuff. I have never had a pet while living here (allergies make it impossible). It is just me. And the house.

I've eaten tomatoes and Swiss chard grown in the backyard and cooked thousands of meals in the kitchen. I've probably cried in just about every room in the house. The walls have soaked up so much laughter, the yells from so many fights, the joy of so many celebrations (perhaps that's why they are cracking so much).

It feels almost like...like it's the two of us now, the house and me. It is almost anthropomorphic, in other words, as in the Peter Mayer song. This house has watched over and sheltered my family, been my comfort and haven in times of struggle and grief. Now it watches over me. It seems more personal. Just as it has been a blessing to me, it seems only fitting to bless and thank the house in return.

Background: a dark wooden front door, overlaid at the top with a stitched sampler reading 'Bless This House." The top of the door has an inscription in white letters "20 † C † B † M † 25." Lower center: a mesh bag containing a piece of chalk hovers over three porcelain figurines of the three wise men. A pair of hands reaches up from the bottom, cupping the sampler in blessing.

Blessing



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It has taken several weeks, but the huge brick-and-board bookcase that was in my bedroom, crammed with a large part of Rob's science fiction/fantasy book collection, is gone. I asked several family members if they wanted the books but got rid of only a handful of the books that way. Then, I checked with a coworker who is an SF/fantasy fan and he happily removed a couple of hundred books for the collection. As I had mentioned earlier, I took some and distributed them in local Little Free Libraries.

Finally, I decided that the most efficient method was to take the books, a box at a time, to Don Blyly at the Uncle Hugo's Science Fiction bookstore. Don would look through each box and generally took somewhere between 1/2 to 2/3 of them. He would offer a sum, either in credit or half that value in cash. I took cash, because I am not trying to encourage myself to buy more books. It generally would come out to somewhere between $5 - $15 a box. I could hear Rob screaming in protest in my mind with every box, but I did it, and I am glad it is done.

I will probably take several more boxes of books piled up in corners. There are still many many books left in the house. But I am next turning my attention to doing over the bedroom. For one thing, getting rid of the books has revealed how disgusting the 30+ year carpet is. Ugh. I want to rip it out.

It has been hard, emotional work. It is odd--these were books I had not generally read myself. Why was it so difficult to get rid of them? I think it was because Rob was so passionately tied to his collection, it was as if a part of his essence had seeped into it, and it felt as though getting rid of them was getting rid of him.

I have worked through it, however, and the bulk of the books are gone. I did pull some off the shelf that I had read and loved myself. But I will go through them and see if I can get them out of the library, and if I can, I will take those too, in a future trip.

Image description: Three views of a brick-and-board bookcase in the process of being dismantled. Top: a semi-transparent view of the books from floor to ceiling. Center: a view with the books with one board left in place. Bottom: a view of the baseboard with the marks of the supporting bricks left on the carpet. All the bricks and boards are gone. Hovering over the semi-transparent bookcase is the signage for Uncle Hugo's Science Fiction Bookstore/Uncle Edgar's Mystery Bookstore.

Dismantling



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Okay, as I think I have said, I really hate AI, but I do love using the Dear Mr. Darcy tool. Sometimes when I am thinking something over, I'll post the question. This morning, I plugged in:

Dear Mr. Darcy, I am a widow living alone. While I miss my husband, I am welcoming the opportunity to make my home my own. What should I reconsider when redecorating my bedroom to make it a space just for myself? Sincerely, Mrs. Windom

Here was his (as ever gracious) reply. It is interesting to see that Mr. Darcy's recommendations hew pretty closely to my own conclusions.

One thing that I determined as I lay in bed coughing for the best part of a week was that I was pretty dissatisfied with my bedroom.

There is no color to speak of--just white, cracked walls. I have artwork, but it is more than a decade old. There is a huge brick-and-board bookcase over to one side, filled with Rob's classic science fiction and fantasy.



It occurred to me during that long, long week of coughing my guts out that I have not pulled a book off that bookcase for over six years.

It is time to make over my bedroom.

Once I started thinking about that, I started getting rather excited at the idea. For so many years, the house was stuffed to the brim with Rob's junk, but I have been clearing it out. I remade the living room to my own tastes, and now it is time to re-do my bedroom.

So now I plan to take down the bookcase and give away or sell the books. I have been going to consignment stores, looking at artwork and furniture, and contemplating my own taste. I want to set up a reading nook in the corner where Rob's dresser once stood. I want to add color and a botanical flair.

This collage is pulled from the vision board I have been playing with on Pinterest.

I am ready to make a nest of my bedroom.

Image description: background: Semi-transparent green bedroom with a large window, plants, and a low green sofa. A round botanical rug is behind the sofa, lower right. A bluebird perches on the sofa with a tuft of moss in its beak. Lower left corner: a botanical green wing chair. Above the wing chair: a delicate print of a stylized tree with birds perched in the branches. Right center: a bookcase styled as a tree, with the books resting on the branches.

Nesting



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I spent waaaaaayyy too much time on this collage, and I'm not entirely satisfied with it, but my technical chops couldn't quite match the scope of my inner vision. Oh, well.

Now that my foundation has been fixed, I have fulfilled a four-year dream and planted a perennial garden on the south side of my house. My sister Betsy came over to help me get the plants in the ground.



I'm a bit gobsmacked at the amount of money I've spent, but I'm pleased with it and hopeful about how it will look in the next year or two.

I'd intend to inset closeups of the various flowers in the garden within the picture of the garden itself. Didn't quite work after a long time I decided to quit messing with it and just post something simpler.

Image source: A garden of perennial plants and flowers planted at the side of a house with blue paint and white trim. In the four corners, yellow-petaled flowers form a frame. Overlaid text in yellow reads 'The Glory of the Garden lies in more than meets the eye.'

Perennials



Click here to see the 2023 52 Card Project gallery.

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This is more or less a follow-up to last week's card, Inching. I'm continuing to work on the projects I spoke about last week and I've moved things further along. Perhaps this card is more wishful thinking than an accurate assessment, but I've been thinking about momentum, about when you get it into gear and you start to really feel that you're getting accomplished. It's a satisfying feeling. Perhaps I'm trying to convince myself I've accomplished more than I really have, but I'm further along and that's saying something.

*sigh* It'd be even more satisfying if I could actually find a contractor. And a new job. But I'm continuing to try.

Background is a semitransparent picture of intermeshed brass gears. Upper half of card: Newton's cradle balls (a device the illustrates momentum). The suspended ball on the right is in motion. Center: a woman in flying superheroine pose looks up, her outstretched fist pointed at the ball on the right as if her punch has put it into motion.

(We're halfway through the year!)

Momentum



Click here to see the 2023 52 Card Project gallery.

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Click here to see the 2021 52 Card Project gallery.

Sometimes I'm really pleased with my collages, as I was with last week's offering, Fragile.

This week's effort, however, is one of the ones where the collage seems so lame, so bereft of imagination or creativity or anything interesting to contribute that I'm actually embarrassed to post it. But I've spent much too much time tinkering with this one trying to get it right, and although I perceive it as a failure (or at the very least uninspiring), I'm not willing to spend any more time on it. As I pointed out last week, I have very little margin right now for expending extra effort.

Fiona and Alona along with someone I met for the first time, Jake, came over last weekend to help spackle and paint my staircase and upper hallway. Jake is 6'8", which turned out to be exceedingly handy for a project like this. I've barely ever done any wall repair or painting in my house in the thirty-plus years that I've lived in it for the simple reason that for most walls, there are bookcases in the way. Not, however, in the staircase or hallway, and the shabby peeling paint gave me almost physical pain every time I passed by. Everything now looks MUCH better.

(I also realize that part of the problem was that I was so busy spackling and painting that I didn't stop to take pictures, so I have less material to work with).

Many thanks to Jake and the Onas. They deserved a better collage for their efforts, but alas, I cannot deliver. Sorry.

Image description: Two photographs of a staircase from two different angles are superimposed over each other. Foreground shows the staircase from the side. A woman (Fiona) stands on the stairs behind the railing. Background shows the view looking up the staircase. Lower right corner: a can of spackle, a can of paint, and a paintbrush.

Staircase



Click here to see the 2023 52 Card Project gallery.

Click here to see the 2022 52 Card Project gallery.

Click here to see the 2021 52 Card Project gallery.

I had an energy audit done this week. Three gentlemen from the Minnesota Center for Energy and Environment spent a couple of hours tromping through the house, changing out lightbulbs, swapping out my shower head for a low-flow model, and checking infrared sensors for heat leaks. They were quite curious to see my gravity-fed (octopus) furnace. One said he has only encountered one other similar furnace in the past four years.

The audit was free, which was certainly gratifying, but their recommendations were somewhat discouraging, as they involved suggestions that would cost a lot. *sigh* Perversely, I pay more for energy because I can't afford to do otherwise. It's not exactly easy for me to drop the money to change out my furnace (a process that would begin with about $15,000 of asbestos abatement before we even get around to the cost of the furnace) or insulate the walls. They are going to send me information about programs and grants that may help. I'm not terribly hopeful, though. I applied for the state energy assistance program last year but was over the income eligibility level.

But hey, I got new weatherstripping, light bulbs, and a low-flow showerhead for free. Incremental changes, but perhaps they will help a little.

Image description: The collage as a whole shows an open front door (seen from the inside), enclosed with red plastic with a fan at floor level (part of an energy audit). Lower left corner: half a cartoon house with different colored lines (indications of energy usage). Right side: a rough cartoon figure checking items off a checklist. Top: logo for Center for Energy and Environment.

Audit



Click here to see the 2023 52 Card Project gallery.

Click here to see the 2022 52 Card Project gallery.

Click here to see the 2021 52 Card Project gallery.

So: a big multi-day snow storm expected this week. One to two feet of snow, they said. My employer's building was closed for a couple days, schools and businesses were closed, and the governor declared a weather emergency. I shopped for groceries, made a big batch of lentil soup and another of vegan lasagne, and I made sure the buckets of traction grit were filled.

In the end, the predicted two feet of snow dwindled to around 13" in my neighborhood. Not as big a blowout as they predicted, but within the top 25 storms in history in the Twin Cities (Eric, on the other hand, got 20" in his neck of the woods). I did one tiring round of shoveling, but a kind neighbor came through with a snow blower for the second round. I've been cuddled up on my couch in fuzzy pajamas with tea, candles, soup, and blankets. It's been rather nice to hunker down.

( Peter Mayer's song 'Real Good Storm' has been running through my head all week. )

I do like this one. I'm pleased with the effect of the frame, made by taking and cropping a picture of my Yak Trax tracks in the snow. I had to wear them over my boots as I shoveled, as my driveway and sidewalk were caked with ice. It made shoveling treacherous.

Image description: Within a frame of Yak Trax in the snow, the collage looks out on a blue-tinged snowy street (the view out Peg's front door). Superimposed over the scene are a pair of yellow snow shovels, handles crossed. Over that are newspaper headlines (top to bottom): "Hunkered down for storm," "epic snowstorm," "Storm fell short of fears," and "Metro braces for snowfall."

Hunker



Click here to see the 2023 52 Card Project gallery.

Click here to see the 2022 52 Card Project gallery.

Click here to see the 2021 52 Card Project gallery.