Glimpses

I used to be really good about posting pictures on Facebook...like annoyingly good. As in I was that girl-the one who would take pictures of absolutely anything and then post them with what I thought were clever captions. Lately I've been neglecting my pictures...I have so many that have yet to be posted! From study abroad to some photos from my last year in college, they've been hiding in the depths of my computer. But due to my love affair with my iPhone and iPhoto, I've been getting better about posting on Instagram. But for this post, I figured I'd post a couple snapshots, "glimpses" if you will, of the past couple weeks in Los Angeles.

1) My view from my office at work. I can't get over it.

2) A group of some wonderful friends before line dancing. Yes. Line dancing. In San Dimas, California, there lies a Texan-Western bar where there is a lot of flannel, a lot of cowboy boots/hats, and yes, a lot of dancing. Highlight of my night: the Cupid Shuffle coming on and and me and Ashley shrieking because of some pretty fabulous Meredith memories :)

3) I've had the same barista at work for a month. This is one of the many spelling variations of my name:

4) Sunset in Palo Alto. I've never felt more at peace.

5) Living so close to the beach means lounging here and not moving for hours:

The Sick Day

Yesterday I was feeling kind of sick...you know that achy, nauseated, most-likely-a-twenty-four-hour-bug-thing? Totally what I have. So today, I took today off. Thankfully my nice boss, Alex, sent me a sweet e-mail telling me to "load up on 1,000 milligrams of Vitamin C every hour." However, when I woke up in the morning after sleeping for nine and a half hours (this rarely happens), I realized that I lacked the following:

1) Coffee

2) ...real food.

My neighbors upstairs were blasting Lil Wayne music, so I figured that while this was going on, I may as well be productive. So I put on an old Meredith shirt, threw on a pair of yoga pants, and drove to Trader Joe's in downtown Culver.

Downtown Culver is one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen. Palm trees, lots of fun and cute places, and hidden in the corner by Washington Boulevard is the Trader Joe's that I've started to claim as "my" grocery store. Lately I've been loving grocery shopping-not necessarily because I'm getting food (though in this case by the time I got to the coffee grinder, I was practically dancing with happiness), but because about two months ago the staff over there started treating me as a "regular." As in they remember the random details about my life that I don't even remember saying. Today a bunch of workers asked me how I liked the chocolate oatmeal cookies I had bought last time and if the wine I had bought for a party was well-received. Another lady, a sweet older one, asked me if my quest to find a colorful bookshelf was almost completed. Someone else asked me if I had fixed the imploded keyhole in my car (....no.). It was so sweet that they remembered and put me in a really great mood.

I was standing by the coffee grinder trying to figure out how to make it work (I have pretty much come to the terms that I'm not technologically inclined), when a new worker came up to show me. While we were waiting for the whole thing to grind, she leaned her face up to the machine and took a big sniff. "It's the little things," she said with a smile. "Ya gotta remember that."

So true.

The Three Necessities

"As I've gotten older," actor Jason Segel said in a speech. "The things I care about have whittled down to three things: my family, my friends, and being nice." He's one of my favorite actors and my admiration only grew. This is a concept I think a lot of us have lost somewhere along the way: being nice.

I think in a place like Los Angeles, where it can be very cutthroat and cruel, it's easy to lose sight of the important things in life. Instead, there are those who are so wrapped up in their own insecurities and are so twisted in trying to be "the best" that they cut others down in the worst possible ways. Now, as a girl from North Carolina, raised properly by a loving (albeit fabulously dysfunctional), I was taught that at the root of human existence is the characteristic of being kind. And lately, I've been questioning my need to "be nice" when it feels like the people who surround me are, in fact, bullies.

I talked to one of my closest friends today and she told me this: "We're nice to those who aren't because they're unhappy. They're hurting in some way, and whether they call you fat or talk about how they're going to exploit a weakness, they're insecure and cowardly, and those are the ones who need us the most."

She's a wise one, my friend.

I believe in this statement: "Always be kinder than you feel." Seriously. It'll bring a smile to your face. And I promise, whether you want to teach someone "a lesson in dumbass-ness," make a comment about how someone appears to be socially awkward, or even go to the point of jeering at the fact that if 2012 were to ever wipe out the human existence, certain individuals would be the first to go, not saying it may actually make you feel better. Being a bully? Not impressive. Not attractive. And not how we as human beings should conduct ourselves.

My three necessities parallel Segel's:

1) My family.

2) My friends.

3) Being kind.

Maybe it's something we should all look into.

Viva 23!

This year I came up with a catchphrase for turning 23: "Viva 23!" As in, HOORAH! Big Girl World is about be owned. Hilary always makes me laugh because she incorporates the good with the bad. For example: "Hilary, I have a pimple." "Well...VIVA 23!" And today, she joins me in 23-year-old Land.

Happy, happy birthday sweet pal of mine!

Love Never Dies: My Romance with Google

A very thoughtful life quandary. At least I thought so:

The Not-So-Sparkly List

One of my favorite quotes of all time is by famed producer, director, general "everything man" Mel Brooks:

"If you're quiet, you're not living. You've got to be noisy and colorful and lively."

I came across this quote randomly and felt it jump out at me, like someone had literally taken the three adjectives that I would want someone to describe me as being and made it real.

And then I started to cry. And bear in mind, I do not cry prettily. I actually suffer from the UCS (Ugly Crying Syndrome), where my eyes burn and get all red, my snuffles sound like a foghorn, and my throat starts to close, making me panic, and do the kind of breathing I imagine women going into labor do. I haven't felt 'noisy and colorful and lively' in awhile. I just felt like everything that I had been so hopeful about once the new year started, was starting to shrivel into nothingness. Oh, and it could also be because, yes, it is That Time of the Month. You know, the IT. Surfing the crimson wave of hell. So as I sit here with my heating pad and hot water and lemon (and as I re-read this sentence, I wonder if I've turned into a ninety-year-old woman), I am composing a new list. A Grumpy List.

Why 2012, A Seemingly Sparkly Year, Has Currently Turned Me Into A PMS-Y Cynic:

1) I have writer's block, in the worst possible way. I'll get an idea, I'll sketch something out in my notebook...but then when I sit down to type it out, I...can't. I don't know why, but everything that I write sounds horrible. And I erase every single thing I write because it isn't what I wanted and then there's nothing. Then I get cranky.

2) I feel like I'm still putting on an invisible jacket of, "Please don't swallow me" every time I step out of my apartment. I love LA. I do. But I get so antsy before I leave, mainly because I am convinced today is the day a truck is going to take my life as it barrels down a 40-MPH road. I get into these moods where if I have everything I need (food, water, various social media outlets, face wash, a full DVR, coffee maker, and a sushi takeout menu), I really don't have to leave my space. So the Kiran Cave goes into full effect, with me applying to more jobs, hating my writing, doing yoga in front of my lifted television, and not leaving. I am social. I love being social. I am not used to exploring on my own, especially when I feel like all I do is get lost and panic as my car shakes on the highway.

3) I can't find my chocolate-covered Cheerios. Also, our DVR is full of Criminal Minds. This is not good for my sleeping habits.

4) I can't find my CamCard. Duh, I'm not a student but I want it. And plus, there was a gift card to Target in there. Dammit, WHERE IS IT?

5) I still need to unpack.

6) I am really starting to see that in "the business," sometimes if you have a plan, it really doesn't matter. At all.

7) My Words With Friends account FORFEITED all of my games because I didn't play while I was at home. So now it says that I lost a bunch of games, when really, with the exception of my roommate, I was kicking everyone else's ass.

8) MY THIGHS TOUCH.

9) An old professor of mine told me I should think about doing stand-up, and all I can think about is having a panic attack on stage and having NOTHING TO WRITE ABOUT.

10) I would just really like all of my friends to live in the same neighborhood. Because I miss them and the fact that they know me really well and that I don't have to start over.

11) My ex-boss has not paid me, yet I still have access to his social media accounts. Hmmm.

12) I think my dad snuck one of his shirts into my suitcase on purpose. Because now I miss home all over again. Stupid girly monthly visitor.

13) My next post will be positive. Perhaps I'll go out and take pictures of all of the hot men I see.

The Grooming List: Some Thoughts

This may be TMI, but you're choosing to read this of your own free-will, therefore I will not worry. My eyebrows are like the hair atop my head: they grow quite quickly...like scary-quick. As in, I can go get my eyebrows done and then the next week I am wondering why a very long and dark caterpillar has decided to take residence on my forehead. There have been many days when I bemoan the idea of being a woman. Don't get me wrong, I celebrate the female gender: I love my girly shoes and clothes and the fact that the male species has to hold the door open for me. But then I look at men with their (sometimes) sexy facial hair, fully grown brows, and hairy forearms and legs and get mad that somehow my gender has to be the one to groom. Though I don't take a stance like Norma Rae and grow leg hair long enough to braid, I curse every time I have to make a trip to my version of a grade A torture palace: the waxing facility.

When I was eleven, my mother decided that while I had a penchant for tube socks (see a couple posts below), didn't really know what to do with my "she could either be a member of Lionel Richie's band or the ethnic Orphan Annie" hair, and baby fat along with boobs that could knock a dinosaur over, my eyebrows did not have to suffer and that I should be more girly. Therefore, she took me to a beauty parlor to give my eyebrows a "shape". During the whole car ride I was alarmed at the idea that someone was going to stencil triangles into my brows, making me even more of a "quirk-ster" than I already was. However, what happened was much worse.

My mom loves Middle-Eastern beauty parlors because they do threading. Threading, in my opinion, is what could bring even the most ornery of criminals confess to their crimes. A lady, most likely the height of a smurf, takes two pieces of what looks like floss, creates some sort of Cats Cradle shape within their hands and goes to town on your eyebrows. It can be painful at times, but mostly it just feels awfully uncomfortable. That day, I was already anxious because it was my first time and I got seated next to a woman whose moustache rivaled the late Pavarotti's. So anxious that I started to shake and accidentally kicked the smurf/woman doing my eyebrows. Needless to say she quit. I'd like to think she found a higher calling.

I am a creature of habit. I have been going to this beauty parlor since that fateful kicking day, and each time it doesn't get easier. The results are always fabulous ("Oh my GOD, I don't look like the caveman from that commercial!"), but you'd think I was about to be pushed off of a cliff. In California I haven't found a place I like-the first place I walked into, one woman was dozing in her chair if that's any indication. So I waited until I got home. This morning I looked in the mirror and knew that my sweet caterpillar had to go. Therefore, my latest list compiles the thoughts that went through my head while I was being made presumable for the public:

1) "That damn floss again. Shit, what's that? It looks like there's something on it...is that...oh God, is that food on the floss? What the...? Oh, no, it's not. Wait. Why is it moving?"

2) "If I were a war criminal, this is how you'd get me to confess. No waterboarding necessary. Just put me in this chair and threaten to wax my legs, I'll start talking within seconds."

3) "Still, it'll be nice to have shapely eyes. They are starting to run together."

4) "Oh, God, oh, God, my heart's racing. No, no, no, this is how people have strokes. Just breeeeeathe. You're doing great! You'll look infinitely better than your neighbors back in LA...people were probably starting to think you were related because of eyebrow similarities."

5) "Man, eff this. Why can't guys get waxed? Do they know how much we do to look 'pretty?' I'm going to start carrying around wax paper ready to go and just start chasing the random passerby."

6) "OH, GOD, HERE SHE COMES. Why is she smiling? Biatch."

7) "Different smurf. She just looked at my eyebrows and judged. I know it. I hope she gets in kicking reach."

8) "STOP SHAKING, KIRAN. YOU'RE TWENTY-THREE YEARS OLD. GROW UP. Oh, God, I'm twenty three..."

9) "Is this what's going to happen if I become a successful actress? I'll have to get groomed every week? Maybe I can start a new wave of actresses...bring back the Neanderthal look."

10) "OW."