Hey, Ho! You're Fo!!

OMG!!! It's Pharonsquare's 4th birthday!!! Can you even believe it? I've been spilling this drivel online for an absurd FOUR YEARS now and somehow keep tricking you guys into coming back. I feel like I should have grown and have some important life lessons to share with you now.

But I don't. Instead, I have evidence that I threw a surprise party...for my blog. That's the same as totally being a grown-up, right?!

Here comes my blog. She has a blindfold on and has NO idea what's about to happen...shhh!

Hehehe...SURPRISE!!!!!!!!

Hooray!!! Pharonsquare, it's your birthday!!! Now, let's get you something to wear:

BALLLLLLER!!! Now, onto the treats!!

Oh, Pharonsquare, thanks, but I can't eat that giant Costco cupcake because I ate 6 1/2 pounds of delicious bread today. But you! Go ahead and enjoy, lady!!

So....yeah. That's kind of all I had planned. What should we do now?

Great idea! I'll drink some wine while you browse Reddit. And then we'll do something SUPER FUN!

Shoot, hold on, blog. Let me quick watch this ep of Pretty Little Liars. Can you entertain yourself?

Whoa, nice scarf you've knitted, Pharonsquare! Gimme like 15 more minutes of just watching TV and then we'll party. Do you have a book or something you can read?

Okay, just lemme....hold on....I was going to plan something big here, but. Wait. Yes, no, wait 'til commercial break. Sorry, just one more second....

Oh hey! Look at you! You've gone and won a trophy!!! And a BLOGGY, nonetheless! What's that say? "Pharonsquare: Boringest Blog"? Oh, well, okay. That's cool, right?! Congrats!!

Well lady, it's been a priiiiiiiiiitty important day full of super fun Fun and surprises. I gotta say: I'm exhausted from all the crazy fun Fun we've had and all the awesome surprises. Mind if I just nod off here on the couch? Cool...

Well, Happy Birthday, Pharonsquare. Four years is a long ass time to do anything, but thanks to all my crazy readers who keep checking in and motivating me to keep writing. You guys are the real heroes...

Eye Sore

My sister Prinna Gchatted me last week with this helpful reminder: "Don't sleep in your contacts, Pharon. I just got back from the eye doctor and turns out, that's super bad."

Most people probably wouldn't need this reminder. But I spent approx 10 months straight, sleeping in my contacts and having a piece of plastic inadvertently glued to my eyeballs during college because I thought "Hey, college girls have enough trouble navigating their dark apartments at 4 a.m. for a glug of water from the bathroom sink with a bloodstream full of Kamikaze shots. Why add near-sightedness to the equation?"

But I have since stopped doing that and diligently take my plastic miracles out every night. However, I'm not so good with the "then throw the plastic away when they are covered with calcium deposits and your eyes start burning with every blink," part of the contact maintenance plan.

So it was not surprising that my last pair of contacts was littered with calcium deposits. Every blink was equivalent to walking in the summer while wearing a dress and having your inner thighs grab on to each other for dear life. It was unpleasant.

I spent a few weeks wearing my glasses to avoid the painful chore of seeing. It was fine. People thought I was smart. I felt like I could do math. But I was getting blinded by sunlight and hangovers were tough to hide when, instead of my baggy eyes being covered by stunna shades, they were magnified by 4-inch thick lenses.

I knew I had to go to the eye doctor. But I kept putting it off because I didn't know where to go. Geo insisted "Just go to Mayo!" which is where our insurance apparently lives. However, I am boycotting Mayo because...well, just because. So I googled "eyeball fixers" and found a place nearby. I called on Friday, had an appointment on Monday.

I hate eye appointments. I do. They make me feel like the last stop of the Survival of the Fittest test. At my appointment, the lady was all "Okay, take off your glasses. Now look ahead of you and tell me if you can read what's on the screen." I saw some sort of shape with some black spots inside it, which I could only assume were letters." I lied and said "I can almost make out the bottom line" because I didn't want to be excused to the extinction line.

Then she very quietly laughs and says, "Okay, you can put your glasses back on." So I do and I see that the shape in front of me is actually a picture of one giant E. That's it. There are no top lines, bottom lines, or anything even resembling anything besides one stupid letter. I had failed. It's been nice knowing you, evolution.

Whatever...the appointment continues and the results are in: I have terrible eyesight and will forever be a stain on the dreams of a perfect civilization. But to make matters worse, a man then reminds me that, as is the case in every other nightmare eye appointment, I'll have to have my eyes dilated.

For those of you who don't know what that means, it basically means that they drop some horrific drops into my eyes, my mascara smears down my face and suddenly my pupils are the size of Mars. I'm like an anime character. Oh, and with all that light pouring into those engorged pupils, I also can't see anything between my nose and whatever is like 2 feet in front of me. "Will I be okay to drive home?" I ask. The doctor says "Sure. You don't live far, right?" Yeah. Because you only need sight when you are driving across the country.

Anyway, I have myself a brand spankin' new pair of contacts and (literally) a better outlook on everything. And I made myself the same promises I make myself after every eye appointment: I WILL take care of these eyeballs of mine. I WILL avoid the calcium deposit debacle. I WILL look into Lasik.

Nobors

Okay, so I've been off the blog scene for a minute. SO MUCH has happened. Oh wait, no. Almost nothing has happened. But, I DID make it through the toast at Madeline's wedding with zero drama. It was short, sweet, and only sort of awkward. It was...a non event. Score.

So back to real life. Geo and I actually drove into the Cities tonight to have dinner with some pals and I had a lobster roll that did NOT taste like it came from the ocean then loaded onto a boat, into a truck, into a freezer, into a restaurant warmer and then into my mouth hole a week later. It was DELICIOUS.

We drove back to Rochester afterward and I was a bit (super) bummed and missing Minneapolis. As we pulled into our little complex, I saw the lights on at our neighbors' house. I was intrigued. Thurs. night at 11 p.m. and they were still up. I wish we were friends.

See, there are a couple guys who live two doors down from us. The only things I know about them are that they have a giant TV (the box is in their garage), grill, drink a lot of beer, watch football in the fall and one of them has devil sticks that he likes to play with after work on his balcony. I've wanted to be friends with these guys for MONTHS.

Geo thinks they are on weird and on serious drugs. He cites, primarily, the devil sticks. He tells me they are bad news and we don't need to mess with them. That only makes me want to be friends with them EVEN MORE.

I've always loved knowing my neighbors. I mean, my first friend in life was Claire, who lived right next door to me growing up. From there, I went to the dorms where no one ever closed their doors and everyone was always welcoming guests. Then I moved back to Minneapolis in an apartment building where I knew my neighbor was a hoarder and caused the major mouse infestation in the building. When I moved in with three guys, we knew our neighbor was CRAY and would start fights with her boyfriend only to chase him out into the street and fight in public for our amusement.

I love knowing who my neighbors are.

But here, I am left to make my own assumptions because no one wants to talk to me wants to socialize.. The 50-year-old guy to the right of me has a baby who cries all day long and the dude tears out of the parking lot listening to very loud hip hop. I assume he is the most terrible parent of all time...or the deafest person who can't hear his child screaming bloody murder at 9 a.m., 11 a.m., 2 p.m. and then at 4 p.m. because his World's Worst Rap album is set on 11. The people immediately to the left can't figure out their garage door and always leave it 25 percent open. That's all I know about them. I assume they are in some sort of cult because I've never seen them and they seem pretty stupid.

Then there's the two-doors-down guys. They are young and have a bunch of friends who come over and watch sports and barbecue all in the comfort of their front patio overlooking everything. They are out there for the world to see. Hiding nothing. Are THESE the kind of guys that are on drugs? I think not.

And yet, Geo frowns on the idea of me strolling over some afternoon and asking them to hang out. Maybe it's their tie-dyed "curtains" that hang askew in the front of their house or maybe it's the strong "LSD-y" vibe he gets from them, but I don't care. They seem like the best time I've seen in Rochester ever and I need to make it happen.

So tell me: How does a gal approach a house of dudes with whom she'd like to hang out without her husband getting mad or coming off as a creep? I'll admit, I'm a tiny bit afraid of the devil sticks, but I'm 100 percent sure I could get used to it. And I'm 200 percent sure I wouldn't regret getting to know them. What do you think? Should I head over there?