Peg Kerr's Blog, page 5

Happy Thanksgiving!

I have many reasons to be grateful. One is that these two beautiful girls are home from college for the weekend.

Happy Thanksgiving from our household to yours.



This entry was originally posted at http://pegkerr.dreamwidth.org/1742937.html. There are comments on the post.

New Manicure

Delia's home for the holidays, which means it's manicure time. Since it's the holiday weekend and I don't have any job search meetings set for awhile, I can be a bit more whimsical. Today's theme: The Marauders' Map. I did it this time. Got a little wobbly on my right thumb, but I re-did it and it looks all right. Rather pleased with the overall effect.



Delia's is more artistic, featuring fall-colored dots and a turkey.



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52 Week Collage: Week 12

The card for the week before last, of course, was obvious. And you've seen the picture before.

Week 12: Sixtieth
Rob celebrates his 60th birthday.



Actually, I'll admit I cheated a little. I bought a new color printer/scanner and printed this out on matte photo paper. However, by the time I glued it to the card, sprayed it with fixative and scanned THAT, the photo was blurred out. The original photo wasn't terribly good quality, either, which didn't help. So I just swapped out the original photo .jpg into the scan for posting this digital version. The actual card doesn't look quite as good.

So I just have last week's card to catch up and then...good heavens. That's thirteen cards. Which means we are already a quarter of the way through the year.

This entry was originally posted at http://pegkerr.dreamwidth.org/1742371.html. There are comments on the post.

Uhhh...

Strangest sentence read today:

"Regardless of our diaper choices, we are saved by God's grace alone, through Christ."

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52 Week Collage: Weeks 9, 10, 11

I was sick during our regular collaging time several weeks ago and then minnehaha K. was out of town. We finally got together and caught up several weeks at once. I'm still one week behind.



The Wordle is taken from a flyer my sister Betsy did that gives directions to the cabin where the Alternity crew had their retreat. I sprained my ankle while we were there, and synecdochic offered me some her ace bandage to wrap it up. It just so happens that the sign of the Protectorate in Alternity is a green Ouroborus, so I took a sliver of the bandage and put one on the card.



Yeah. I got back from the retreat and spent the next several days in bed. Combination of recovering from the sprained ankle and fighting off the crud.



Fiona and I have been getting together to watch 'Outlander' and I've got her reading the books. The bicycle is a reference to a pretty fraught and revealing dream I had that week that tied into Outlander. There is a long explanation that ties the together very tightly, but it's pretty personal, so Elinor Dashwood isn't going to explain.

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Happy birthday to Rob

Happy birthday to Rob on his 60th birthday!



We brought Delia home from college for the occasion for the weekend. Today, my mom took us out for lunch to The Cheesecake Factory, where we indulged. Thanks, Mom! It was a lovely weekend spent with the girls, and a quiet celebration which suited Rob exactly.

This entry was originally posted at http://pegkerr.dreamwidth.org/1741792.html. There are comments on the post.

Happy Veteran's Day!

In honor of my dad, Allen Kerr, who served in the United States Navy:




Today is Veteran's Day (I'm sneaking this under the wire) and Friday would have been his birthday. So I post these two pictures from another occasion, his wedding day with my mother, as they're the only pictures I have right at hand of him wearing his uniform.

This entry was originally posted at http://pegkerr.dreamwidth.org/1741556.html. There are comments on the post.

CaringBridge: Good news and...inconclusive news

We've had two trips to Mayo in the past two weeks and have received both good news and inconclusive news. Good news: surgical site (Athena's old quarters) is healing, and PET scans show old cancer sites are dark. Inconclusive news: there are some new glowing areas on the PET scan in his neck area...but we aren't sure whether it's cancer or not. Read further on our CaringBridge report (see link).

Read the post at our CaringBridge here.

This entry was originally posted at http://pegkerr.dreamwidth.org/1741223.html. There are comments on the post.

Pumpkins!

Happy birthday to my friend from college, Minnesota children's book author and illustrator David LaRochelle, who had an article published on the front page of Minnesota Public Radio about his famous Halloween carved pumpkins.

Here is a video interview from a few years ago, showing David's techniques.

Pro-Pumpkiner from Ben Garvin on Vimeo.

This entry was originally posted at http://pegkerr.dreamwidth.org/1740901.html. There are comments on the post.

pegkerr @ 2015-10-20T17:01:00

Week 8: Encouragement
You are a strong, powerful woman, no matter how defeated or nervous you may feel.



This card is strongly tied to last week's card, Fall. In fact, this week's creation was entirely due to reaction to last week's.

When I created Fall and posted it, I sent the link to Delia (away at college) because, after all, it was our conversation about her art assignment that inspired the card in the first place. She sent me a beautiful e-mail in response and I've received her permission to post it here:

Sorry this reply took so long.

I really like that card. The blog post on it was very thoughtful and insightful, and made it a bazillion times cooler once I really understood the meaning.

I hope things start to feel a little better very soon. Imma preach a bit here. I know you know this stuff, but I'm going to remind you of it.

I know from experience, that dread feeling you were talking about gets you nowhere. Try to focus on today, the now, and you'll feel a whole lot better. (Obviously you have to think long term sometimes, but keep that to a minimum.) Cutting down on focusing on my future to do list or stresses helps me focus more on my tasks at hand, so I have less to worry about later because it's already done or no longer stressful. It also helps me enjoy the Sparkling Moments life gives me, without feeling guilty or stressed or even miss them all together. I hope that makes sense.

I know how hard it is to stop yourself from worrying about things and retraining your brain. It feels pretty much impossible at first. But with practice, you can do it. I know you can. You are a strong, powerful woman, no matter how defeated or nervous you may feel. I know you can and will get through this. We all will. If something is important, we find a way to make it happen, right? Finding a job is important, yes, but your quality of life is extremely important as well. You can do this.

Thought this might be a good song for you on this topic:
I Will Get There

"I will get through the night and make it through to the other side."

And you will. You will get through this, and you will be stronger because of it. I love you to the moon and back, Mommy. You are amazing and you can do this, no matter what.

I believe in you. I trust you. I love you.

Delia

(Bolding is in the original).

I was so touched by that email, and I thought about it a lot this week.

Now, I was in church this Sunday, struggling with a coughing fit, and as I have about a million times over the past three months, I pulled out a Halls honey-lemon cough drop and started sucking on it. The coughing is due to asthma (yes, I am also taking Zyr-tac and using an inhaler). But in this instance, for the very first time, I noticed the writing on the wrapper. Note: I have been unwrapping these cough drops for months. I saw the slogan they use: A PEP TALK IN EVERY DROPTM and realized what else was written on the wrapper: affirmations. Lots and lots of affirmations, exactly like Delia's email. And the layout of the card bloomed instantly in my mind, just like that.

So for this week's card, I dug some of the wrappers out of my purse and others out of the waste paper basket (there were plenty to choose from) and cut out the affirmations. minnehaha K. suggested and provided a paint that would blend in the background (because the black of the prepped card would be a stark contrast). The sentence that describes the card came right from Delia's email; she even helpfully bolded it for me.

I think I'm just about as pleased with this week's card as I was with last week's. Perhaps not as pretty (well, Delia is, but not cough drop wrappers!) but it is certainly spot-on with the theme of the week.

What do you think?

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