Category: Family (Page 25 of 27)

Celebrating the Accomplishments Made Later in Life

November 22, 2009 / Katie L. Carroll

The hubby turned 30 today, and he’s kind of been freaking out about this milestone birthday for some time. The other day he said something along the lines of, “Well, I may as well just die now because I’ll be 30 soon and my life will be over then anyway.” (He was kidding, of course, but I’m pretty sure there was a kernel of truth to him feeling that a certain aspect of his life would be over once he turned 30.)

In honor of this momentous occasion, here are some major accomplishments people have made after the age of 30:

As chronicled in the movie “The Rookie,” 35-year-old Jim Morris makes his Major League Baseball debut pitching for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays.
At the age of 37, Julia Child begins her culinary career by enrolling in the Le Cordon Bleu cooking school.
Also at the age of 37, Tom Hanks wins his first Oscar for his role as Andrew Beckett in the movie “Philadelphia.”
John F. Kennedy becomes the youngest man to be elected into the office of President of the United States of America at the age of 43 years and 236 days.
At the age of 52, Ray Kroc, with the support of Maurice and Richard McDonald, franchises the hamburger restaurant McDonald’s.
In an act of civil disobedience, 61-year-old Mahatma Gandhi leads the approximately 200-mile long Salt March.
At the age of 73, Charlie Chaplin becomes a first-time father when his son Christopher is born.
The first of edition of “Roget’s Thesaurus” is published when Peter Mark Roget is 73 years old.
Anna Mary Robertson (Grandma) Moses begins her career as a painter at the age of 76 years old.

As for my thoughts on age, I maintain the argument that you’re only as old as you feel and that each birthday is a time to celebrate that you’re still here, alive and kicking. I, for one, can only wish that my younger sister (who died when she was 16) got to see 30. Imagine all the things she would have gotten to do with an extra 14 years. That’s why, although I don’t relish the idea of getting older, I try to embrace it as an opportunity. Not everyone gets the opportunity to grow old, so I am honored each time I reach another birthday and try not to let it bother me as I continue to grow old(er).

Celebrating New York Yankees Style

November 5, 2009 / Katie L. Carroll

Last night (or maybe early this morning) the New York Yankees won their 27th World Series Title. Woohoo! If you know anything about me, you might know I’m a bit of a Yankees fan (that’s me a few years ago at the old Yankee Stadium).

How big of a Yankees fan am I? Well, this year I dressed as Derek Jeter, my favorite current player. I was boycotting having to dress slutty. (Since when did dressing up for Halloween for a woman over the age of 15 mean looking super slutty?) Halloween is about living out your dreams by pretending to be whatever it is you want to be. Well, I’m already sexy, so I don’t have to pretend to be that. And who wants to be slutty?

My Derek Jeter costumer really did fulfill one of my childhood dreams. When I was three, I used to tell everyone I was a boy (identity crisis…maybe?), but my reasoning was perfectly logical. I knew girls didn’t play for the New York Yankees. I wanted to play for the Yankees. Therefore, if I told everyone I was a boy, I would be allowed to play.

And it wasn’t just I wanted to play baseball. Nope, I wanted to play for just one team. I even went so far as to refuse to wear my red baseball cap. Red was Red Sox colors; no way were you gonna catch me in red. I was all about my little navy blue cap.

Some people might wonder why I’m so excited about a baseball team. What is so great about your team winning a championship anyway? The truth is, I’m not sure I really know. I suppose there’s the living-vicariously factor and the excitement of rooting for the best team in the world, but I think it comes back to making connections.

A sports game is a good excuse to get together with your friends (and eat crappy food without feeling too guilty about it) and getting a little rowdy. I love any environment where it’s perfectly acceptable to yell obscenities at the TV. Plus, when you watch or attend a game, there’s a certain camaraderie between all the people watching, even if they’re strangers. If you ask someone about where they were during a certain memorable game, they always have a story, and then you can share your story with them.

Last night I somehow ended up watching the game all by myself (the hubby a Red Sox fan…boo…so he went to bed). Just before the last out, my dad called from Florida (he and my mom are there on vacation). He asked, “You watching the game?” I replied, “What kind of fan do you think I am? Of course I’m watching the game.” I had taken my parents to the airport earlier in the week and my dad had mentioned that he told God that he didn’t care what happened with the NY Giants this year, all he wanted was for the Yankees to win the World Series.

I was really honored that my dad called me for the last out. I had turned the volume on my TV way down and had put the radio on to listen to the end of the game (something my dad does all the time). The TV was a good five seconds behind the radio, so I heard the call before I saw it. I was quick enough to hold the phone up to the radio so my dad could hear John Stirling (the Yankees radio announcer) yell his signature, “Ballgame over! The Yankees win! Theeeeeeee Yankees win!”

Then I heard my mom whooping in the background (she had had a whole three beers!) in celebration. It was the middle of a night on a Wednesday in November, but the Yankees winning the World Series made it a special night. And I got to share a few moments of it with my dad.

Answering the Tough Questions from Kids

August 17, 2009 / Katie L. Carroll

I spent last week relaxing in Vermont; not exactly a jet-setting type of vacation, but one that was much needed. The room in which my husband and I stayed had a bird’s nest on the outside sill. It had three little blue eggs (most likely robin eggs) in it.

(This was taken through the window…hence the weird glare)

When the kids (my 10-year-old nephew, 4-year-old niece, and 3-year-old nephew) arrived in Vermont, they all had to see the eggs. The novelty soon wore off for the boys, but my niece was a little obsessed with them. Every time she came downstairs, she just had to see the eggs. Then she started asking all these questions about the eggs.

Now, my niece is very curious (as most 4-year-olds are), but trying to answer some of her questions has gotten me into trouble before. Recently, I was wearing my dragon-claw necklace, and my niece wanted to know all about it. She loves when I make up stories, so I told her one about how I defeated a dragon and took his claw as a souvenir of my triumph. It sounds a bit gory, but I kept it pretty tame.

At some point during the story, my niece wanted to know what color the dragon was—I think I said it was blue because that’s what color the stone in the necklace is—because clearly that’s a very important detail when you’re fighting a dragon. Then she asked why the claw wasn’t blue anymore, and I said I had to dip it in metal to preserve it. “What’s preserve?” she asked.

Somehow my explanation led to how living things—including people—decompose when they die, which I told her means they turn to dirt (I guess they really turn to dust, but dirt was easier for her to understand). She looked at me with big eyes and said, “I don’t want to turn into dirt.” I told her she didn’t have to worry about that because she wasn’t going to die for a very long time and hoped she would forget about it.

Well, she didn’t. My niece now periodically asks her mother about when she or Grandma or whoever is going to die and turn into dirt. Mostly she thinks about this right before she goes to bed. My sister is so very pleased with me!

Anyway, back to Vermont. My niece asked, “When are the birds going to hatch?” I don’t really believe in lying to kids (and my sister is pretty straight-forward with them), but I didn’t want to repeat the turning-to-dirt episode, so I told her eggs usually only hatch in the spring and since it’s already summer, these probably won’t hatch.

She was okay with that for a little while, but not for long. “Why aren’t they going to hatch?” Luckily, my sister and my mom were there to answer these questions, and I was off the hook. My mom said that without a mommy bird to keep the eggs warm, the babies inside can’t hatch. “Where’s the mommy bird?” My mom explained that maybe the mommy bird had to leave the babies. “Why would the mommy bird leave?” Well, no one really had a good explanation for that. We said that maybe the mommy bird was hurt, or even died, because some times that happens in nature, but none of our answers were really good enough.

I realized while we could give her scientific answers to her questions, they weren’t really the answers she was looking for. And really, don’t we all still have those questions? Why would a mother abandon her unborn offspring? Why do animals have to die? Where do they go when they die? Why do bad things happen to innocent beings?

I’m not sure what’s harder: telling my niece that these bad things happen or not being able to really explain to her why these things happen because I don’t know the answer myself.

Dumb, Dumber, and Dumber-er Jokes

July 14, 2009 / Katie L. Carroll

The hubby, my brother, and I were watching TV the other evening when the hubby made a joke (many of our jokes revolve around the shtick of one person saying something like “That’s stupid” and the other person saying “You’re stupid”). Later my brother made a pretty bad joke and the hubby said, “That was even dumber than my joke.”

I quickly said to the hubby, “Hah! You just called your joke dumb.” My brother responded (and this is so typical for the two of them to gang up on me!), “Not necessarily.”

That got me thinking…which always means trouble. I argued that in order for joke B (the bro’s) to be dumber than joke A (the hubby’s), joke A has to be dumb as well. In grammar terms, that means there has to be the positive (definition 20)—dumb, tall, beautiful—in order for there to be a comparative (definition 4)—dumber, taller, more beautiful.

Of course, the hubby and bro decided that I was wrong. My brother said, “So does that mean the statement ‘You are dumber than Bill Gates’ says that Bill Gates is dumb?” I said, “Yes.” Just like it doesn’t make sense to say “My brother is smarter than a pencil” because the pencil really doesn’t possess any qualities of smartness, it wouldn’t make sense to say someone is dumber than Bill Gates if Bill Gates doesn’t possess some quality of dumbness.

Now it might make sense to say “My brother is sharper than a pencil,” which at least makes more sense because—although in a punny way—the pencil and my brother both possess qualities of sharpness. Yet, it isn’t really that simple, but we’ll get back to that later.

The boys continued to argue for their point, and the debate really just went in circles for awhile. I think I may have eventually convinced them that from a purist point of view, there really should be a positive in order for there to also be a comparative, but in the real world, it’s just not practical to interpret a comparative statement that way.

For example, a guy says, “That chick is way hotter than that butt-ugly one.” From my argument, he’s saying that the butt-ugly chick is on some level hot, which is not at all what he meant to say. Unless, and this is the real sticky point in this whole thing, you take into account the negative side of the positive.

I know, how convoluted can we get here? But stick with me because I think my brother has an interesting point (and, oh, how I hate to admit that). Can the opposite of the positive (dumb versus smart or hot versus ugly) be considered on the same scale? In that case, you could say someone is dumber than Bill Gates and not have Bill Gates be dumb at all. Instead of the positive of dumb, Bill Gates would be the negative of dumb (i.e. smart) and the comparative would still work.

Definitely something to think about! And for all of you brave souls who made it to the end of this post, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this topic.

Running in the Land of the Midnight Sun

June 16, 2009 / Katie L. Carroll

The summer solstice rolls in on June 21st, ushering in the warmest days of the year (at least for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere). This is the longest day of the year, which when looking at the symbolic meaning of lightness and darkness, means we are truly approaching the high point of the year.

My father once said that the summer solstice always makes him want to jump in a car and follow the sun north to see how long the day will last. My sister and I sort of did this one year. We actually hopped on a plane—not the one we were hoping to get on, but that’s a story for another day—and headed north…first to Seattle (which we weren’t supposed to go to) and then finally to Anchorage, Alaska.

We were there to run the Mayor’s Midnight Sun Marathon (find our results here…look in the 5:06 range). We raised over $11,500 for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, thanks in large part to sponsorship by William B. Meyer, the man and the company.

We have many, many, many stories, adventures, and pictures (which are all from the pre-digital age, so they have to be scanned in before they make it on this blog) from our marathon training and that trip. You may read about it in our memoir Loose Bowels & Butt Chap (see comments). Oh wait, it’s not yet published…okay, it’s not even written yet. This is a good start, though.