incogkneeto.com blog

This is my favourite thing today.

It’s been a spell!

I never got around to announcing my approaching holiday to Canada to visit parents and friends, and when I got there I discovered that I had no idea what my WordPress password was; I had relied upon this computer to remember it. Then it was busy busy busy! between efforts towards house-cleaning, working, quitting my job and making investments in my artistry, which is what I will pledge myself to full-force during the lapse of employment. I do have my hopes set on another job, which I would probably like best at the low end of full-time. This job would be what I enjoy doing as someone’s employee: pumping out sdelicious espresso drinks all day long! And that was what the presence of an espresso machine fooled me into thinking this job would entail. Yesterday, I made one latte. And it was smooth and delightful and I fucked up the art on it but it looked intentional anyway. But I do like to make more than one a day.

I have been in a mood since watching a bit of the Illusionist at my parents’ house for stories of that complexity and time period. My last dream was something between I Capture the Castle and the Other Boleyn Girl set as usual in a distorted version of the house I grew up in: there were two princes and I was one of two princesses, but my sister was set up to marry the prince who was Daniel and I had a horrid gross prince for a fiance. He gave me a vibrator as a present. It was on when he did so and it went roaring around the floor. My parents were there, laughing hysterically. I just wept, and schemed of how to marry Daniel instead.

On Sunday’s flight back to the twin cities I ate a sandwich just before a very turbulent landing, and got so nauseated I had something of a 12-hour flu, all achy and feverish. Now I have a nice hacking cough, and the usual allergy symptoms here and there. We are approaching the dreadfully hot part of twin cities summer and I don’t know what I’m going to do about it, besides hound myself constantly about my water intake.

Visiting Calgary again was lovely as always, I always feel like I am waking up from a dream when I arrive there. Short visit though. But I got to see some people I hadn’t seen since before I moved, and unfortunately missed important other ones. But that’s how it goes. My old house is lovely in the summer, I spent a darn good amount of time on the patio or in the garden squeezing my cat and feeding him pea pods. I honestly try not to reflect on recently made memories from Calgary trips too much, not when I have to go to my job where I am miserable in an hour.

Doing my show rounds I discovered Joanna Newsom is to play a show on the day after Daniel’s birthday in Chicago. I did calculations despite the timely inconvenientness and it would be too expensive anyway. I would have paid in a heartbeat to see her play with Bjork there last fall if I had heard of it a bit sooner than after the fact, though! Although simply Ys with a full orchestra… well, I’m not going to think about it, but I know that there will come a time when she isn’t focusing on that anymore and I do hope I don’t miss it entirely.

We will be going to see the opening of The Dark Knight tonight.

Currently I am working on a blouse that was inspired in part by Bill Clinton’s would-be First Lady dress in the Onion, in part by current trends. :)

I’ve had a number of very heavy grocery trips while Daniel is working during a day off of mine, but this one took the pancakes that I bought organic whole wheat pastry flour for. (I read the labels of various flours and realised all I really use flour for is baking, so…) And it doesn’t help when I find fabulously original things like DRY Soda’s lavender soda on the shelves, which make you buy them simply because of how persistently you doubt they’re actually as good as they sound. (Oh but it is.) Nor when you’re addicted to mangoes and watermelon. I’m always a little worried about breaking my collarbone again during these trips, but I suppose I am even more determined to endure them to strengthen it…

On the subject of mangoes: the other day I made what I’ll shorthand Heidi’s “quinoa-meal” (because it is so like my favourite way to eat oatmeal: blueberries and nuts and maple syrup) with our sweet, stringy, succulent yellow friends instead of berries, and I highly recommend you do so as well. Ms. Swanson’s blog functions as my second most-used turn-to recipe source. I wonder how many of us there are out there! Someday I will order her first cookbook because of how interested in grains I am getting, and because of her method of writing very basic, malleable recipes. The time certainly comes soon…

Some recent things:

We are trying out and loving cinnamon toothpaste :) Fennel isn’t quite astringent enough for a toothpaste, honestly.

Two brilliant concerts, quite the opposite of one another: Saul Williams and the Minnesota Orchestra’s performance of Schubert and Mahler. I told Daniel at the latter that I wouldn’t mind naming a male son Gustav, but I’m still fondest of Odin. For a girl we like Esther, for various commonly meaningful reasons but especially because I can sing Madonna’s “Little Star” to her every bedtime until she is old enough to do it better than me. Anyway! Saul was totally intimate and immediate and electric and erotic and had the best stage presence of any performer I’ve seen, and he ended the show with his encore: the first thing I ever heard him speak, ,said the shotgun to the head. He came out with a gorgeous headdress and gradually shed much of his attire. What a metaphor. He is such an insightful, important artist. Dan found out about the orchestra at the last moment, and bought the last-ish four tickets which naturally were also the four worst seats. But for listening to sounds in a good venue that doesn’t matter anyway. Ah, the kicker - when we arrived and picked up our tickets… someone in the front row must have cancelled, and so all that was between us and the harps was the hop onto the stage! Harp-plucking is such a beauty to watch. I was really quite distracted by it. Overall a huge treat… I hadn’t seen an orchestra since the tenth grade, on a choir/band trip to Vancouver. And were we all too young and antsy and on a holiday with all the people we spend the days with and full of deep fried chicken feet!… Or at least Andrew was so daring… good times…

Finally caved in to these shirred-butt undies from American Apparel, partly justifying the investment as research. And you know what? They are so comfortable! It makes so much sense! Other undies are so baggy. There are two cheeks! Bras have two cups. So why don’t panties have two sections? Well I guess thanks to American Apparel, and myself in the future because I can get 100% organic cotton jersey and make the leg holes higher and wider, there are now… aren’t there?
Closer and closer I get to the perfect undies :)

I maayyy become the manager of the bakery I work at :) boy do we need a formal one, and boy could I use the experience. Work has been particularly nutty lately, particularly work-all-day-with-one-ten-minute-break-and-still-you-can’t-possibly-accomplish-everything-that-ought-to-be-done. A day off was sweet, and what a sweet warm day for it. As usual I met Daniel for lunch, for which I ingested the most yuuuuUMAMI-licious turkey wild rice soup. My favourite soup. The time we spent together afterward seemed to last forever.

Later he registered us at a gym, because I want to swim every single day.

I am kind of curious about ordering earrings from the people I derived my wooden crochet hooks from, which they finish in the same pretty way. Something neat I have ordered recently and definitely is this stamp set from Hero Arts that I will use for the labels on the sold attire I produce for my attire label, the lack of which has been holding me back from finishing projects. The garment and the description and endorsement of the garment are one expression…

Daniel is working on ripping out some music from his soul :) Lots and lots of music, all the music that built up inside him while he succumbed to the corporate succubus. It is a wonderful thing to hear. Who needs human babies? Not us. He has sound, and I have yarn… and the equipment is as expensive as 2.5 children…

I need to write to his aunt.

Today proposes a warm, persistently rainy day. It is the first day of my weekend after a seven-day workweek. We woke up late because I can’t distinguish between AM and PM when setting alarm clocks :)

Daniel went to work. I am going to tidy the foot-high floor of our closet which is clothing and anything biodegradeable sitting around, then take a bus to downtown Minneapolis to find umbrellas and harvest ideas at the library. He will punctuate my day with lunch. Maybe I’ll join him at work after that.

I happen to adore rain. It is cleansing, and I like how it slows everybody’s pace. The world moves like a race and I’m not that competitive. Rain is a referee.

Yesterday after work I got on the bus to our evening destination and it was so empty for that bus, so I was not shy about claiming the entire seat with my luggage. Then I got absorbed in the Citypage’s best of the twin cities issue and suddenly the bus was busy and there was a man sitting on my things. He mumbled, oh sorry. I wouldn’t bother with this story if it wasn’t the third or fourth time it’s happened to me! Weird. It’s hard to say, hi, can I sit here? isn’t it?

Yes, and far easier to just sit on my watermelon! Of which he earned none.

There is lots to crochet. The connecting row of a skirt, a cardigan, and a hoodie which I have been reworking and reworking since before the mid-March San Francisco trip. But it’s a sweet design so no hard feelings, just carpal tunnel.

Also, I bought some dandelion greens and lemongrass at Whole Foods the other day, and need to figure out what to do with them. I think the best/only use for a digital library would be cookbooks on a PDA, because you’re at the grocery store and you know you’ve seen an amazing recipe for this seasonal ingredient but you don’t remember it or any of the other ingredients, thus a second grocery trip there will be. Unless of course, you had all your cookbooks in your pocket…