Peg Kerr's Journal

As we have for many, many years, my siblings, our children, and our significant others gathered (with my mom) in our homes the week between Christmas and New Year's Eve.

I hosted Christmas Eve in my home with Eric, his son Michah, and Delia and her fiance Chris. Then Fiona and Alona and I went to Delia's new apartment for Christmas morning.

I hosted a brunch for the family sometime during the week, and my sisters hosted during the evenings. We visited mom in her new assisted living apartment, went bowling, went out one evening to a speakeasy, went to movies, played karaoke, and just relaxed and enjoyed each other's company. As we always do, we gathered at my sister's on New Year's Eve day for a feast of Chinese food, provided by my mom, and hung out with each other.

I do feel extraordinarily lucky: I genuinely enjoy spending time with my family--and that means my mom, all my siblings and my nephews and nieces. I know from my time on social media that not all families can say this. My sisters, my brother and I get along so well, and our children are bright, curious, and immensely interesting people who also revel in each other's company. And the new family members we are beginning to add as our children grow up and find partners are filling in well, too.

This is the last collage of the year. I do intend to continue with my collages next year.

Image description: Different views of members of a family facing the camera, all smiling. Interspersed among the images of people are images of holiday celebrations food.

Celebrations



Click on the links to see the 2024, 2023, 2022 and 2021 52 Card Project galleries.

I had such hopes for this holiday season.

I spent it last year alone, and I was so looking forward to getting together with my family. We have had some holiday rituals that we've done for decades: my extended family gathers between Christmas and New Year's every year, and I was excited to see everyone. We are all vaccinated and many of us have received boosters, and we are all willing to wear masks. It felt like our reward for being so diligent about keeping safe all year.

My nephew Lewis flew in from New York. He tested twice before getting on the plane and was negative each time. He came home to my sister Cindy's...and then tested positive the next day (Christmas Eve). Cindy, too, had really been looking forward to Christmas: this was the first year in decades that they would have been gathering in their own home instead of going out East. But now this meant that Cindy and her husband were forced to go into isolation, and her other two sons, Mitch and Stuart, could not come home. It also meant that my brother Chet's family canceled their trip to join us--they had intended to stay with Cindy's family (although one nephew did travel separately later). Disappointment #1.

I had planned an event during this family week for the women of the family, a cream tea at Bingley's Teas, but since our group was now reduced by one-third, I regretfully canceled it. Disappointment #2.

I spent Christmas Eve with my sister Betsy and her family, including my mom. Mitch and Stuart joined that party.

Christmas day, Eric and I had intended to go over to Fiona and Alona's for breakfast--but Eric tested positive that morning and so couldn't join us. His sons subsequently tested positive over the next several days. Disappointment #3.

That evening, Christmas night, I invited over Mitch and Stuart, Cindy's two sons who hadn't been able to go home for drinks and appetizers.

Delia had planned to come to Minneapolis with her boyfriend Chris on Tuesday the 27th. All of us--Fiona, Alona, Chris, Delia, and I tested negative that morning, so I went over to Fiona's and we had our gift opening. Yay! We had planned two more days of get-togethers before Delia and Chris had to head back to Eau Claire.

The next day, yesterday (Wednesday) Mitch called me to tell me that although he had tested negative on Christmas day, he was now testing positive. So now I am in isolation and unable to get together with Fiona's household, including Delia and Chris. I will not be able to see them again before they leave town to go back to Eau Claire. Disappointment #4. I will spend New Year's Eve alone again.

I thought of making another plum pudding on New Year's Eve, as I did last year. What better way to recognize the end of a difficult year than by setting something on fire in my living room? But I have a colonoscopy scheduled for next week and have to start limiting my diet, and I have to avoid some of the ingredients in the plum pudding a week out. That also means I will have no 12th night celebration--I will be fasting that day. Disappointment #5.

I'm grateful that my family and I are all on the same page, getting vaccines and boosters and wearing masks and testing before getting together. But despite our best efforts and diligence and cooperation, people have fallen sick. Omicron is just so damned contagious.

I am trying to keep my spirits up, and I'm glad that at least I did have a few get-together's, and the girls and I got to open our presents together. I will see Eric soon again and we can exchange gifts between the two of us then. But it's still hard, and this still sucks.

Edited to add: I took a rapid test tonight, five days out from my Christmas day exposure (per CDC guidelines), and it was negative.

The background for the card is the charcuterie board I created for my nephews Mitch and Stuart on Christmas night, with a rapid Covid test in the center. Upper left: Covid virus (wearing a Scrooge hat), with a dialogue bubble that reads "Humbug." Upper right: logo for Bingley's Teas with "no" sign. Lower right corner: Fiona and Delia overlaid with "no" sign. Lower left corner: Eric overlaid with "no" sign.

Humbug



Click here to read about the 52 card project and see the year's gallery.

Woo hoo, I did it! 52 collages for the year completed!

Which one did you like the best?

I will continue the project next year, starting a new gallery with my next collage.

I spent it alone. I decided that since 2020 was such a dumpster fire that I should celebrate New Year’s Eve by setting something on fire in my living room. Why not? So I spent the day making a plum pudding (as I did back in 2013) and then set it ablaze. What fun!






Happy New Year!

My sentiment about 2015 is pretty well summed up by alfreda89 on Facebook:

I just brought three kinds of salt to the crossroads. Judith Tarr brought flamethrowers and stakes. Somebody has a machete.

A bunch of us are making sure 2015 *never* rises again."

I hope 2016 goes better. Here's my New Year's manicure to start it off right:

Here's a song that's on my Midwinter list, and it's a lovely song that touches upon Solstice, Advent, and the end of the year and beginning of the new. It's a good wish to send out to my readers near and far. I hope you have a lovely

Jiggernaut - Midwinter (Album: The Well. See it on CD Baby here and on iTunes here)

Blossoms of spring
are the green leaves of summer
then autumn's splendor
will follow the sun
carvings in stone and
seasons encircle
the old year has ended
a new one's begun

Chorus:

Set a light in your heart
to ward off the darkness
set a fire in your heart
to keep till the spring
let the Advent of love
keep us warm in midwinter
find a song in your heart and sing
find a song in your heart and sing

gather regrets
like deadwood for kindling
sweep out your soul
release doubt and fear
plant seeds of joy
let your light flourish
light a fire on the darkest
day of the year

Chorus

Make ready your home
and welcome the stranger
bring what you have
and take what you need
the table is set
the door it is open
love's feast is prepared
and time for to feed

Chorus

keep watch in the night
a new day is dawning
when love and peace
shall blanket the earth
hunger and war
will be all but forgotten
when death will give way to rebirth
when death will give way to rebirth

Chorus

(here's the song in Mog. If I'm doing it right, I think you'll be able to listen to it there.).

This is going to be a good year.

I don't know why I feel that way. I just do. I've been thinking over the past several New Year's days, and seeing a pattern. I usually feel depressed. The grip of seasonal affective disorder is usually pretty bad this time of year, and often on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day I feel lousy.

This year I don't.

I don't know why.

Sure our family is facing a lot of difficult things. But I feel curiously optimistic.

I hope this feeling last, and my conviction is borne out. It feels like a nice change.

We celebrated the New Year as we always do, gathering at my sister Cindy's house, eating hors d'oeuvres and Chinese food, playing the famous White Elephant game and watching movies. Fiona's boyfriend Mitch joined us as well as the boyfriend of one of my nieces, Leigh, and it was fun to introduce new people to our cherished family customs.

Here is my Decrease Worldsuck report for 2010. My commitment dropped away toward the end of the year. I'll try to be more consistent. Still, I think I did do my bit to make the world better place.

Love going out to my family and friends. May 2011 be a blessing to you and yours.

I want to make a post about 2009, mostly to say good riddance. This was a very tough year, more so than I've actually admitted in this journal to my friend's list. For my own sanity, I need to remember the good along with the bad, because I very much need to hang on to that.

The bad: A year of Rob's continued unemployment, and the personal and family strain that resulted, not all of it merely financial. The Bad Thing That Happened in April of Which Elinor Dashwood Does Not Speak in Public, which was one of the hardest and most painful things I've ever experienced. Mental health problems for more than one family member, some of them severe. The theft of the girls' bikes. My knee injury that stopped the karate for awhile (and resultant weight gain), and all the hassle of dealing with it.

The good: The kindness of so many of our family and friends during this difficult year, including the generous gift that gave the girls their bikes again. I can't say it often enough: thank you, thank you. My family is really so grateful.

Even after a year and a half of unemployment, we are still paying all our bills. There are so many others who can not say that, whose situation is so much worse off than ours. I think I have the right to be proud of my careful stewardship of our family resources.

The trip to Mexico that the girls and I took to work at Casa Hogar Elim. That was a truly wonderful and life-altering experience.

The Decrease Worldsuck project and all the good that came of it. I've lost momentum over the past month, due to the reoccurrence of my depression, but I do intend to try to pick it up again. I can honestly say that I've made the world a better place this year, and that's a good thing to say about any year. Take a look at the entire list of what I accomplished here. Isn't it impressive?

alternity was OMG SO MUCH FUN!! (Are any of you still reading it? If so, what was your favorite thing about it this year?)

My girls are thriving, for the most part. They are busy and creative and beautiful and smart and compassionate and interesting and funny and they are turning into remarkable young women before my very eyes. I am so very proud of them.

There is something that makes Rob and I still reach for each other in spite of all our problems and pain. I'm trying to hang on to that.

Here's a wonderful blessing for the new year. Hat tip to commodorified.

Happy New Year's day, everyone. I hope my 2010 is 1000% better than 2009. I wish nothing but the best for you all in the coming year.




Let the Good Guys Win
Paul Hyde, Murray McLaughlin, Tom Cochrane

May I get what I want, not what I deserve
May the coming year not throw a single curve
May I hurt nobody, may I tell no lies
If I can't go on, give me strength to try

Chorus:

Ring the old year out, Ring the new year in
Bring us all good luck, Let the good guys win

Ring the old year out, Ring the new year in
Bring us all good luck, Let the good guys win

May the one you love be the one you get
May you get some place, you haven't been to yet
May your friends surround you, never do you wrong
May your eyes be clear, may your heart be strong

Chorus

May the times to come be the best you've had
May peace rule the world and make us glad
When you see something wrong, make it right
Put a shadowed world into the bright sunlight

Chorus

I've been rather quiet on LJ lately because we do a lot of family get-togethers in the week between Christmas and New Years. Our last hurrah for the holidays is our annual Twelfth Night breakfast; we'll probably take the decorations down after that. (I'd like to make this Twelfth Night cake, but alas, the girls will probably veto it since (horrors!) it has fruit in it. I'll have to come up with something else.)

It turns out Rob's new job will start next week; it took awhile for all the paperwork to get processed. Meanwhile he's getting stuff done around the house that he's been promising to finish for months now.

I've been thinking about New Years and resolutions, as I do every year. My weight took a real jump this past month, partly due to the holidays, of course, and partly, I suspect, due to stress eating--I was really worried about the unemployment coming to an end. I'm not being too hard on myself about it, but I've decided to start tracking my calories again on SparkPeople, and upping my exercise program again, including adding the weight-lifting back in (I'd let it slide when I started biking and especially after the gall bladder surgery, and I never really picked it up again). I think I'll be able to get back down under 150 before too long.

But about self-assessment in general: Kij has been talking to me the past couple of weeks about needing to take a hard look at her own life, trying to figure out what she needs to do. Something she said stuck in my mind, the need to be honest and to face the stuff you've been avoiding. I've been thinking about that this week. What about me, what have I been avoiding facing?

I think the truth that I've avoided saying is that the conviction has been growing in me that I don't think I'm ever going to write a novel again. I don't know why, but the fire I used to have in me to write fiction has gone out. Kij and I talked about it this morning; I said that for so many years I thought of myself as a writer (and for me, that meant specifically a writer of published fiction). Facing this realization means facing the fact that the way I use to identify myself must change--even as I acknowledge a point that several people on my friends list have made to me repeatedly (cakmpls I think, specifically)--that what I perhaps need to do is to quit thinking of myself in terms of what I do (I am a fiction writer, I am a karate student). It's less mind messing is just to accept myself as myself--I am Peg. There are various things I do--I wrote novels in the past, right now I'm studying karate. I may or may not do these various things in the future, but I don't need to let that cause a corresponding upheaval in my own identity.

This realization feels quite sad, although I am, of course saying never say never. Maybe a great novel idea will mug me when I'm in my mid-fifties that I'll absolutely have to write.

But where I am right now, I don't really see it happening.

So I'm putting it out there. The most absurdly neurotic part of myself wonders if there will be a mass unfriending as a result ("Peg says she's not going to write fiction anymore??! My god, why have I have been wasting my valuable time reading her stupid blathering journal? *Defriends immediately*") But fortunately the wiser and mature part of myself realizes that this fear is neurotic; in fact it's absolutely ridiculous. If you were going to defriend my journal because I'm not producing publishable fiction, you'd have done it months ago. Heck, it's been blindingly obvious for months now that's not what this journal is about anymore anyway.

So we simply continue on as we have before. I write essays here. I go to karate. I try to cook dinners my family will deign to eat. I garden. I face the dark and try to reach for the light. I make wry observations. I natter on (and on! and on!) about my extremely silly obsessions. I try to be a better person--wiser, more empathetic, more thoughtful, more politically aware.

I live my life. And it's a pretty good life. I tell you about it. Or as least as much about it as Elinor Dashwood wants to share.

You read. Or not.

Your choice.

I actually like both of these. Maybe I'll do both!

In the year 2007 I resolve to: Fire my boss. Get your resolution here.

(kijjohnson, this reminds me of you).

In the year 2007 I resolve to: Walk on the ceiling. Get your resolution here.