Author: Katie L. Carroll (Page 115 of 142)

Ten Years Is A Lifetime

April 16, 2012 / Katie L. Carroll

Ten years. That’s how long I’ve been without my little sister, Kylene. The sad thing is I don’t know what life would be like with her anymore. I used to be able to imagine what certain events would have been like if she had been alive: helping her get ready for her prom, attending her high school graduation, the dress she would have worn at my wedding. It gets harder to imagine what her role in my life would be with each passing event.

I only know her up to the 16-year-old person she was when she died. Everything after that is speculation. I can try to imagine what she would look like at 26, but the difference between 16 and 26 is unfathomable. Would she be married? Maybe she would have kids, maybe she would’ve even had her first kid before I had The Boy. Kylene was talented at so many things, I don’t even know what she would have grown up to be.

I like to think she would have gone to NYC for college and majored in something that had to do with helping people but minored in drama. And like I discovered in college that writing was my true passion, she would have discovered acting and singing were hers. Maybe she would be a famous Broadway star. That’s the thing about 16: there’s an endless supply of potential.

For years I’ve been heartbroken over all the potential that died with my sister. Over all the things she never got to experience. Recently I’ve realized how sad I am over all the things I lost since she died. We had a volatile relationship as kids, trying to share a bedroom for many years, me being annoyed when she copied me, her being annoyed when I tried to tell her to be more like me (when I maybe should’ve been more like her).

We were just learning how to be friends when she died. Because she was my little sister and always had a sympathetic ear, she never made me feel bad about my feelings. I can remember having a bad dream and hopping off the top bunk into the bottom bed where my sister slept, showing a vulnerability I hated to admit I had. She didn’t ask for an explanation or make me feel silly for being scared. She was just there for me. Even in our worst fights, she would never, never bring something like that up and throw it back in my face. She kept my feelings safe, no matter what.

I think we would have been best friends now. I wish she had been here to meet my son. I wish she could be here when my first novel comes out (a story I wrote for her, but turned out to be about me). People always say things like, “The dead are with us as long as they are in our hearts.” I don’t disagree with that. I hold Kylene close to my heart. That doesn’t mean I don’t miss her and what my life would have been like if she was still alive.

Signs of Spring

March 31, 2012 / Katie L. Carroll

Here in New England you never can use temperatures to decide what time of year it is. With a warmer than average winter (bad for allergies and getting rid of bugs, but a nice break after last year’s crazy winter), it seems like spring has been around for months.

I know better than to let an 80-degree day in March fake me out with a premature promise of summer. An April snowstorm is always a possibility. Just today it was rainy and damp and cold outside. There’s other ways to tell spring is here, though.

For one the birds are back. I spied a crow taunting a squirrel. The crow clutched what appeared to be a long reed of dried grass in its mouth. The squirrel got real close to the reed, only to have the crow fly out of reach. Then the crow landed back on the grass and let the squirrel approach. With a squawk, the crow hopped away again. This went on for some time, much to my amusement (those pesky squirrels are always stealing my unripe tomatoes, taking one bite, and leaving the rest for me to find) and much to the squirrel’s dismay. I’ve also has a particular blue jay that seems to have made a nest in the forsythia bushes on the edge of the yard. And the distinct who-who-who lament of the mourning dove is back.

On Thursday, the hubby, the bro, The Boy, and I had our first ice-cream-for-dinner event at the Sundae House. The giant sign on their building reads, “It Must Be Spring, We’re Open!” Signs never lie, so you know that it really must be spring!

On Friday as I was leaving work I drove toward what from afar looked like a couple of misplaced lawn chairs blocking the driveway. Turns out, it was a tom turkey strutting its stuff and peacocking (let me just point out what a fun word “peacocking” is) as it tried to court an indifferent lady turkey.

Lastly and most definitively I know it’s spring because the little pea seeds are sprouting in their trays. My mom and dad both stopped by the house and saw the too-tall-for-trays pea plants on my kitchen counter and (independently of each other) said, “You’ve got to get those in the ground!”

What signs of spring have you seen lately?

WIP Wednesday

March 14, 2012 / Katie L. Carroll

Ummm..it’s the second Wednesday of the month…and this is my first blog post of the month…sigh…where does the time go?

FINALLY finished my latest round of edits on Elixir Bound. Over the years I have gotten much better at revising, but I still wouldn’t say I like doing it. I love the thrill of a new idea, letting it marinate in my brain, the tendrils growing into a plot and characters. Furtive moments of writing snippets in my notebook because I just can’t help but get these thoughts on paper. The possibilities are wide open, no disappointment that the words fall short of the image in my mind.

Revision is a slow slog though the vomit of words that made it to the manuscript, have been pored over a million times, and still don’t quite meet expectations. If I have to transform another HAD, WAS, THAT into more interesting language, I might just (oh, JUST is another one of those words I’m trying to cut out!) throw my computer through the kitchen slider.

Wait, what am I talking about? I’ve been waiting years to work with an editor on my manuscript to whip it into publishable shape. In that case, I LOVE revising. Too bad I can’t stop thinking about that new story…the one I haven’t even officially started writing yet. I look forward to the day I am sick of that story!

The world stays the same…or does it?

February 26, 2012 / Katie L. Carroll

After teasing us last September with the news that Einstein might have been wrong, scientists reported on Wednesday the face of physics as we know it is not changing. It appears a faulty cable connection created an erroneous reading of tiny neutrino particles traveling 60 nanoseconds faster than light.

I’m a bit disappointed to learn the way we thought the world worked isn’t changing (as in E really does equal MC² and Einstein had it right all along). Maybe the physicists over at CERN should have done a better job of keeping the lab rats from gnawing on sensitive technical equipment (just kidding)!

Yet just when I thought my imaginings of a new paradigm for the universe was going to be destroyed by such a mundane thing as a bum cable, a report on Friday restored a little of my previous excitement. It seems the faulty wiring could actually have made the original readings wrong in the opposite direction and the particles may have been traveling faster than the faster-than-the-speed-of-light readings.

Say what? So maybe Einstein was wrong and I might still have the pleasure of seeing a major scientific shift in my lifetime. Oh cruel physics…stop toying with my fragile emotions and get some definitive results already!

Magnificent Magnetic Poetry

February 18, 2012 / Katie L. Carroll

The poetry has been building up on my fridge. And the poets have really outdone themselves with this round of magnetic verse. Here’s the latest musings:

squirrel breeze

        dream freeze
                 conscious can
                         gray man (nice rhyming scheme and use of spacing here…I have no idea what it all means, but I sometimes wonder if that’s not the hallmark of good poetry…me not understanding it!)

the devil relax ed with a cold drink after a long night of trick er y (I wonder what the devil’s drink of choice is…wouldn’t it be funny if it was an appletini?)
explore a prostitute s body with random electric fruit s (yikes!)
howl that beautiful morning torso noise (this person must have had beans the night before)
dream s create inspiration between cold shadow s and silent thought s (I wish my dreams did this…mostly they leave me feeling a bit puzzled)
live for more than a memory (very deep, very wise)
spark muse speak music green woman green woman (the use of repetition here indicates the author has a great understanding of literary techniques…or an unhealthy obsession with the Green Giant’s girlfriend!)
imagine a friend and she will come a live (kind of cool, but also kind of scary)
emotion s bleed the heart wrench the mind expose our soul and leave us naked (my favorite of the bunch, no explanation needed!)

The Hubby came up with the idea of hiding some of the overused words. “Prostitute,” “Pickle,” “Explore,” “Naked,” “Skeleton” come to mind (and pretty much anything else that can be manipulated into a dirty phrase). Although as we can see from the above lines, those words still offer thought-provoking options. “Prostitute” still should go…not much you can do with that word that isn’t dirty!