The Write Stuff

Seething. I was all prepared to write a blog ranting rationally pointing out the flaws of a recent development in my living situation, but I need to just shelve that right now. I can't unwrite the things I want to write at this moment. I can't unsay that I think it's downright communism to have to pay, however LITTLE, for my neighbors use of our washer/dryer. Especially after being without HEAT for three days. Oh, didn't I mention the heat went out AGAIN? Oh, because it did. I just, I don't, I can't...I shouldn't write in this state. I have to move on.

Non sequitor! I am SO sick of my handwriting. Is that weird? This afternoon, while making a “To Do” List, I started testing out different “R”s and “E”s and “G”s throughout the list. What’s that, Charlie Sheen? You want your crazy back? Sorry, I’m kind of using it right now. I came to the conclusion, however, that penmanship (rude! – penWOMANship!) is not exactly my forte. Trying to read my writing is like trying to get through the Danger Above level in Angry Birds without cheating. That is, to say, very difficult to do, and typically not worth it in the end.

I remember all through middle and high school, this one group of “popular” girls all had the EXACT SAME HANDWRITING. It was like they wrote in their own, programmed font and it was kinda creepy. You could seriously tell when a girl was making the leap from “average and well-liked” to “Dudes, meet me at my Jeep Wrangler and lets just go get manicures instead of going to History”. You could tell, because all of a sudden, she’d turn in her homework (intermittently now) and her letters would be all boxy and strong, and smooshed together. Exhibit A:

You better believe I tried every day for many many moons to write like that. You know, so I could trick the other girls into thinking I was popular too. I was doing my homework one night and I tried writing the crazy hard, tight letters. It was really tough and my hand started to cramp up. I switched the pen around in my hand so that it came out between my pointer and middle finger instead of between my thumb and pointer finger (you following me?) It kind of worked, actually! I was all “Yeah! I better start saving for my leopard-print steering wheel cover today!” But then my mom walked in and said “Ugh, what are you doing? It looks like you’re writing with your FOOT!” Foiled.

I still don’t like my handwriting, popular girl or not. Lately, though, I wish it was just really freaky neat and people would say “Pharon, could you come and write this nasty hate letter to this idiot who double parked? Your handwriting is totally the best!” There are times at work when I’m filling out forms and I’ll have to go over a whole line with white-out, because by the end of the sentence, even I can’t tell what I’ve written.

The point is, when I have to start signing autographs (and I know that day will come), no one will know what I've written, which is nice. Or terrible. I haven't decided yet. But maybe I should only worry about perfecting my "Best Wishes! Hope you can read this illegible mumbo-jumbo!"

All the Best,
Pharon

Show Us Your Beads!

Alert! Alert! I've been browsing the Kate Spade website for over an hour now, periodically adding items to my Shopping Cart and then quickly removing it, lest I quickly click "BUY" in a spontaneous fit of Spade Lust. I need an intervention. Aw, but those tidbit plates are sooooooooooo cute! NO! No. Must. Write. Blog.

Okay, I made it. That was close. I was thisclose to rationalizing my way into a new bag AND new rain boots. Priorities, Pharon. Anyway, Happy Fat Tuesday! Apparently, Fat Tuesday is officially the the last day to gorge yourself silly before fasting begins on Ash Wednesday (tomorrow). Silly me, I always thought it was "An awesome reason to go out in sequins and fake eyelashes on a school night". (Not that I ever really needed a reason, but oh well.)

During college, my friends and I would get all snazzed up and go celebrate this "holiday" we knew nothing about. All we knew was that it was a big night in New Orleans for some reason, and there are bands and stuff, but as far as we were concerned, it was a pre-St. Patty's Day party. But with more beads. We'd all go out and throw on 10 pounds of beads, find some feathers, trade some girl a glow bracelet for a masquerade mask, and dance around drinking fruity drinks. We may not have really known what we were celebrating, but trust that we were celebrating. Yay! Mardi Gras! (Or something!)

I don't think I've gone out for Fat Tuesday since college. Sad. Now it's just plain ol' "Tuesday". And, depending on what I've eaten that day, it may or may not be Fat. Tonight, for instance, I'm at home watching Teen Mom with the roommies in our freshly HEATED house (yes, we have heat again!). To make it worse, I missed a text from Geo asking if I wanted to go out for a late dinner/drinks, because I was too busy NOT shopping online. Laaaaaame!

There are no parades in my 'hood today, no sparklers, no sequins or feathers. The only things I indulged in today were too much Crystal Light and Angry Birds. Ah, the life of the aged. I've changed, I know it. I talked to Madeline today and we both decided our lives were sorely lacking the fun and spontaneity of our younger years. She's way out in Chicago, I'm in frigid Minneapolis, and I have a feeling neither one of us is going out and tossing beads around like it's our job. (Madeline, you BETTER not be having that kind of fun without me!)

On the plus side, I did just snag a highly coveted hair appointment at a salon Kim recommended (but is apparently impossible to get in to), so maybe my indulging will start on Friday when I'm enjoying a Stella Artois at Salon Stella, getting my burlap-y hair snipped, and gearing up for a crazy fun weekend. And before that I've got Happy Hours, shopping, and Skype dates with Madeline planned. Turns out my Fat Tuesday this year is turning into Fat Week-After-Tuesday. I'm psyched. Mardi Gr-awesome!

I Didn't Realize Mars Could Be So Cold

If you could have seen me 10 minutes ago, you'd fall off your bar stool laughing, guaranteed. I just finished playing Kinect, wearing sweatpants, fleece socks, a long sleeved tshirt, fleece sweatshirt, giant abominable snowman jacket, and mittens. The good news is, I obviously look AMAZING. The bad news? It's all because our heater went out AGAIN. I grabbed the bull by the horns and called our maintenance man posthaste this morning. Good news? He came out right away. Bad news? He couldn't fix it. A "specialist" is coming...TOMORROW MORNING. So, it's a brisk 55 degrees in my stupid, old, drafty house. Sometimes I hate this place so much I would consider moving back in with my parents. But I'm not leaving tonight out of pure stubbornness.

The heater was a, uh, point of contention between Geo and me this morning. He was home when the maintenance man came, and was the unfortunate messenger of the bad news via text to me. "Heater's broken. Specialist coming tomorrow tomorrow to fix it."

Being the calm, cool, collected woman I am, I shot back "That is NOT OKAY. We can't NOT HAVE HEAT FOR A WHOLE NIGHT!" (Yes, the all caps was necessary because I was screaming inside my calm, cool, collected head.) Here's the thing: Geo is very laid back and believes there's not point in complaining about something you can't fix. I, on the other hand, believe that COMPLAINING has historically FIXED a number of problems.

Then here's where the fighting came in. Geo says "If it's too cold and you can't handle it, go to your parents house." Well, I never! I'm sorry. I must have missed the Biology class when it was explained that men's skin is made of steel and Snuggies, and women's skin is made of tissue paper and butterfly wings. (Hence, the reason I'm determined to tough it out at my house all night tonight.) Okay, so I respond to him: "Yeah, thanks for the advice." He replied with a (seemingly) patronizing explanation of how a heater works, to which I replied, "Thanks for the explanation." He told me to stop being a jerk, and I told him to stop talking to me like I was four years-old.

We had reached a stalemate. His insistence that he was just trying to make me calm down fell on deaf ears. I told him that all he needed to say was "I feel your pain" and let the whole "Hey, Crazy, you're sooooooooooo freaking out right now!" fall by the wayside. Men! I immediately dialed up Kim to vent, and SHE got it! She was all "OMG, I'd be so mad at the heater guy if I were you! I said "All I wanted was for him to just side with me and say it sucks and then act like he's upset too." She laughed and said "This whole idea was JUST on Modern Family the other night. Men just can't even PRETEND to empathize when a woman complains. A guy just launches into ways he'd fix it, or reasons why the problem wouldn't bother him like that."



I get that Geo doesn't understand the point of venting about something I can't do anything about. But what he (and the entire male population, apparently) doesn't get, is that SOMETIMES IT FEELS GOOD. I do it to express my disappointment and frustration. I like to commiserate with other people. It's fun and it makes me feel better. So I have one, teeny little outburst over a totally sucky situation, and he goes all "Operation: Immediately Point Out the Futility of Complaining".

Why, Men? WHY must you do this? Here's a hint to you: You don't sound smarter or more practical or more effective when you try to rationalize with a woman who is ranting. Sometimes, you sound like a jerk. Sometimes, it's OKAY to not have an answer/solution/response to everything I complain about. Sometimes? It's okay to just say "Ugh, that is so lame. I feel bad you have to deal with it." Or even, "I know..." paired with a sympathetic nod and maybe then like a pair of diamond earrings or something. I dunno, I'm just brainstorming here. The point is: I'm not trying to start a fight WITH you, I'm trying to get you on my side so WE can fight whatever abstract thing is ruining my day. Get on my side, would ya?

Well, Geo came home and started a fire (in the fireplace - which is, arguably, a better idea than the one I had of setting our couches on fire and breakin' out my shorts), and it's helping a great deal. I've been able to unzip my giant coat a couple inches (although he's still struttin' around in a pair of jeans and a thin hoodie, insisting it's "just not that cold"). I guess, given the great temperature gap, it only makes sense that men are indeed from Mars and women from Venus.

That's Quite Enough

Geez, who DOESN'T have a birthday this time of year? Real quick Birthday Shout Out to my very awesome, lifelong friend CLAIRE! It's her birthday today, so feel free to call her up and harass her with birthday wishes.

Call this The Weekend of Things That Didn't Quite Happen. I was supposed to hang out with Ally on Friday night, but I didn't. I couldn't quite muster up the energy to get off the couch to go out. I'm lame. Saturday, I finally bought a Kinect. Yay! After doing the math, I believe I worked out (read: dancing/playing Kinect Adventures) for approximately 6 hours straight on Saturday. Which means I didn't quite get to the Y to open a membership. And on Saturday night, I was going to try and get out to the local legendary bar Psycho Suzi's to meet up with some disgustingly awesome chicks with whom I used to work. I didn't quite make it, what with the post-"workout" nap and impending trip to the airport to pick up Geo. Then today I had big plans to go on a little shopping spree but ended up with like 2 measly shirts. Not quite the "spree" I had anticipated. In-Between Season shopping is so not good. It's still snowing out. I can't bring myself to buy any tank dresses, Urban Outfitters. Not quite ready for that.

Today, I forced Ally to play Kinect with me for a little while. After my third dance performance for her, I discovered she wasn't quite as into it as I was. I cut her some slack and we went and ate wings and had a beer instead. So very ladylike.

Ally is about a year and a handful of months younger than me. I tried, in vain, to explain to her that getting older is not quite awesome. We talked about our twenties, and how awesome they are. All those life lessons, and things learned "the hard way" are so worth it, we decided. But then we were talking about our sisters who are, like, born-again twenty year-olds. We both have sisters who did the whole "marriage/house/kids" thing in their twenties, and now their kids are basically old enough to stay home alone, so now our sisters are all goin' to Mexico and staying out too late drinking mojitos. They're like rich twenty-somethings. Ally and I both wondered silently if the grass really is greener on the older other side. Who's to say? Neither me nor Ally is quite qualified to answer that question.

Anyway, I did manage to clean my room, though. I found things on my floor that have been there since Christmas. I'm not quite up to snuff on my cleaning these days. But the sun finally shone through our windows today, and the amount of dust I could see on everything instantly made my eyes water. I wanted to pre-emptively Spring Clean, but we all know it's obvs not quite time for that. So instead I made a sub-par attempt at doing laundry. I had a load of whites sitting in the washer for over 24 hours. Whoops. Meh. I don't need socks quite that badly yet.

And I made it out for my weekly excursion to Target, but, as I've mentioned before, Weekend Target is just not quite right for me. Too busy, not enough carts, too much time to browse, not enough money to buy everything I want. Left to my own devices for that long, I ended up buying the Kinect but forgetting to buy soap. So I wasn't quite as fresh-faced as I usually am.

Okay, so I didn't quite get everything done I needed to do this weekend. It's okay, though. Next weekend is jam-packed with birthday parties and fun times. But it's not quite time for that yet. In the meantime, I'm going to have to get the haircut I couldn't quite manage to schedule this weekend, and eat some vegetables that I couldn't quite work into my weekend diet of pasta and Skinny Cow ice cream sandwiches (omg, they are so delicious, yet so horribly named. It's like the person who named them also named Dress Barn. It's just not quite right).

I had hoped to have a well-prepared blog for tonight, too, but, alas, I didn't quite do that now, did I? Oh wells. I think I'm going to get a couple dance routines in before bed, because I'm not quite sleepy yet.

Miss. Elaneous

Well, for the first time in the history of this blog, I'm gonna have to phone it in. I just got home from Wine Night hanging out with Lana and Val and I'm officially exhausted of good topics. I got nothin'. Between the three of us, we solved a number of world issues. From jobs to boyfriends (I believe Valerie wins all contests because her boyf works in Hollywood and I get to enjoy the perks of free pre-released DVDs of Oscar-winning movies) to appropriate wedding etiquette, we nailed 'em all.

It's late. I'm tired, and I just had a frighteningly grown-up conversation with Geo, so I'm drained. I keep sitting here, waiting to write something all clever and/or profound and yet I continue to come up short. There's something about some good ol' female conversation that knocks the complainy/deep thought out of me.

We talked about first kisses, first time we learned what really happens during birth (EWWWW), and why there are so many TV shows that feature some fatty/lazy dude inexplicably married to a clever, hot woman. I postured that we need more shows with normal, well-rounded women married to some cutey Calvin Klein models. If this TV show exists, please do tell...

We skimmed the topic of Anonymity in a Digital World, and we all realized: Privacy is Dead. So that was a lesson learned. Also, kids raised in sterile environments develop more allergies than kids raised in normal households. Yeah, it's true. Sorry, OCD parents. You're just not really helping anything.

Okay, I'm calling it a night. Do you have any insights you'd like to share with people before we embark on the weekend? If so, please share. And try and make them very prolific. We have standards here, people.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

(In this thread of random, not-quite-giving-it-your-allness, I give you a great song to blast this weekend. It's random. It's not great, but I just love it. And it's really very catchy....)

Do These Shoes Go With this Lasso of Truth?

Heeeere I come to save the daaaaaay!! Here's a little math riddle for you: If a furnace stops working on one of the coldest days of the year, and if 4 out of 4 roommates notice that the house is freakishly cold in the morning, how many of them will do anything to resolve the problem? The answer, mathletes, is One. Me. I'm the hero today. Okay, yeah, 4 out of 4 of us were out of the house at work all day and couldn't really take swift action, but still. I left the house this morning and it was 55 degrees. I came home and it was 52 degrees. For those of you keeping track, that's approximately 40 degrees too cold to function inside a house. So, my heroic fingers dialed up our brave maintenance man, and 2 short hours later, we are sittin' pretty at 53 degrees. With great power comes great responsibility, I guess.

I don't care how little recognition I'll get for this. Sure, it'd be nice to hear "Thanks for springing into action and saving our freezing, chilled bones, Pharon! What can we EVER do to repay you?!" But this will be a self-congratulatory win, I'm sure. Whatevs. You can't argue with...54 degrees!

I feel good. I feel like I've really done something to help out my fellow human. The last time I felt like this, I was helping up an older man who slipped on the ice outside of my work building. I'm expecting my Purple Heart any day now.

Now, I don't want to say I "fight crime" or anything, but yesterday a strange man got of the bus at my bus stop and I watched him walk for 3 blocks before I decided he posed no threat to me the children in my neighborhood. And when my crazy neighbor would get into juicy, screaming matches with her equally insane boyfriend, you better believe I was carefully monitoring the situation from my balcony with a bag of popcorn to ensure it did not escalate. Justice never sleeps.

You know, people throw around the term "hero" a lot. And okay, no, I haven't saved any lives, or rescued any kittens from a tree or anything, but, like, I've saved sooooo many people from embarrassment. Toilet paper stuck to your shoe? I'll sneak up behind you and tug it away with my own shoe without saying a word. Have a giant zit on your face? I will NOT look at it. I won't. And I won't be OBVIOUS about not looking, either. When I used to play Halo on XBox with the guys every once in awhile, I'd make my guy just go and hide so I wouldn't get killed 100 times to save my team the humiliation of having one of their own ruin the whole game. I'm a giver, people. And if that makes me a "hero"? Fine, I guess. I'll take it.

So saving my entire household from frozen pipes and uber-dry skin by making a phone call is but the latest in a long line of heroic activities I can't help but perform. It's like I was born to watch out for my fellow man. But I'm not going to lie. I wouldn't turn away another superhero should one come along. I could use some help every once in awhile. I can only laugh at so many bad jokes by myself. And it would be nice if I weren't the only person in the world who tries to help other drivers improve their technique by yelling helpful tips out of my window (and sometimes illustrating with equally helpful hand gestures). Anyone available to help my friends drink wine during the week? 'Cause that's a burden I've carried alone for too long.

The point is: it's 57 degrees now in my house and it's all because of me. Little does everyone know, though, that I've also bumped our "ideal" temperature from 67 to 72 degrees. Hey, I've gotta be warm if/when I must spring into heroic action.

B Girl

FINALLY! It's MARCH. I'm so over February, it's not even funny you guys. For as long as I can remember, by the time St. Patty's Day rolls around, I've packed up my abominable snowman coat and can stagger around Irish bars in a thin jacket. I can only assume the same will be true for this March. Or else.

Anyhoozle, I'm also glad it's March because it's the greenest. I'm not talking "green" as in "earth-friendly". Blech. Dumb. I'm talking: green grass finally starts to show up, green rivers, clothes, and beer are acceptable - nay MANDATORY - and it's one of those awesome months when people who get paid every other week get THREE paychecks this month. Cha-ching! Thusly, it is one of my favorite months. I've been missing all that green lately.

Unfortunately, March is also the month for some big basketball tournament thingy, I'm told. Pretty sure basketball is the only sport I just canNOT get into. I can't. It's all backwards to me. The most exciting part of a basketball game is when someone DOESN'T score a point? Really? No, I like my athletes to EARN their points. Not just "miss". Dumb. Plus, much like The Bachelor, all that matters is the last 2 minutes of a basketball game. Snoozefest.

Having said all that, I went to the Timberwolves game with Geo tonight. The things I do for love... I was really planning on at least seeing a Kardashian sister or something, because we played the Lakers, and I thought "Hey, if I have to sit through a professional basketball game, I at least want to see someone famous". But twas not the case. I did get a good look at Kobe Bryant though. He's cute a good basketball player.

Now everyone's talking about March Madness. So, what, that's like a big college basketball tournament? FUN. My alma mater isn't even in the running to win anything. Why should I care? Whatever. I can't even muster the strength to focus on PROFESSIONAL basketball, nevermind COLLEGE basketball. I'm not looking forward to ESPN this month. And nothing is worse than Geo coming home at night and wanting to watch a basketball game. He's a big NBA fan. Big time. The problem is that the NBA plays like 12,000 games a season, apparently, so there's a lot of TV I'm trying to avoid. And Geo and his brother Jami are obsessed with the Miami Heat, because of Lebron James. So not only does Lebron play a sport I don't like, but he doesn't even play for MY TEAM. Color me uninterested.

But there was beer and fun little chants at the game tonight. Those are things I can really get behind. It was fun, actually. Of course the game itself came in a distant second to seeing my friend Ally there and talking to Geo about how cute the Lakers players are. I have a feeling Geo won't be bringing me to the next basketball game he goes to.