It's my own physical comedy routine...

So I was at the supermarket today and I did something I haven’t done in quite awhile: I ran into something because I was checking out a hot guy.

He was walking in right when I checked out, so the whole walk to the door was me watching him. He walked up to the deli counter and stood there looking at the case while I thought about how nice it would be to be that meat because that means that he would be checking me out. He was black, about my height, well built, and very good looking. Usually, when I see someone like this, I’m far enough away so that when I make a fool of myself, I’m the only one who notices. Oh, but not today.

As I was walking out the door, I had to turn my head almost completely around in order to continue my stare and, well, I slammed my right shoulder into the doorframe, only missing slamming my head by about an inch. Yeah, there was a loud expletive that came out of my mouth. Yeah, it hurt like hell. And, OOOOOH yeah, he saw. And laughed. It was such a sexy laugh, my pain went away.

Until I got to my car.

What's in a name?

Working at Starbucks, I have to write a lot of names on a lot of cups. I can’t tell you how many times people get upset when I write “Megan” instead of “Meaghan” or can’t call out “Rajhamenanae” (Yeah, that was an actual name. I wrote it down on my hand in marker so I would remember it for this exact reason.) Getting snapped at or made fun of out of frustration is really annoying, but I can totally understand. Our names are a huge part of our identity, so having someone disregard the spelling or pronunciation can feel like someone is just disregarding you. My advice? Identify with many different names.

I have 4 names that I go by, the first being the name my parents gave me at birth, Kimberly. The credit goes completely to my mom, who got to name me since my dad got to name my older sister. (Shelby, like after the car. On the up side, Sissy, he could have named you Caroll. You are so not a Caroll.) My mom decided on Kimberly because it was the name of one of her favorite characters from Days of Our Lives. Anyone who wonders about my flair for the dramatic, there’s your answer. The only people that call me Kimberly are my parents when they are angry/annoyed/frustrated with me, my brother-not-in-law Joey, bill
collectors/telemarketers, and Ernesto at work. I have no idea why he uses my full name, but I think it’s kinda funny.

The next one is Kimmi. How I got to Kimmi is long story, but basically, in the 2nd grade, there were 3 Kimberlys. One of us got to be Kimberly, one got to be Kim, and I became Kimmi. I don’t know whatever happened to Kimberly, but Kim and I are still friends to this day.

The third name I go by is Kim. Mostly, I use this one at Starbucks and other places where they need my name for something. If I say “Kimmi,” inevitably it comes out as something different. Kammie, Kally, Kayley, and Kelly most often. The only person that really calls me Kim is Cierra, and she’s been doing it ever since she met me. Sometimes she’ll call me Kimmi and it sounds weird.

The fourth is Queen Kimmi. Obviously, no one calls me that in my day-to-day routine, but it’s still a part of me. I got it because when I was working at Cold Stone the whole “Princess” trend was in full swing. There were princess bags, tees, necklaces, pillows, name tags, and everything else you could possible put it on to express that you were a princess. One of the girls I worked with wore a princess pin on her hat and I mocked her endlessly. One day, she very maturely responded to one of my taunts, “You’re just jealous because you’re not a princess.” I stopped, turned, and said, “You’re right. Why would I want to be a princess when I can be the mother fuckin’ queen?” About two weeks later, got promoted and she made me a name tag that said Queen Kimmi. I’ve gone by it ever since.

So which one do I prefer? It doesn’t matter. I’m Kimmi to most people, Kimberly to others, Kim on rare occasions, and Queen Kimmi always.

January done, February bring it on!

So it’s been a month since I started with my resolutions, which was the original amount of time I had set to reach these goals, so, naturally, it’s a time for an update!

First on the list is updating my blog. While I haven’t been updating as often as I said I would, I do feel like I’ve been doing a great job. I might not be sticking to my resolution absolutely, but I’m ok with that. Really, who wants to read my blog everyday? Other than certain family members…I have found that just the idea of updating everyday has got me thinking more about what I want to write about and it challenges me. And everyone knows I like a challenge.

Second was to quit complaining about work so much. I haven’t completely failed this one, but I do think that I haven’t done as well as I could have. I don’t complain as much to other people, but I find myself bitching in my head a lot more. Some may call it talking to myself. The problem with this, however, is that I’m still spending a lot of energy complaining about a job that I won’t have forever. I should just see it as a short chapter in my life and push all the negative thoughts out of my head. Although, I guess not complaining openly to anyone who will listen is a step in itself.

On the subject of energy, I guess I’ll talk about my daily walks around the block. Much like updating my blog, this resolution has evolved a bit. The whole point of this one was to get myself exercising a little bit each day, so that even if I can’t do a full workout in, I can do something. Plus, a little fresh air is good for me to. (Well, as fresh as the air in the Valley can get.) But, I find myself doing other forms of exercising more. I've never been much for walking, but dancing around in my room to my iPod? So much more fun. Plus, it burns a lot more calories than walking around the block.

So that brings me to making one meal a day at home. I think I have stuck closest to this one. I have been making a real effort to make stuff at home more often, which is making me even more conscious of what I’m eating when I’m not at home. My stomach can’t even take some of the things it used to, simply because it’s not used to it any more, especially fast food. I felt sick all night at work the other night from having greasy pizza, which I used to eat all the time. I guess that’s a really great sign! But I won’t give up my In-N-Out. Ever.

The last resolution I made was to read the front section of the newspaper everyday. (It was brought to my attention that calling it the “front page” implied that I was only reading the front page. Whatever.) Truthfully, I haven’t been doing this. Instead, I’ve been reading the WHOLE ENTIRE NEWSPAPER! Even the political crap that’s boring and I hate. I read the whole thing everyday, and even if I don’t have the time, I read all the stories online, even on multiple news sites. I check them every time I go online. SF Chronicle, LA Times, NY Times, USA Today, and Yahoo! News. I’ve also been watching CNN, Headline News, and Fox News Network almost religiously. Unless, Greta Van Strokemouth, er, Susteren or Bill O’Racisist, I mean, O’Reilly are on, in which case I have to turn off the TV. The trouble is, I’m horrified by a lot of what I read, especially in the Bay Area. A lesbian gets gang raped and a guy gets shot by BART cops all in the same week. But that’s a whole other issue…The up side though is that now every time a kid walks into work with one of those Obama Hope shirts, I can really embarrass him by asking if he knows the artist’s name that created that image. I have yet to find one who does.

So now what? Do I give up, having found success? Nope. Instead, I stick with these and come up with more ways to improve myself this month.

Here’s the list:

1. Get up by 9 everyday. No matter what.
2. Keep my room neat. Jeliz, by the end of this, you’ll be able to walk in my room without attempting to fold clothes or shut drawers.
3. Follow more world news. I’ve got the US, California, and Los Angeles covered, so it’s onto the world.
4. Write more. Not necessarily to post, but just write more in general.
I’ll let you know in 2 weeks how it’s going!

I'll start in the year 2023...

So the other day I wrote about big girls who won’t accept their weight, and, by extension, themselves. Well then I got to thinking. Some of these women won’t accept their weight because they have high hopes of being the next Star Jones. Which is fine. If a person wants to lose weight, I am all for it, no matter what his or her motives are. However, more times than not, these same people don’t do shit about it.

They talk and talk about how they want to lose weight and how hard they are going to work to reach their “goal size.” I’ve seen it a million times and every time it’s the same: I’ll start on Monday. Wait. Monday I have a big meeting and am going to need some comfort food. Ok Tuesday. No, I have so-and-so’s dinner party. Wednesday. Yeah Wednesday is perfect. Except that on Thursday I have dinner at my boyfriend's parent's house and it would be rude to not eat the food his mom cooks. And Friday I have a wedding to go to. Ok, next week. And the cycle continues. Then, instead of going on a diet or starting a regular workout routine, she will either do it for a day or she will put it off until everyone forgets about it.


Here’s the thing: If you want to lose weight, you have to actually do something about it. It doesn’t magically come off. Unless you get some disease that doesn’t allow you to eat for weeks, then you can’t lose it by sitting around. So shut the fuck up and get up and do something. Either accept the way you look or shut your mouth, go for a run, and eat an apple instead of a bag of chips.

This brings me to my next point: Oprah. Don’t get me wrong, I love Oprah. She’s powerful and smart and entertaining, but damn if she doesn’t get on my last nerve with her whole weight gain issue. She’s been up and down for years. Every time she loses the weight, it becomes a major news story about how strong she is or how great it is that she has the discipline to do it. Then, when she gains it all back, it becomes even bigger news. Every single station has a 10 minute segment chronicling the "issue" and every critic has something to say about it. It’s always negative. No one ever admits that maybe, at 200 pounds, Oprah still looks damn good. She might not be able to wear belly-baring shirts, but honestly, her face looks healthier and younger when she has a few extra pounds on her. Plus, I think she is more outgoing and confident when she weighs more. But, for some reason, she thinks it’s best to keep losing a ton of weight, only to gain it back. If she would just pick a weight, whether it’s 150 pounds or 200 pounds, I think she would be a lot healthier. She would also be a much stronger role model.

So, whether you are like Oprah or the silly girls who can’t get themselves started or even one of those women who can’t just accept the way they look, it all breaks down to finding out who you are inside and letting that show on the outside. I had embrace many years ago that I am not perfect, inside or out. There will always be things for me to work on and challenges I have to face. It’s all a part of being human. But, it’s not about facing the challenges; it’s about stepping up and conquering them. If you’re weight is your challenge, then conquer it, don’t just talk about it.

I might be big, but I think it's hot...

I was in Macy’s the other day, shopping in the “women’s” section (because “plus size” is so low class) and I overheard these two girls talking. They were both about my age and one of them was, well, um, on the large size of plus size. The other looked like she could still fit comfortably in youth sized clothes. Anyway, Plus Size keeps picking things up and making a face and putting them back while Size -3 picks up stuff and says, “This would be so cute on you!” and Plus Size makes a face so Size -3 puts it back. Finally, Plus Size finds a great electric blue wrap dress, that would, in my opinion, look fantastic with her blonde hair and fair skin, and she asks Size -3, “Do you think I would look fat in this?” I snorted so loudly to keep myself from laughing that they both looked up.

Her friend, ignoring me, replies, “I think it would look great on you. The color is great and you could wear it with a pair of tights and pumps or boots. I say try it on.”

Plus Size looks at it one more time, puts it back on the rack, and says, “I’ll think about it. Let’s go walk around a little bit.” I just shake my head and walk over to see if they had that dress in my size. (They didn't, I was a little sad, especially because it was marked down from $250 to $60!)

Now, I know it was mean of me to laugh when a fat girl asks if something will make her look fat, but come on. The dress won’t make you look fat, honey. The fact that you’re fat will make you look fat, no matter what you put on. I’m sorry, but that’s the truth. I would have told her that if she had asked me. (Although, props to Size -3 for her tact and encouragement.) Here’s the thing. If you aren’t willing to embrace your body, no matter what size it is, then you will never be able to shop happily, which means you’re missing out on one of the most enjoyable activities of our society.

I see this a lot with plus size women. They are so hung up with making themselves look thinner that they miss out on looking good. They will wear over sized shirts, baggy pants, shapeless dresses, or, on the other end of the spectrum, tops 3 sizes too small, skirts let their ass hang out, and jeans that create the ultimate faux pas, the muffin top. All of these “styles” are worn with the intention of looking thinner, which makes them not only look larger, but sloppy also.

The problem is the idea that is burned into our brains everyday: thinner equals better. I’m not saying that being thin is bad, but why am I going to judge what I think about myself based on someone else’s standards? I can wear clothes just as well, if not better, than every other woman on the planet, so I refuse to look in the mirror and think of ways I could look thinner. I am never going to be small. If I spent my whole life obsessing over that, I would never be happy. So, instead, I shop at stores that carry plus sizes, buy things that fit, and accessorize accordingly. I love the way I look and if other people don’t, then they can just look somewhere else. And if all women embraced this, maybe Queen Latifah wouldn't be the only Über successful plus size woman in the media.

Ah, to be a teenager again...

I think that it’s because I’ve been working a lot of Friday and Saturday nights that I’ve really noticed it. They come in packs.

It’s not just two or three teenagers coming in together, but they literally come with no less than five people. Always. It’s like they can’t go out unless everyone in the whole school can go with them and they can’t do anything without the whole group. Like being loud and annoying.

Ok, so here’s what I see at work. It’s 3:30 pm and school has just let out. Two or three of them will walk down to beautiful Downtown Burbank and either walk around the mall or loiter on street corners or do whatever it is the kids these days are doing. These two or three will come into Starbucks and meet a few other groups and merge into one. Then, they will either hang out there for a few hours, holding tables and chatting loudly about last night’s episode of Gossip Girl and how hot the Jonas Brothers are, or they will go outside and take up the whole sidewalk walking down to the mall where they will aimlessly wander in and out of stores until their parents pick them up and force them to go home.

It wouldn’t be so bad if they weren’t so loud about everything they do. Everything has to be vocalized, but instead of waiting until the others are done speaking, they just speak over each other. It gets so loud that you can barely hear, and the bits of conversation you can hear makes you understand why some teachers become druggies. (If you grew up in Burbank, then you should know some of the great stories…If not, feel lucky)

Now, I totally remember what it was like to be a teenager. But I never went out with that many people. We would go out with three or four of us, unless it was someone’s birthday, and then we would go to dinner in a big group but not walk all over town 20 people thick. I tried thinking about all the other groups I wasn’t really tight with, but even the most popular crowd didn’t go out in large groups like this. We might have all congregated at someone’s house to cause a raucous, but we never did it in public.

I asked my friend’s little sis, Sami, age 16, about it the other night before work. We were sitting there and a group of twelve kids come in, get in line, make a ton of noise and get in the way for every other customer in the store, and then only one of them actually orders something. I asked Sami if that’s what she and her friends do, and she just rolled her eyes at me.

“I’m so over that,” she said. “It turns into too many cliques and someone is always mad at someone else so you have to choose sides because there is no middle ground. I only need a few good friends to hang out with and I’m good.”

Ah, girl after my own heart.

Why read the book when they are just going to make it into a movie?

I don’t know if it’s that I’ve been reading even more than usual lately, or if I just never noticed before, but I feel like there are a ton of movies based on books that have just come out or are coming out.

Not that this is a bad thing. Sometimes, when I read a book, I think about all the ways it could be made into a movie and how cool it would be. I usually have to refrain from comparing a movie to the book, though, because books can go places emotionally that movies just can’t. There are only so many voice-overs or monologues a movie can have before it becomes cheesy and unbelievable, whereas in a book, a reader connects with a character because of the thoughts and emotions that are not necessarily vocalized. Unless of course it's Morgan Freeman doing the voice-over. March of the Penguins was enjoyable just because he narrated it.

I am not one of those people who will go into a movie and be unsatisfied if the movie doesn’t completely stick to the book, either. I hate people like that, actually. There is really no way to stay completely faithful to a book, especially because it would take many hours. People do not want to sit through a 6 hour long movie because the movie makers decided to include every single scene. By cutting out unnecessary scenes, the audience can still enjoy the story without thinking about how many days they have spent in the theater.

Also, think of how much money it would take to film every single scene. The movie industry already spends massive amounts of money on these films, and to add that by filming a scene that can easily be removed or cut out would just be plain stupid.

Sometimes, however, the films just get it wrong. They will stick to the basic story but will lose the point of the novel. Or, they will change some of the main characters so much that they are longer the same character as in the book. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen movie and been disappointed by these changes.

The best example of this that I can think of is The Devil Wears Prada. (The main reason this is my example is because it was on last night.) I read the book before the rights had even been bought, so I didn’t read it because of the movie like I do with a lot of books. I really liked the characters that Lauren Weisberger created, especially Andrea and Miranda. Andrea was seen as an idealistic girl with real ambitions and, most importantly, real emotions. She is frequently angry and smokes and stresses and complains. Not to mention, she doesn’t just walk away from her job like she does at the end of the movie. She tells Miranda off and then gets fired. Who hasn’t once wanted to tell off her boss? By doing this, it allows the reader to see that Andrea is gaining back some of herself. The whole point is that Andrea changed so much because of this job and not in a good way that she has to find herself again and the movie really doesn’t convey that.

Miranda Priestly became human in the movie. That’s the only way I can really describe it, and I hated it. She was supposed to be this superwoman who was manipulative and snobby and bitchy and unemotional that you feel for Andrea. She does not reveal things about her personal life and certainly does not make you like her, but are totally fascinate by her. But in the movie, while Meryl Streep did an amazing job, there is too much emotion in her. She smiles with approval and pride at the end of movie after seeing Andrea. No. There is none of this in the novel. They took the strongest character in the novel and took away a lot of what she is about. Between this and the changes in Andrea’s character, I really felt the movie lost a lot of what the novel was about.

There are lot of these adaptions coming out or that are out already that I am totally looking forward to, despite my skepticism of them. He’s Just Not that Into You is going to be hilarious and since the title literally is the story, I don’t think I’ll have an issue with the point being lost. Confessions of a Shopaholic and The Reader are ones that I haven’t read yet, but am looking forward to reading and seeing. Where the Wild Things Are should be interesting, and I’m interested to see what Peter Jackson does with The Lovely Bones. And, of course, Harry Potter is at the top of my list. Now that they are all legal, I can enjoy it thoroughly…