17-III-2023.
On 14th or 15th, in the evening, she said she had enough of them frendz parties, it's always the same talks, drinking less, dispersing earlier, it's more and more looking like we're just holding the place and it's not what it initially was. And we became boring to each other. So let's just stop.
While I was thinking of a good reply to this, I realized that I concur. Though it doesn't give me headaches like [it does to] her, I have also slid from „I can barely wait for it to come“ into „I can barely wait for it to pass“. So okay, let it be this monday, and then split, or at least tone it down a few notches, perhaps once into 3-4 weeks, or when there's a new untried rakija or when we all feel like it. We'll see.
On 16th in the morning I drove Joda to Raša the sheet metal worker* to smooth and paint that rear door. We talked since last friday, first aiming monday-tuesday, but nothing there, so on wednesday I esemessed him a „so okay, when do I drive it to“, and he said tomorrow morning at 7. So I wound up her nokla to wake me up, the alarm on my phone doesn't wake up the phone (but now at least it gets the messages and the calls).
The weather was almost frosty but bright, „some miracle, sun shines and you feel it warming you but only if you find a lee, which is scarce in my street. You just feel it when you run into a pocket of it, then you're out in the cold for next 40m. But I don't give up, clogs on bare feet, spring is here if you ask me. From where I look, it's just one last possibly frosty night ahead. The appricots are still halfway, and the blossom didn't get singed last night, there was only a thin skim of ice on the cats' water, then two meters away another spot like that, none in between. Spotty.“ - as I described it on burundi.
Someone finally published an article on suština (about asking his kid which word in serbian has a double en - having bosnian „slan'na“ (slanina, bacon, is proper), but the kid broke the joke finding „vannastavni“, which is a regular word, no regional tricks), so what Boća published last april, with the cristchenoid iconography on album covers, finally got pushed below the main page, where it sat for all of eleven months. I had parked my november article to publish on 16th of april, 366 days after his, assuming that if you occupy the square and don't clean up within a year, lease is up. Now it can go right away, it's not me pushing anyone off, so I scheduled this (about a photo I made on 25-V-2018.) to 19th of march, and it was publushed on that day. I've lined up one article a week until end of april.
We drank nothing since monday, but this evening we finished what pear we had - good, very mild taste, not like what they usually push as pear, which has a much stronger taste. This is perhaps the actual taste, as Vasa said „the rakija should taste like a rakija made of the fruit, not like fruit itself“.
Next morning it was even colder, a good frost, whole millimeter of ice on cats' water. And even warmer in the day. Now the question is whether the frost was only on the ground or did it reach 3m high.
Džimi is bearing kittens all day. That is, got one out and stopped. To make thing worse, she did it in a box in the middle of the terrace, where we pass all the time.
Around noon I hooked up the cable to the van's battery, starts, goes. Drove a round to Lidl to pay her phone subscription. Swung by the sheet metal worker to get my driving glasses from Joda, and look, he already smoothed the door. The top of it, where it was bent the worst, he had no way to access from the inside, so he had to drill, pull, weld, grind. But it looks good, now only to paint and polish. He smoothed the scratches by the rear wheel which it had before I bought it.
Aleksa's mongrel is appearing and vanishing. Juliška is bitching about it and so are we. She has already patched all the places in the fence where it could pass. Juliška runs it out on the street at times, and we know it can't jump over the fence, but there's a place, that low wall between his house and our fence, where it can, and only has to walk the 60cm between his wall and our garage. There's all the possible krtlog (v. house dictionary), old door and window panes, planks, nobody can pass through that... but a dog still may. Aleksa's son is here now, but we rarely see him, I haven't seen him for eight days, I know he's here only by seeing the light in his bathroom. He seems to be powdering his nose more than taking care of the dog, which must be always hungry. He took it two blocks away and left him once, but the pooch returned. Should take it much further so it gets lost.
And yes, we're now married for 44 years.
Eighteenth. In the morning there was still some frosting on the ground, but cats' water didn't freeze. The apricots blossom isn't quite fully open, and I've seen bees when it was warmer in the day. Fingers crossed, knocking on wood. This week we drink cherry (not cherry).
Nineteenth. Got kicked out by UA, which means Alphonse still hasn't fixed the bug. He just polished the warning where it says to go to the homepage and login from scratch. The forum is now an old men's club, there are just a few of us left, never more than 20 at a time who keep it open in their browsers.
Džimi finally bore the rest of the kittens, in that cornerr. Who knows how many, we'll see in 2-3 weeks when they come out. The one of overyester has vanished. At breakfast, only females - Dženifer and Amelija, perhaps Zelena too. Rundek and Mimi dare not enter. Džimi has none of that severe look in her eyes, but she's the undisputed matriarch now, and while the kittens are on the terrace, the toms have to stay away.
Twentieth. Finally have a bell on my bike, from her old one. The sheet metal worker says he finished Joda, just to buff it out and return the innards of the door, will call me in the morning. My phone just keeps working. The batteries hold for about 48 hours, there's room for a lot of optimization, but good bang for the buck. Last night, when I was summoning, couldn't get Borče, so had Dragana call him and then he called me, said he changed the providers, moved from emtyess to ay one, and lost the address book and whatnot. Because lots of that accrues, and can't fit into the sim card's memory. And if he changed phones as well, then his backup should have been somewhere in them clouds, but then every provider has its own, so... if you didn't make your own backup, you just fucked yourself.
At lunch, we two and Raja eating spaghetti (Nina sleeps later, if not longer). Rare event, that one of the kids eats same as we do.
And in the evening, that final, 97th frendz parti. For dinner we barbecued, together us two and the girls. They weren't much in the way, and it was actually fun. Nina gave them a practice lesson in american culture, kids should know that, so they brought biscuits („Domaćica“ served fine, has chocolate on one side), she'd poke a marshmallow on a tip of a stick, and then hold it above the flames until it melts, then squeeze it between two biscuits, who will eat this, okay gimme the next. All that while I was still starting the fire.
I didn't pour any rakija in advance, but rather asked Dragana which one would she like, and she picked quince without thinking. And it got drunk, a lot - she had two, Dragana, Nina and I three each, Borče four. After the barbecue we switched to wine (she to beer), had three liters of roze and two cans of beer. The barbecue was received well, the majstor was praised (that'd be me, though we did it together).
I just remembered, that time when we discussed amongst ourselves, how Borče has the habit, when he's a host, to make it look as he's done with a round of discussion, goes to the kitchen, we go on with something else, and he returns from halfway and resumes what he was talking about, not fucking five percent that we have started on something else, and then when he's finished with that, we need to remember where were we interrupted, and is there any sense in continuing after such a cut. So this time, when he did the same thing, just (very loudly) asked „have you been finished?“ „Well... no, just this bit more“. „You're silent for a whole minute, how do I know whether it means you're done or not“. „Er... just this and then...“. When he finally finished, „There, and now you can go on“. „Pass“. „Pass what?“. „What, you never played cards, you know what pass means“. Mentioning cards relieved the tension and everyone started telling of what they used to play and how many hours it used to take. But I did let my accumulated frustration with his interruptions be heard in my voice, specially the hundred times when I was accused of interrupting. Not that I kept mum, but I didn't try to kidnap the floor, I rather interjected something short and, if possible, unsurfuckable, into the break between lines.
There was a longish talk about smoking, where we three staunch smokers came up with various stories. I mentioned how dad used to smoke and then suddenly quit when three packs a day weren't enough anymore. Dragana said „I never saw him with a cigarette“. Well neither did I, I guess he quit in fiftyseven, but when he died and I brought over the box with old photos, I did find a few with him having a cigarette between his fingers. And then Borče went on about the time gone on smoking, i.e. how long does one cigarette take. Wrong measurement, it's very rare that one smokes and does absolutely nothing else while it lasts. On the other side, measure the time you waste watching ads...
And then it was past the 23:25 mark, when the spring began, to which we specially raised our glasses.
This is when the easter was mentioned, and how she colors the eggs every time, with his „I've never seen any of your colored eggs“, to which I reacted, to circumvent any incoming rubbish, „she also hasn't seen any of your colored eggs, so call it quits“.
Rade was mentioned, who said that until recently he still had something to do at work, while they were using the app that some guy from once kombinat's erc wrote; now that they bought some other app, of which he knows nothing, he's back to just bossing, doing nothing and waiting to retire.
The fiercest discussion was when he again fired up a silly thesis and supported it... with noise, no proof, just repeating the same five sentences infinitely, quite loudly but with no substance, that we're all, okay say 99% of us, are unidimentional beings, reduce other people to good/bad mostly based on the first impression or the first fuckup... There all four of us stormed him and he eventually relented somewhat, said he was just provoking a discussion, „I have no proof but neither have you“. „Then it's a religion like issue, a construction which is outside of logic, proving or disproving doesn't apply“. Except that you organically feel that it's not as he says, because you ditched the dichotomy somewhere around fifth grade.
Around one in the morning I finally announced the dissollution of parliament, i.e. that we won't be seeing us regularly, but wait for some occasion - for example Borče manages to, after two years, organize us to visit Staša, or we have a new rakija that we haven't tried yet or some such event. Which passed without much noise, as if I've read the daily orders. I don't know if I was more amazed with that or something else, but regardless, it passed as it was said.
The next day, 21st, she changed her mind a bit, said once a month would be enough, just so we stay in shape and not bore each other.
Joda was done by noon. The 150€, that Raša guesstimated as the price, came out to 17500 dinars and some decimals, which I brought bottled, the man said he loves apple. „OOooooaaah... strong... but gooood...“. While we sat and chatted, he told me how that french guy is coming again, the one who every couple of years rides a spaček to here so he'd spit and polish it, don't know how many times already (and really, I saw two of those parked outside). Then I recalled that it must be the same guy from 06-VIII-2019., and after I described the paintwork on it, he said yes that's the one.
Did the photos in the afternoon, amazingly good, specially the part when I made paper airplanes for the kids, and just when I wanted to throw them on Dropbox, it got stubborn on the spot and demanded the extra six digit code, which it allegedly sent me at info@sGradlj.com... then I saw I had erased that address. Okay, created it again. Tried a few more times, nope, will not can. I shit on your sound film. I zipped those ten shots and hung them at http://sGradlj.com/fotke/do%C4%8Dek.prole%C4%87a.zip (doček of spring), and passed them the link.
Went with Linda and Sanda to Roda and Lidl, and along the way there's a message from Dragana that she doesn't know how to open that. Called her later, but it still seems that she'll need some younger help, or wait until the next meetup, whatever comes first. Don't have a clue how a zip may look on her phone.
----
* yes, I enjoy using this english shorthand for „limar“.
Mentions: 25-V-2018., 06-VIII-2019., Aleksa Pajkov, Alphonse D'Alchembert, Božidar Sokolović (Boća), burundi, doček, Dragana Vitas (Dragana), erc, frendz parti, house dictionary, Joda, Juliška, kombinat, Linda Sredljevich Aquilla (Linda), majstor, Mališa Borkovski (Borče), Nevena Sredljević (Nina), nokla, Rade Peretić, rakija, Ryu (Raja), Sanda Sredljević Aquilla (Sanda), sGradlj.com, spaček, Stanoje Serdarević (Staša), suština, UbiquAgora (UA), in serbian
22-III-2023 - 7-IV-2026