20-IV-2020.

7th: the girls have rediscovered the upstairs. (... 20 words...) and boxes and bags with old, cached toys and kids' garments. Sometimes they fish out some interesting forgotten toy or something to wear. Generally, they just love to dig through things, and they don't even make too much of a mess.

In the afternoon we put them on bicycles and went to the sports' centre nearby, just like we did so many times this winter. This time they didn't insist on having dandelion wreaths. Played with water - we set the tap, near the entrance, to drip and they spent at least half an hour so.

8th we went to Klincaid to see how are apricots doing. Perhaps a couple of fruits survived here and there, perhaps we'll have enough for two jars of pekmez. Yet there was something I've never seen before: some additional flowers at the ends of younger branches, whole three weeks after the primary. Wow.

The vineyard peaches were aglow with blossom, the perfect pink.

I kept cutting the unneeded trees - the old brokenek (v. house dictionary) plum is finally dead. I was planning to cut it years ago, but it kept growing leaves and even having fruit, so I left it. This is its last picture before I cut it.

I started chopping the hazelnut next to it, but it seems to have been too much for the tiny engine, so its overheat protection kicked in and I was forced to take a break. I switched it to hedge trimmer afterwards, and cleaned up some of the high weeds so she can mow it (or perhaps I did, after she finished mowing on the street)

10th, just when the first weekend curfew kicked in, so the christians who adhere to gregorian calendar can't go out to do their easter stuff and spread the virus, someone at burundi talked me into creating a "referrential collection of jokes"... which I wanted to do in a way. But the original idea would involve the art of telling the joke live, with some acting and... well I remember how Aćim taught me how to tell bosnian jokes, so I went to youtube (aka jućub, as written in burundi) to see how it looks nowadays, and didn't like it. Too much acting. So... no, I don't want my face all over the intertubes, I've had that kind of face recognition when I needed it in 1984 (kviskoteka...), not now.

Instead, I just added a new section to sGradlj.com and started filling it from sezam's archives, which I have. Almost all. The most that I could get... Well these archives are mostly a source for this Byo project, to at least serve as a reminder on what happened when during the nineties. But the logs also contain the jokes, use them. Within nine days, I had 1300 jokes posted. Not that they bring much traffic - they brought some visits in the beginning, but then the total visits by now is 150 and the AM/PM page had 697 in these nine days. OK, the AM/PM page is the most popular, something unexplainable, it alone carries between 10 and 33% of traffic - the less traffic, the higher its share.

(... 8 words...)

14th, getting the groceries. We hit the timing right, our lunch is around noon, while most people eat at least an hour later, mostly around 14. So when we came to Roda, she took a place in the queue - they allow only a certain number of people inside at a time, and by the time I parked, it was our turn. Less than two minutes. Thinking of the fruit season ahead, we tried to buy ten kg of sugar, but the cashier said the limit is six. Ah, well, they want us to come more often and have more social contact, right. So we decided to keep buying a couple of kilograms whenever we go get any groceries. By 20th, we had 11kg, and we'll need to have around 50-60kg by september. Don't expect any problems with that, sugar is neither imported nor exported much (except when M. Kostić tries to fool the EU).

Next, at the adjacent Lidl, we were perhaps fifth in line, but the line went fast, we didn't even think of lighting a cigarette while waiting. They limit the number of carts in circulation - about 60% of them are chained (by a simple plastic tape), so when you're done, you don't return the cart to the coral, but to the entrance, where the floor manager sprays the handle with antiseptic and hands it to the next customer. By the time we got out, the queue was 15 people long. The good thing is that they didn't try to rearrange the aisles, so everyone knows where things are and it all goes smoothly. And quick. About 90% of the people are wearing masks.

Juliška bought a carton of eggs, and on curfew weekends she also buys cigarettes (that we also make... hm, time to call the dealer to get some tobacco again, we'll run out within a week). Then the other neighbor bought two cartons while we and I were getting groceries. Funny, they have twice more hens than we do. Must have miscalculated.

15th, we took the little table (which she made in 2012 to host the wood grinder/router) upstairs and made noodles for the soup again. We just have too many eggs. Next few days we had this or that soup every day, just to enjoy homemade noodles. More to come.

In the evening we had a few drinks. Called Dragana and spent almost a whole hour with her on the phone. She's out of routine with drinks now, would be a cheap date, says perhaps just two shots would kick her like a horse. She's strictly isolated, says she's risky three ways - has chronic blood pressure problem, had this cancer treatment, and the third was I guess the age. Sure, she's two months older than me.

16th went to Klincaid again. We finally put the foil over the other half of the vegetable garden, so no more weeds. She mowed the front half of the orchard again. I was cutting more wood - finished the hazelnut in the rear, some dry branches on the plums, one dry apple. Started collecting the branches, so my firewood pile in the big tractor shed next to the distillery is growing back. The wood is actually the load for the return - the main load is the extra soil left behind from the compost heaps - where Zeki's son was dumping the rotten hay, the bottom layer of his stacks, which he'd have to drive out of the village to dump. And then I was dumping the distilling sludge over it. The best soil there is, which now goes to fill the canals we dug in the orchard when it was still doubling as vegetable garden, back in 2011-2012.

17th I went to the old house to mow - right on time, nothing of the heavy stuff had the time to grow, so the little electric mower did everything. I also managed to hit the serekeš, lift my regular monthly 58000, the kiosk to refill my phone (800RSD to add to the existing 260, so I'd have the cash in it to do three times of 100 min over 30 days per 300RSD - the dirty tricks of cell service providers) and butcher's shop - got bacon, a couple of pieces of smoked beef and the last of his čvarci - basically just droždine, the crumbs from the bottom. The latter was a perfect hit, Linda was eating them like crazy, over the next few days.

Then at 17:00 the curfew fell and we didn't leave the house until 21st. The fucking julian easter, so to stop the christians from spreading the virus, the gov't... no, Vučić himself orders an 84 hour curfew. Kids got painted boiled eggs from both Juliška and the other neighbor. She also made a few, using just onion shells for dye.

Monday afternoon and evening we saw the first breaches of the curfew. I saw one girl pass by, then a neighbor going home and then coming back with some beer. At night, some larger diesel engine and also a larger motorbike was heard. The spies (and we're sure to have them, there's at least one policewoman down the street, and four retired cops in the street behind us) seem to have gotten the directive to lay off a little.

19th, my belt buckle broke. Improvised something with 2mm steel wire, worked like a charm except I couldn't bend the prong that goes into the hole to proper right angle, so it would fall out after a while. After a few weeks she cannibalized the old german schoolbag for a buckle, and two months later I was still wearing that, never finding a good time to go downtown and buy a new belt. Too bad, this belt served me almost ten years, it was among the first items we bought in the summer of 2010.

---

Mentions: burundi, Byo (Byo), čvarci, Dragana Vitas (Dragana), house dictionary, Jovan Dimijan (Zeki), Juliška, Klincaid, kviskoteka, Linda Sredljevich Aquilla (Linda), Milan Šebrcan (Aćim), pekmez, serekeš, sezam, sGradlj.com, in serbian

19-V-2020 - 7-IV-2026