Sriracha Not Necessary

Well hello there, my minions.  Do have a seat.  I was just about to have a bite.

I...I have a confession to make to you, my minions.  It is a little bit uncomfortable for me to admit this, seeing as I pride myself on having fine taste and a sensitive palate.  However, I want to be honest with you.  That's important to me.

The truth is - I love ramen.  I really do.  However, it is important to note that I am not talking about Top Ramen or Cup o' Noodles.  I mean this:

Imagine this smelling fantastic.  Because it does.

The above image is of shoyu ramen (which means it's floating in chicken broth).  I purchased this particular packet in the fresh noodles section of Uwajimaya.  They also had a very nice tonkotsu ramen (creamy pork broth) by the same company.  That was a special occasion, however.  Most days, we buy Ichiban ramen in Original, Shrimp, or Chicken varities.  What is not special, however, is the egg, green onion, or fishcake (that swirly pink and white stuff).  Those come standard in my house.  This isn't your lazy, broke college kid's ramen.

I indulge this habit outside of the home as well.  For the longest time my favorite spot was Boom Noodle.  The food is good, even if they're trendy as all hell, and they have a fun menu with a lot of variety that includes not only ramen but cold noodle salads and other hot noodle dishes.  They also have a sampling of fun "small plates", including but not limited to the traditional edamame, ebi katsu, gyoza, spring rolls, and whatever intriguing little dish the chef is currently in love with.

Now, while I still love Boom Noodle, I have to admit I have found a better place for just straight ramen (with no fancy appetizers or trendy presentation).  Said place is Samurai Noodle.  They have three locations - Capitol Hill, University District, and International District.  I've only ever been to the one in the I-District, which is a little hole in the wall off of the Uwajimaya building.  The tables are frequently full, but the food is great and you can get it to go if you need to.  I recommend the Tampopo.So that's it, my minions.  I hope this hasn't drastically altered your opinions of me.  And if it has, you clearly don't understand what you are missing.

Spooky night at The Lovecraft

It should not surprise you, dear minions, that I enjoy travel and will take the opportunity to do so whenever it is presented.  So when Beasty and I had some free time a little while back, enough for a quick getaway but not for an extended adventure, we decided to drive to Portland (like you do).  This was not our first trip to Portland, but the last one was somewhat rushed and not terribly well researched.  On this most recent venture, we had a little more time to plan.

We stayed at The Jupiter Hotel, which is an older building that has been renovated into a charming enough boutique hotel in a gentrified neighborhood.  I recommend the place to the younger set for a weekend trip with friends.  It was cute, and fun, and the Doug Fir Lounge was quite the popular spot two of the three nights we were there.  Do not expect it to be quiet enough to go to bed early - the hotel provides earplugs as standard in your room.  And a neon yellow condom, in a clear wrapper stamped with the hotel's logo (I kept mine as a souvenir).  The door to the room was a chalkboard (on both sides), and we kept our "to-do" list on it, crossing places off as we visited them.

Incidentally, overall impression of Portland - dirty.  If the city can scrape together enough for regular street cleaners, it can only improve things.

This is not the point of the entry, however!  Amongst our list of things to do (which included Powell's, Ground Kontrol, Spartacus, and others), at the very tippy top of my list was The Lovecraft.  The Lovecraft is a bar and tea room with a decorating theme inspired by (wait for it) H.P. Lovecraft's works.  It is the most deliciously gothy little spot I have ever stepped into.  For the love of Nyarlathotep, it is a bar and tea room!

The ceiling at The Lovecraft.  Photo by Chloe Alix,  © 2011.

I was fair giddy.  It's not the most polished spot I've ever been in, and their outside signage leaves a lot to be desired.  Additionally, while the abundance of red lighting certainly assists in setting the mood it makes reading the tea list a touch difficult.  That said, I enjoyed a lovely Earl Grey while listening to Murphy, Morrissey, and Gahan, taking in the fantastically macabre decor.  Deep in my darkly glittering soul I felt a happy, contented joy such as I have not experienced in a very long time.

Regrettably, we were there on a bit of a dead night.  Our Portland adventure was a midweek trip, and they didn't have anything special scheduled for that evening.  We ended up heading out early to catch the Goth night at The Fez, which turned out to be a significant disappointment.  That much dubstep does not belong at Goth night.

In conclusion, my minions, should you find yourself in the ever raining City of Roses, do go take yourself to The Lovecraft.  Even if you're not one to regularly don the black, dress up for a night and go dangle your toe in the deep end.  The experience will be worth the effort.

Rain-drenched me, with my tea, at The Lovecraft.
(Courtesy of Beasty's smart phone)

Forgiveness and Past Mistakes

Good evening, my minions.  I have once again let a horrible amount of time pass in between these updates.  In the spirit of this post, I hope you will forgive me.  Because this post is about forgiveness.  Though not from others, but from ourselves.

Quick disclaimer:  The usual subculturific posts will resume on the morrow, tonight you get morose self-reflection.

It may have come up in the past that I have children.  Two of them, precisely, two little demonic minions that are usually pretty good if I'm going to be completely honest.  They are not Beasty's, although he has taken on the role of "Father" fairly well and has even done all right with the on-the-job training.  There's been some grousing, but he does good.  Which is something to be admired.  The person who contributed to their development biologically is no longer in our lives, and no one considers this a loss of any sort.

So, that covered, as I write this I'm sitting across from my son, who is sipping hot chocolate, and I'm watching him carefully.  I'm specifically watching his mouth - the right side of his upper lip protrudes a bit oddly.  It is not obvious, you really have to be looking to see it, and I imagine I only see it because I know what to look for.  You see, when my son was two, his lip was split open and I had to take him to the emergency room to get it stitched back together.  He fell onto our coffee table after being carelessly and impatiently pushed back by He Who Must Not Be Named.  It was an accident, but one that could have been avoided, and I have not yet been able to forgive myself.

This is just one poignant example of the slew of mistakes that I hold against myself when it comes to my children.  Many of the mistakes are my own, even more are what I allowed my ex-husband to do, all the while telling myself stupid things like "Well, he does yell a lot, but he's not hitting them or anything," as if that made it okay.  Berating an autistic child for not comprehending things as an adult would is just as cruel as slapping him would have been, it just didn't leave a mark.  Volleying between outright ignoring and overly doting on the "normal" daughter wasn't any better.  Yet I let these things happen, because I was so mired in my own misery and so unsure of myself that I would disagree (at times quite loudly) but I wouldn't intervene. These are the horrors that eat at my soul, these are the sins that bend my head and cause me to weep.  These are the mistakes of my past that hold me back.

It serves nothing and no one to sit here and cry because I was too young and unready to handle motherhood responsibly when I first took on the mantle.  My son's lip won't lose it's odd curve, he won't stop being autistic, my daughter's incessant need for attention won't go away, she won't magically become more thick-skinned, not a single damn problem will be solved no matter how many tears I shed or how much I beat myself up over it.  It serves nothing.  Yet it is still there, festering like an infected sore.

The key, the only logical way to more forward, is forgiveness.  Forgiveness of self is hard.  It is among one of the hardest things I have tried to do.  And I still can't do it.  I function by not thinking about it most days.  I'm still working on it.  No one else can do it, though.  I could ask my children to forgive me, and they would.  Lovingly and freely they would, and they would be more upset by my tears than by any past transgression from myself or a man they can't remember.  They cannot grant me absolution, however, and asking their forgiveness would confuse and hurt them.  Which would really just make the matter worse, wouldn't it?

My son is in bed now, the empty cocoa mug in the sink, and I was hugged and kissed before he ran off to his room.  They are good children; loving and sweet, charming and playful.  I have to acknowledge that whatever I may or may not have done, I have (so far) raised two pretty fantastic kids.  And maybe accepting that will be my first step towards forgiveness.