Category: Kai Strand (Page 4 of 7)

January #InkRipples: Traveling the World and Beyond

January 4, 2016 / Katie L. Carroll

You’d probably believe me if I told you that in the last year, I’ve traveled to Waterbury, CT, several towns in upstate New York, New Orleans, and the Biltmore estate in North Carolina. You’d have no reason to doubt me if I said my travels included a small town in middle America full of cornfields or if I mentioned visiting Hawaii.

But what if I said I’ve also been to an empire inspired by Ancient Rome, several planets in distant galaxies, and a kingdom full of dragons that can take human form (twice!)? And that is only a handful of the many, many places I’ve been. Now you might be starting to question my honesty, or possibly my sanity. I can assure you, however, that I have been to all of these places.

Seraphina

You want to know how? Books! (Just in case all the book covers above didn’t tip you off to what I was talking about.) 😉

With two kids under the age of five, my days of wandering the bookstores of London, swimming with the sharks in Tahitian waters, and running marathons in Alaska (all things I’ve done in the flesh) are currently limited. For now I have to rely on my imagination to take me places.

And you know what? I’m kind of okay with that. I love traveling to new places and old favorites, and I’m sure I’ll get back on an airplane one of these days. For now I’ll content myself with cracking open (or writing) a new story because I can travel anywhere in between the pages of a book!

Interested in seeing what I’ve read this year? Check out My Year in Books on Goodreads. Where did your favorite books take you in 2015?

#InkRipples is a monthly meme created by me, Mary Waibel, and Kai Strand. We pick a topic (January is all about travel), drop a ripple in the inkwell (i.e. write about it on our blogs), and see where the conversation goes. Be sure to check out Kai’s and Mary’s posts this month. We’d love to have you join in the conversation on your own blogs. Full details and each month’s topic can be found on my #InkRipples page.

December #InkRipples Celebration and Gifts

December 14, 2015 / Katie L. Carroll

Before I get to the month’s post, I wanted to share a few things about #InkRipples. Kai Strand, Mary Waibel, and I have decided to continue the meme into 2016, and we’d love for you all to join us (I’ll tell you how below)! You may have noticed we have a new streamlined name of #InkRipples (formerly Ripples in the Inkwell) and brand new images to go along with it.

We also have a new set of monthly topics for discussion in 2016:

January – Travel
#InkRipples February – Chocolate
March – Feminism
April – Poetry
May – Memories
June – Movies
July – Inspiration
August – Guilty Pleasures
September – Banned Books
October – Masks
November – Heritage
December – Cookies

How can you participate? Glad you asked because there are lots of ways. The idea of #InkRipples is to toss a word, idea, image, whatever into the inkwell and see what kind of ripples it makes. We provide the topics and will be blogging about them on the first Monday of the month. You can spread your own ripples by blogging about the topic any day of the month that fits your schedule, just be sure to include links back to the three of us please (Katie – https://katielcarroll.com/blog/, Kai – http://kaistrand.blogspot.com/, and Mary – http://waibelworld.blogspot.com/). Or you can simply share your thoughts on social media using the hashtag (#InkRipples). Or even just comment on one of our posts. Tag us and we’re always happy to share your posts and thoughts to keep those ripples going and intersecting.

There is no wrong way to do #InkRipples (with the exception of following basic human decency!). It’s about having a conversation, sharing ideas, and connecting. So if this sounds at all interesting, please do participate in whatever way you can. And feel free to use any of the meme’s images (created by the wonderful Mary Waibel). I’ll include them all at the end of the post.

Now for the last #InkRipples of 2015: Celebration and Gifts

I’m always a little reluctant to admit that I’m not very religious (I guess because I feel like people will judge me for it). My husband and I both come from Catholic families, but we don’t practice it ourselves any longer. We’ve always celebrated Christmas, but it’s more about spending time with our families than a specific religious tradition.

Now that we have kids, I’m struggling to figure out how to make the holiday about more than giving and receiving presents, and Santa. I suppose we could discuss Jesus and how he was an important man and what he stood for (because we do emphasize Christian philosophies with the boys, even if we don’t tie them to religion per se), and that Christmas is his “birthday” and that’s why we celebrate. I’m not sure how meaningful that will be to them, though.

Thinking about this has made me wonder what Christmas means to me. Family, first and foremost. Most things for me come down to family. But what else? Is there more? Should there be more? A spirit of giving perhaps. Something beyond that. A spirit of generosity and goodwill toward others…which is something that we try to instill in our boys all the time, not just at the holidays. So maybe not that in and of itself.

I think I need to ponder it some more for myself before I can guide the boys in the right direction. How can I help them understand what Christmas is about if I’m not sure? Maybe they’ll come to have their own meaning of Christmas as they grow.

Anyway, this is just me thinking out loud. I guess for now I’ll muddle through it as best I can (which seems to be how it is with most of these big parenting type subjects!). What do the holidays mean to you and your families?

(And here are the #InkRipples images you may use!)

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November Ripples in the Inkwell: Where Did My Memory Go?

November 9, 2015 / Katie L. Carroll

November’s Ink Ripples topic is remembrance/thankfulness, and I’m taking up the latter for my post this month. I have a really good memory, at least I did until I had kids. I had heard that being a mom messes with your ability to remember stuff, but man, I didn’t expect it to mess with me so badly.

I am now the type of person who needs to keep lists in order to remember anything, like anything at all. And all those precious moments of the kiddos that at the time I thought I could never, ever forget…yeah, if I don’t have a picture of it or if I didn’t write it down, it’s gone…forever!

I’m not sure what it is about motherhood that has fried my brain. Maybe it’s the lack of sleep. Maybe it’s because I primarily hang out with little ones who have the attention span of, well, a 1-year-old and a 4-year-old and it’s rubbing off on me. Maybe it’s that I’m now keeping track of two other people and have to remember all their stuff for them.

Did so-and-so go to the bathroom lately? Did we brush teeth this morning? Who needs to get dressed today (probably me!)? Is it bath night? Who has a doctor appointment this month? And now that The Boy is in school, there are a whole slew of other things to keep track of. Pretty much the only thing we never forget is eating. No one forgets to eat around here!

I’m told that eventually my brain will regain its former glory of being able to remember something for more than five seconds. I’m skeptical but hopeful…

Wait, what was I talking about again?

Inkwell meme green Have you joined the #inkripples movement yet? Ripples in the Inkwell is a monthly meme created by Kai Strand, Mary Waibel, and Katie L. Carroll(me!). On the second Monday of each month, we post on a particular topic. The idea is that we toss a word, idea, or image into the inkwell and each post is a new ripple. There’s no wrong way to do it and we’d love for you to participate (full details here). Be sure to provide a link to your own #inkripple in the comments! Look for details on next year’s ink ripples topics in December!

October Ripples in the Inkwell: Anxiety Dreams #inkripples

October 12, 2015 / Katie L. Carroll

For our October Ripples in the Inkwell (#inkripples) Kai Strand, Mary Waibel, and I are discussing fear/things that go bump in the night. My mind immediately went to nightmares.

It is well-known among my friends and families that I have very vivid, often wacky dreams. I’ve even been lucky enough to have the occasional lucid dream (in which you are aware you are dreaming, and may actually be able to take control of the dream…pretty cool actually, and I always end up flying when I can!). That also means I’m subject to realistic, terrifying nightmares.

I’m more prone to having nightmares when I’m feeling anxiety and stress. A couple of common stress dreams I experience with some regularity are the one where I show up for the final test of a class I haven’t been to all year and the one where my teeth fall out or crack.

More likely than those two dreams, though, is a recurring anxiety dream that has changed throughout the years. When I was very young, I can remember having lots of dreams about wolves chasing me, and I would wake up sweating, my heart racing. At some point during my adolescent the go-to stress dream turned into dinosaurs stalking me (one reason why, to this day, I have a hard time watching any of the Jurassic Park movies).

After The Boy was born, my anxiety dreams were often about the end of the world. Usually they would start with me seeing something strange in the sky and then aliens would strike or there would be some kind of widespread terrorist attack, and I’d be trying to protect my family.

And lately, my nightmares have taken the form of zombies (you won’t catch me watching The Walking Dead ever!). What’s interesting about these dreams is that the zombies don’t get a lot of “screen time.” It’s more the constant threat of a zombie attack that causes the panic.

Aren’t you so glad to have a glimpse into my dreams? What kinds of nightmares have you all had?

Have you joined the #inkripples movement yet? Ripples in the Inkwell is a monthly meme created by Kai Strand, Mary Waibel, and Katie L. Carroll(me!). On the second Monday of each month, we post on a particular topic. The idea is that we toss a word, idea, or image into the inkwell and each post is a new ripple. There’s no wrong way to do it and we’d love for you to participate (full details here). October is all about fears and things that go bump in the night. Be sure to provide a link to your own #inkripple in the comments!

Totally Random Ripples in the Inkwell Post: Dog Days to Buttercup

August 10, 2015 / Katie L. Carroll

Have you joined the #inkripples movement yet? Ripples in the Inkwell is a monthly meme created by Kai Strand, Mary Waibel, and Katie L. Carroll (me!). On the second Monday of each month, we post on a particular topic. The idea is that we toss a word, idea, or image into the inkwell and each post is a new ripple. There’s no wrong way to do it and we’d love for you to participate (full details here). August’s topic is dog days and/or things that drag you down.

I’m going with the dog days part and I’m gonna see how many different ripples I can include in this post because this is honestly how my brain works. I think of one thing, then it leads to another, then it leads to another, until I come out the other end with something totally unrelated, like a game of telephone (do kids still play that or is that a very out-of-date reference?). So here goes:

Whenever I hear the term dog days, I immediately think of the song by Florence + The Machine called “Dog Days Are Over.”

But of course, dog days actually refer to the hot summer months (which are July and August in my part of the world). They are called the dog days because at one time they coincided with the rise of the star Sirius, the brightest star in the sky (it’s really a binary star, but it appears as one star, not two, to the naked eye). Sirius is part of the Canis Major constellation and is known at the dog star.

But when I think of Sirius, I think of Harry Potter’s godfather, Sirius Black (who doesn’t). I watched all the Harry Potter movies several times before I realized Gary Oldman is the actor who played Sirius in the movies.

In fact, it was only after watching The Dark Knight for like the hundredth time that I realized Sirius (Gary Oldman) is also Commissioner Gordon. The Dark Knight is one of those movies (along with The Shawshank Redemption and Clueless, among others) that I always watch when it’s on TV.

The Dark Knight is one of my husband’s favorite movies (and probably one of the last ones we saw in the movie theaters together because since having kids we hardly ever go to the movies, that and movies are crazy expensive these days). It’s a fitting favorite for him because he is affectionately called Batman by some of my family members.

This started back when my oldest nephew (who is now 16 years old) was a baby and couldn’t say my husband’s name very well. One day he said it and it sounded just like “Batman” and the nickname stuck.

Unfortunately I don’t have any cool superhero nicknames, but I was once dubbed “Buttercup” by some of my soccer teammates. They got this crazy idea to wear these hideous tuxedo shirts with ruffles as jerseys (it was a co-ed team and it was the guys who thought this would be fun). So they printed up numbers on these shirts and put silly names on the back. I was the only person who fit into the yellow “Buttercup” one, and then the team would sing The Foundations song “Build Me Up Buttercup.”

Totally random post, right? And so far removed from dog days at the end there. Did you notice, though, that I managed to bring it back full circle to a song? So some semblance of order amid the chaos.

Hopefully you’re not drowning in all ripples. And I’d love to see you add your own ripple this month. Make sure to link to it in the comments so I can check it out, and don’t forget about Mary’s and Kai’s posts.