Pho or, The reason why I don't mind being hungover

I've been in a bit of a pho fix as of late. I'm not sure exactly what brought on my less-than-a-weekly need for the gelatinous, fresh, salty, savory, spicy, heavenly rejuvinating meat and vermicelli noodle Vietnamese soup, but it's making me feel like my dorky 12-year-old self when I first kissed a boy -- I think about indulging daily and wonder if I'm a bit obsessed each time I give in and order a large bowl of steaming deliciousness.

My obsession for the noodle soup has become so intense and, perhaps unhealthy, that I look forward to waking up after a night of considerable drinking because I know that pho is going to be the best hangover cure. I came to this realization of pho as a cure-all while I had shingles; Walker and I went to Toast and Pho (my first but definitely not last time there) the day after a really bad nerve pain episode for lunch and, after a large bowl of pho gai (chicken soup) I felt freakishly better and stronger, like I was Popeye after popping a can of spinach (Parenthetical sidebar: Does anyone else ever wonder if Popeye's spinach wasn't laced with something stronger like steroids? I, perhaps more than most people, know that spinach is a GREAT iron source but know from experience that it's iron-possessing power's aren't all fantastic enough to grant anyone immediate strength.).Pho is -- dare I say it -- better than coffee, better than a Nalgene of water and much better than any meaty sandwich that usually makes me feel better (Yes, I'm talking Podnah's pulled pork sandwich here).

So I went back to Toast and Pho, two days later, feeling sluggish from nearly three weeks of hard core pain medication, ordering pho gai to go. Three days later Walker and I went to Pho An on Sandy for New Years Eve. And when I started my new job at the clinic, I found myself calling Toast and Pho, making orders for pick up.

"Large pho gai," I'll say illegally as I drive through the Teriwiliger curves after an 11-hour day.

"Ohhhhh you say very well," the lady who works the counter and phones at Toast and Pho tells me.

"Thanks," I respond, feeling a bit of pride at my Vietnamese-speaking ability.

"You must order pho gai a lot. No one know how to say properly," the cute Vietnamese lady says in broken English grammar (That I actually don't even think about correcting for she is my link to a meal of greatness), all at once thanking me for my patronage while mocking my Americanized white-girl pride.

"Yes, yes I order often," I reply half sheepishly, half excited to become a regular because, let's face it, I love being a regular. And who doesn't? Being a regular typically comes with perks (Free pho? Only in my wildest of dreams).

And why shouldn't I? Since I've been raking in more money, thus enabling myself to be less of a frugalista (Jason, please kick me next time we work together) and more of a, dare I say it?, spender, I've celebrated my hard labor with a couple of drinks of the weekend. A mixed drink here, a shot there, a couple of beers way over there; I drink just enough to know that I'll feel slightly hungover but not completely life-hating debilitated the next day solely (or so it seems) so I have a legitimate reason to get pho at 9 in the morning.

I don't know why I try to hide it for  I really have no shame. The cute Vietnamese lady at Toast and Pho must know by now: What white girl with last night's makeup still smeared across her eyes, dressed in a striped ear flap beanie cap hiding her heavily cowlicked hair, donning a baggy gray sweatshirt to hide the fact that she's too lazy to strap on a bra, jeans and beyond-retirement old man slippers comes into a Vietnamese restaurant on a Sunday morning carrying a newspaper (that remains unwrapped throughout the course of noodle and broth slurping) a mere half hour after opening who isn't hungover?

It paints a pretty shameful picture, I know.

But it just tastes so good.

41 Days Later...

As if my infrequent blog posts haven't been evidential proof of my lack of free time and extra energy, the facts that I worked every day for the past six weeks, logging in an average of 53 hours between Pottery Barn and Whole Family Wellness Center while producing three articles for Neighborhood Notes (which involves interviewing, taking pictures, writing and eating a LOT of food) and four food articles/reviews for The Examiner should add up to a sum of me having barely enough time to sleep let alone write blogs for fun.

But that changed on Saturday when I had my
very
first
day
off.

And it was amazing. Simply amazing. Here's a lovely breakdown of how I spent my (I like to think) hard earned day off:

8:35 am -- Wake up, without an alarm, slightly confused like I fell asleep at some place other than where I usually sleep and forgot that I fell asleep there and expected to wake up in my regular bed in my regular studio (I always experience that slightly confusing and panicky feeling whenever I go home to Spokane and forget, upon waking up, that I'm going to be in my old bright yellow bedroom in my parent's house and not in my cushy queen sized bed in my freezing studio). I didn't recognize my own room upon opening my eyes because it just seemed eerily different. After uncurling myself from my burrito-wrap of blankets I realized the difference: My room was light...from the sun...which rose...before I did.

8:45 am -- Happy that I have a day off while the sun still had to rouse itself bright and early, I remain in bed, watching The Office and texting with Rachel and Walker.

9:20 am -- Think about getting out of bed but decide that the warmth of my electric blanket is just too good to leave and I know that, despite the sun's presence shining through my curtainless window, my 60-year-old hardwood floor is going to be cold on my sockless feet.

9:45 am -- Still in bed, I begin to hear unnerving stirring from up above where The Nympho in my building lives. Seriously, she's a nympho...and a very loud and crazy one at that fact.

Sidebar: My very first weekend in my apartment my friend Matt was in town for the marathon so he stayed with me. Matt and I hadn't seen each other for a solid 10 months and of course, while talking and playing catch up in my studio, we heard the nympho going at it. He asked me if I moved into a brothel. I couldn't give him an answer. End Sidebar.

I can't help but pray that perhaps she is just waking up and getting ready to make one of her crazed mad dashes out of the building. While she is just waking up, she's, unfortunately for me, waking up with one of her many Johns. Her bloodcurdling screams of ecstasy are enough to get me out of my and into pajama pants and blue and yellow polka dot galloshes and over to Fat Straw for a Stumptown-made soy mocha. Taking the mocha back home, I snag my Saturday Oregonian and crawl back into bed, happy to know that The Nymph's John is the short-winded one, if you catch my drift.

11:00 am -- Crossword puzzle complete and newspaper read (There was this super crazy article about a PSU professor who accused a student of being an FBI informant and murderer. I still don't understand it), I finally get out of bed and throw on half spandex pants, the generic watch my sister gave me, sports bra and my Nikes and proceed to push my body through seven miles.

Noon -- Shower and head to New Seasons for lunch. I finally talk with my mom for the first time since last Sunday which is nice because, let's face it, I'm a huge Mama's girl and feel as though I'm without my right arm when I don't speak daily with her. I love New Seasons on the weekends; sure, they're always busy but there is always a mountain of samples. This Saturday's sample platter was all in preparation for today's Super Bowl (Which I did not watch, thanks to a solid PB shift). While waiting for my sandwich I feast on Pirate's Booty, kettle corn, gluten-free pretzels and stone ground corn tortilla chips and guacamole.

1:45 pm -- Arrive back home and, upon being unable to see much of my hardwood floor, decide to clean up a little bit.

1:55 pm -- Bored and sick of cleaning (productivity just wasn't suiting me), I opt to finish a blog post that I began on Wednesday (I told you I've been busy) and, feeling a little rebellious, crack open a beer, just because I can.

3:15 pm -- Itching to get out again and armed with a $50 gift card, I head to Powell's. Hopping in my car I know that the crowds will be out in masses but find a parking spot on the corner of 10th and Everett anyway. An afternoon at Powell's, teeming with people or not, is definitely my ideal activity. I have a route that I typically follow: Enter into the Orange Room, peruse (And I actually mean the real, original definition of the word which means to search intently and deeply, not to scan or skim) through the cooking section before making the rounds in the middle of the room, looking at the islands of sale books. I next enter the Pink Room, rummaging my way through the running books in hopes that something will ignite the kindling of my once ravenous passion. Up the stairs, I head to the Blue Room where novels live. My favorite aisle? The M/S aisle where David Sedaris lives across and down the aisle from Christopher Moore. Checking the $5 sale shelf, I grab Atonement before heading to "B" for the chance that there's a new T.C. Boyle. Finding there is, I grab it and add it to the four other books I've already selected. Next stop is the Green Room where I search through the best seller shelves before heading past the greeting cards and wrapping paper and into the Purple Room where Journalism lives.

4:45 Walker meets me in the Purple Room as I'm drooling over Ralph Steadman's biography/autobiography about Hunter S. Thompson and his experience with working with the founder of Gonzo Journalism. We walk around, checking out the history and Astrology sections (There's nothing like bonding with your boyfriend over an astrology book that explains, by the signs, how much and what type of a bastard your boyfriend is) before heading out the store.

5:32 pm -- Walk swiftly to my car -- it's beginning to rain -- only to find that I got a ticket three minutes ago for having expired tabs. I didn't even know my tabs expired and now I'm slapped with a $60 ticket for not having something that costs $30. As Walker said, the least that the parking police could do is give me tabs, considering I now have to pay $90 for something that I wasn't even aware I had to take care of. I mean really, how's a girl supposed to know about expired tabs?

6:00 pm -- Bundling up for a night out in the neighborhood, Walker and I decide to try Pope House Bourbon Lounge on NW Glisan, just east of NW 21st. I wish the little house-turned-lounge was more happening but, as the music suggested (We walked into the dark lounge to hear Johnny Cash be followed up by Jack Johnson's Bubbly Toes. I like both singers but to who is the restaurant trying to appeal?), the lounge seemed a little of whack. Nevertheless, the pub had Terminal Gravity ESG on tap and one of the stiffest Manhattan's in the neighborhood.

7 ish -- Being a person who loves being around more people, Walker suggests we blow the Pope Bourbon Lounge popsicle stand and trek to New Old Lompoc before it closes (Which is rumored to happen).

And here's where I lose track of time a bit. Two IPAs and a couple sips of harsh well whisky later, I know  we eventually leave Lompoc so I can try Walker's and the Jesses' favorite NW 23rd hangout, Nob Hill Grille. I finally get to savor two sliders and a whiskey neat over simultaneously coyish and sarcastic conversation. I can't help but feel totally spoiled and giddy over one of the most relaxing and happy dates I've had in a long time.

After an attempt to watch 28 Days Later, the combination of happy inebriation and sleep took me to dream land for the night.

A solid day off, even if I did wake up with a headache this morning.

But then again, what's a day off if you aren't going to pay for it a little bit the next day?

I am what I am

I finally understand why I am the way that I am. Or rather, and perhaps more accurately, I've finally been given a plausible theory regarding my love for good food and desire to be a food critic despite my overwhelmingly awkward and unfavorable history against it.

I went out last night with my ex-boyfriend, a move that, I understand, doesn't seem like the best idea to most people. However, the night was pleasant and, throughout the course of a couple of beers ($2.50 special-list pints on Tuesdays and the Mash Tun Pub on NE 22nd and Alberta Street), we accepted what was, moved forward on what it and talked, as we always have, about food.

While he's never been much of a reader, he does relish in reading books about food and restaurants and people involved with food. As we were breaking up he was reading Jeffrey Steingarten's second book (Which I'm still mad I didn't get to read because of the breakup) which, according to Kevin, really details Steingarten's reasoning behind becoming and being a food critic.

One of the chapters is titled, "Brain Storm" and explains how suffering a head trauma could potentially lead one to have an obsession for gourmet food and refined tastes. The chapter's first sentence reads that "a profound interest in food may be caused by a lesion in the anterior portion of the right cerebral hemisphere of one's brain." When Kevin dealt this morsel of information last night I knew he knew I was thinking about when I was five-years-old and ran into a mailbox (Hey, before you judge, know that I was running for my life away from a dog scarier than The Beast in The Sandlot) chipping and swallowing half of my two front teeth and damaging some muscles in my right eye so severely that I developed a head tilt during my childhood years that was corrected only through surgery and near-coke-bottle-lens-sized reading and work glasses (Yes, I am wearing them as I type).

Kev continued recalling Steingarten's chapter, which surveys Steingarten's experience with the doctor who originally told him about Gourmand's Syndrome. The doctor told Steingarten, a glasses-wearing older man, that the most common symptoms of Gourmand's were visual spatial dysfunctions (Like I said, I am wearing coke-bottle glasses right now) and that there is some research indicating that eating disorders spring from brain injuries because even though eating disorders appear to be purely psychological, physical changes are evident too. (Of course, there's a lot of research indicating a lot of causes for eating disorders and I personally don't think there's a solid consensus and don't believe there really ever will be. It's one of those mysteries like whether we dream in color or that age-old standby wonder about the falling tree making a noise in the forest).

Steingarten's doctor continued over dinner at a five-star restaurant within the chapter that "changes in neurotransmitters and serotonin and noradrenalin along with brain lesions affecting the system have been linked to OCD, pathological behavior, kleptomania and so forth." So, people with Gourmand's might not necessarily crave gourmet food but they recognize the superfluous indulgence in steak tartare, black truffles, white truffles, foie gras, sea urchin, pork belly, monkfish liver, lamb burgers, toro (fatty tuna), sweetbreads (the gourmet nugget, if you will), geisha varietal coffee, kobe beef, chicken heart, beef heart, saffron and the like and crave the richness and indulgence of these delicacies.

In fact, Steingarten argued against his doctor -- who, I might add, says that Gourmand's Syndrome is bad for a person to be 'afflicted by' -- saying that he's okay "pleading guilty to an obsession with beauty, edible or otherwise."

Could I really have Gourmand's Syndrome? Probably not. I'm not a kleptomaniac and, despite my obsessive and compulsive fretting over the lifestyles at work (It's a good thing I've recently been officially assigned as a visual associate at Pottery Barn), I'm not, in medical definition terms, OCD. Still, it's nice to have another key as to why I, the once-food-fearing, fat-avoiding freak of a girl is now striding to becoming a try-everything-at-least-once food critic.

And as a food critic, I definitely plead very, very guilty to my obsession with edible beauty.

Oh...and yes, I've eaten everything in my aforementioned list of delicacies.