A Love Worth Celebrating

By Kathi Macias

February is quite a month, isn’t it? Shorter than the other eleven, it honors everything from past Presidents to groundhogs. But by far the most celebrated holiday of the month is found smack-dab in the middle of it: Valentine’s Day.

Personally, I’ve never been too enamored of the chubby little baby with the bow and arrow who flies around trying to zing people into falling in love, but the sentiment is nice. To be honest, though, the actual holiday doesn’t appear to be based on such light-hearted frivolities as exchanging chocolates and cards and jewelry. The most commonly accepted start to the holiday came—at least so far as legend tells it—by way of a beheading. It seems a Roman priest performed weddings against the Emperor’s orders and paid the ultimate price. So how did we get from someone getting his head lopped off to lace and candy and sentimental poems?
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“I’m Still Sixteen Inside!”

By Kathi Macias

Every now and then I have one of those days when I understand what my grandmother, “Omi,” used to say so many years ago: “My body is getting old and worn out, but inside I’m still sixteen.” We grandkids would laugh and wonder what in the world she was talking about. Now Omi has long since graduated to heaven, and I am slowly but surely taking her place as the “oldie but goodie” in the family. Still, most of the time I feel relatively healthy and energetic; yet, as I said, there are days…

At no time are those days more evident than in January. Years ago I looked forward to January, as the month represented a new year, a new start, new plans, new resolutions…and a new membership at a new gym. And in those days, I actually used the memberships. Now? To be honest, I no longer waste the money to sign up.

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Christmas Shopping—Bah, Humbug!

By Kathi Macias

I am not a shopper. Seriously! Shopping—particularly Christmas shopping—is right up there at the top of my “despised things to do” list, right along with root canals and skydiving. (Okay, I’ve never actually experienced skydiving, but I promise you I’d hate it. I mean, you don’t have to get set on fire to know you don’t want to be a human torch, am I right?)

The worst thing about shopping is that you really can’t get out of it. When I was a kid, Mom used to drag me and my two younger brothers along on the bus just so we could trudge up and down Main Street and plod in and out of every store along the way. (That was before shopping malls, if you can imagine that!) My feet would hurt, I was mad because I wanted to be home reading a book, and worst of all I had to “keep an eye on” my two little brothers. Oh, that was fun! While Mom pawed through piles of sweaters and socks and underwear—none of which we kids had the least interest in receiving as gifts—I halfheartedly tried to keep my brothers from getting into trouble. They, on the other hand, were completely devoted to finding some new and innovative way of disrupting the entire shopping event. Of course, as I stood there bemoaning my fate and feeling absolutely wretched over the entire state of affairs, it never occurred to me that it wasn’t exactly a walk in the park for my mom; somehow I was under the illusion that she actually enjoyed it!

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“Baby Steps”

By Kathi Macias

“What About Bob?” has to be one of the funniest movies I’ve ever seen. I’ve laughed my way through it many times, which is highly unusual for me, as it’s a rare film that holds my interest more than once. I’ve asked myself what it is about that movie that intrigues me—beyond the obvious, which is that it’s a story about an over-the-edge neurotic who carries his goldfish in a water pouch around his neck and endears himself to his therapist’s family through his eccentric but winsome ways, even as he infuriates the therapist himself and eventually drives him over the edge. As humorous as that is, the most memorable part of the movie is a simple two-word phrase: “baby steps.”

When Bob learns his therapist is going on vacation and won’t be able to see him for a while, the poor man is panic-stricken. He informs the doctor that he simply cannot function that long without him, so the therapist advises him not to be overwhelmed by the situation but to approach it with “baby steps.” We then see Bob proceeding through the movie, reminding himself at every juncture: “Baby steps, baby steps, baby steps….”

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Thanksgiving…Again?

By Kathi Macias

Didn’t we just do Thanksgiving? It couldn’t possibly have been a year since the last one because I promised myself I was going to lose those extra turkey-and-mashed-potatoes pounds but…I haven’t! How can that be?

Seriously, when I was young I could lose ten pounds by skipping lunch for a few days. Now? Turkeys follow me around laughing. They know they’re not the only ones who are going to pay the price for this calorie-laden holiday.

I remember Thanksgiving when we were kids, when my mom started baking on Monday for Thursday’s feast. She was so busy preparing for the big day that she forgot we still had to eat until then. Between Sunday and Thursday of Thanksgiving week, we survived on dry cereal and cold hot dogs.

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