10-XI-2023.
Went to that funeral yesterday. To the new cemetery first, it's easier to park and they have a good flower shop, by city's greenery service, then to Tomaševačko cemetery, to leave some flowers on our family grave. Due to all this mess after the fire, we skipped our end-of-october tour of the cemeteries this year, so at least this.
The cemetery gate looked strangely vacant, and the two diggers there told us that the funeral is at the Temišvarsko, not here. Ah, t-m-š, I misheard. We still had twenty minutes to spare, got there quickly, but finding a slot to park was difficult. Eventually had no other way but to drive over the sidewalk and park on the lawn, and I was the sixth already who did so. Luckily, the weather was nice, sunny, no mud nor chemtrails.
Dragana was visibly shaken, really cried a lot. A big funeral. Usually who makes it over seventy gets a sparsely visited farewell, having outlived most of those who would have attended. The bouquets were piled up on the long cart, there were so many of them. Felt like being in a different city - a cemetery to which I never was, hundred people, of which I knew only Dragana and perhaps a handful whom I met a couple of times and didn't memorize, and one former neighbor whom I do remember some (but not the name, though).
The Aziri brothers came later in the afternoon to measure the wall tiles surface, so how many to buy, how much primer, and to decide the layout of tiles. They too picked some bolivian little hot peppers. Seems each team of majstors has one hot lover. Just like each programmers' team had exactly one šerbedžija
In the evening she went on sanding the soot from the bedroom walls and ceiling, and I scraping the molten plastic off the saloon floor. The handle of vekšmajzl already fell apart, so I finally discarded it and started using the tool as a chisel - works much better so. Dust everywhere, got to empty the vacuum cleaner today. It lost a buckle, fell off somewhere, and I'm trying to somehow jury rig an improvised one with steel wire. I have a clear idea in my head how to do it, but with the pliers in my hands it somehow doesn't follow the imagined design.
Woken by a stubborn fly on my face this morning. Because we left a window ajar („on kip“) while we drank two or three last night, not just because of the smoke but the dust too, and the flies feel even that paltry amount of warm air, and there they come. So before lunch I exterminated ten of them in the kitchen, where they gather because it's warmer, and that's because of the oven, where there's a šlingeraj being baked (finally!) True, half of it is with meat and greenery, so I get the other half, divided by foil, just like the times when we had a vegetarian and made two versions of something in the same plek. Turns out it was simpler to use two glass vessels, they fit side by side in the oven.
We went in the afternoon first to get that shower tub, the guy called to say it arrived, and a syphon for it at some descendants of Čelik (we're long time customers there, they may be roughly polished but they have the goods and know the details), and then to the lumberyard, the same one beyond the dairy, where almost half of our house originated, to buy the tiles and the primer. Called Aziri with the news and let them schedule themselves at will, who comes when.
Then to shopping again, with the girls this time, first to Rerso (i.e. Pepco, but I'm pretending that it's finally one shop with headline in cyrillic), then to Roda, then to Neša's butcher shop, then to the chinese shop in Lesnina. At the first one they bought the present, going to Vera's daughter's birthday tomorrow, nothing at the last one, it got closed and replaced with a Lily pharmacy. At Dragana's it's dark, she's possibly at the other sister's, or they gathered somewhere, or she's simply sleeping the afternoon off, she has that habit.
Eleventh, rainy afternoon, it got dark quite early. Stuffed Nina and the kids into the Joda and went downtown, Vera's hosting her daughter's birthday party. Somewhere on the magistrala, next to zzzzz, where there was Gorenje's appliance retail salon, where we bought the dryer and a salami slicer on top of it, now there's a rođendaonica. Considering that the building is yet another ugly gray box, with lots of glass though, they made it almost pretty, it's all some outer space ambient and it's all in english. The old habits hardly die, there are two entrances and one is locked, the one with a roof above it. For the first smoke break I simply unlocked it and went out, for the other one the girly (but regardless, a cerberus is a cerberus) sent us to the front one, with sheer glass wall above, no cover, so Vera's mom and I had a smoke under a light drizzle.
The kids had a great time, except Raja, who stayed at the table. Ever since his 3ds works again, Nina found a battery for it, he carries it along, including now. All the kids' lips were dark blue from some balls on a stick, which were encrusted with some painted edible buckshot. Bunch of good shots.
Tried on sunday to call Dragana to see when will she be disposed towards a next frendz parti. Because who knows, she may need just the relaxation now, and maybe she even can't take one. Got no reply, and it turned out she later tried to call me, but not a trace of the call on my phone, but then she called again the next day and said they're just getting ready to go to the cemetery, a week's outing there, the sister died on monday. And regarding the sitting, it's the other case, said she, it's uncool to have us sitting and mocking around while she has just two shots of rakija and a glass of wine. Well, that already happened a few times this year, which was one of the reasons to cancel the rest of the season. She'll call when she's in drivable condition.
Lost my first wisdom tooth, exactly the one which came out first, back in Ohrid in 1970. It's not quite gone, just the visible part. Ah, back to reconfiguring my jaw.
On sunday afternoon Aziri came and installed the bathtub. Slowly, precisely and to last a hundred years. And luckily, I have the habit to keep stuff in reserve, because the sewer pipe ended with a 90° elbow, which is okay when the sewer is below and the gravity does its thing. Here, however, the pipe is in the wall, at the same level, so such a stiff turn is a congestion in near future - well, I had a straight connector in the garage, at the end of the same kind of flexible pipe, doing nothing, that end is hanging loose in a wider pipe. So I brought that and that saved the matter.
On tuesday (14th) the lumberyard called, tiles arrived, so I went there to pay and schedule the delivery. While I was paying, the cashier girl was really friendly, I guessed she remembered me from few days ago. When she was writing down the delivery address, said well look at that, that's my end... then looked up the name, read it aloud and „was your wife doing the...“ and I quite expected the next word to be acupuncture, it comes up every few months like a bad coin, but no, „...decoupage?“. „Where did you hear that... eh, my lady does lots of different things, switches genres annually“. „I was on the little market by the community [centre]“. „Aaaah, it's you... we were just wondering where you vanished from Lidl, we bet that you got shooed out because of your attitude towards the corona measures, you complained a lot“. „Yes, that was it, and then I went to the other lumberyard by the cargo railway station, and now here. This is a song, compared, the Lidl even caused me health problems“. There, we found her.
And I finally managed to make the wire buckle for the vacuum cleaner. Follows the project about halfway - works as I imagined it, doesn't look.
In the evening talked with Carp, he called a few days ago and I didn't notice, so now. Says he almost got married, and the bride was okay and they fit well together, all all but she was of no mind to come to him in the village, and he just couldn't stand being stuck in thirtysome square[meter]s on eighth floor, so nothing came of it.
In the evening she continued sanding the ceiling and walls in our bedroom, and in the end I cleaned it up and vacuumed, just like we do the last five days. It begins to look like the room it once was.
Since she started adding out tobacco into the mix, we smoke less. In this month after the fire, not once have we needed the third tozna, even as we regularly sit and have a few shots every odd evening. Sometimes we end up even leaving two cigs for the morning, so she doesn't have to make while still fuzzy from sleep.
Wednesday, 15th. Waiting for lunch, the landline phone rings, someone calls asking whether this is so and so... yes, but with -ić, if you meant Sredljak, he's not on this number. But the guy actually needed him, they're building an extension of the medications factory (as we saw when returning from that other funeral ten days ago), and his father had the rights to one apartment in the adjacent kolonija šećerana, so they'd like to buy them off and expand this further... so, if you'd have a phone number for him...“. So I dug out the file with addresses and numbers of IV5pp, spelled out both of his mobile numbers, and some day we'll see what came of it.
Just when we sat by the table, and I cut one little bolivian in half, chopped my half in tiny bits and passed her the knife and the other half, my mobile rings. Bajlo. „Hey, did you hear that Dragana's sister died?“ „Was at the funeral“. Uh... took me some time to explain when was what, who was there („um, just the two of us, of hundred people I knew nobody, as if in another city“)... Luckily, he was at the wheel so we finished shortly.
Sanding the bedroom walls has progressed almost to a half, there's more light already, the obscure ambient has partly left the building, now to paint it. Knowing how soot can seep through layers of paint, regardless of it being sanded off, she searched the web and found some impregnating solution against that, what where when. Now we'd go to the paintshop, but we're waiting for tiles. Called the lumberyard, and got a firm statement from their boss that if the driver hasn't called yet (14:30), there's no way he'd make it today. So we went to that paintshop by the firemen[s' station], and bought what we needed. The girl there even mixed the selected shade of greenish turquoise, or rather turquoish milky green, to repaint the old regal, we're really bored with how it looks, we'd rather separate its parts, the top row will go upstairs. And more sanding pads, new dustpan (the one I'm using is from 2010) and even dropped by Najka in detelina for hens' fodder, it was already sold out last time. Came home, and I belatedly remembered that I shouldn't park on the driveway, a delivery is still due, the guy will need the space to lower the tiles by forklift. Okay, I'll move the car when the guy calls.
And there it was already unloaded, the guy with the van came while we weren't at home. So no help at unloading, he just left it in the middle of the path, we barely walked around it, should trim those rosemaries again. We brought in at least the bags with the glue, even though they look waterproof, but still, just in case. That is, we two brought in the first four, and then I sat on the stairs to breathe. Should have taken a break after the second. Nina helped her with the other five bags. Called Aziri then, said this is like ace on eleven*, the guys have two days off, can start in the morning and work all day. Then called Jeptel to see about that bill, but their phone menu refused to cooperate, didn't react to what I typed. So called that technician guy, he said he'll check. And indeed he called back three minutes later, said it was canceled, no trace of it. Okay, come by anytime, have a drink.
And then vacuuming the ceiling. For no matter how much the sand scrubs off, some of it gets just moved around and smeared on the wall, and the simple bit with some brush on it can take that off, even leaves a noticeable whiter trace behind. There'll be cramps in some unaccustomed muscles, but never mind that, as long as we're progressing to normality. Then she painted some insulation over it, which should stop the soot from emerging. We had the case in the old house, where the soot found its way from the chimney through four layers of paint. The walls weren't cut off from the foundation there, so the moisture circulated slowly, not the case here, but, again, just in case.
On UA it's the second day of discussion about crashed memo fields in fox's tables. Started with Kristin's complaint that she finally had the case, and everyone joined in commiseration or offering advice. I mentioned rebfpt.prg and allowed myself to be talked into uploading a fresher version... which I did, and then decided that the thing is worth mentioning here. And it's 22:13 now and I'm still adding references to it, by dates, into Byo.
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* expression from tablić - where an ace can count both as 1 and as 11, so if there's a ten and an ace on the heap [aka talon], the next player scores four if he has an ace - ace and ten are 'full cards' i.e. counted against the score, and an extra point ('tabla') for cleaning the heap
Mentions: Byo (Byo), Čelik, detelina, Dragana Vitas (Dragana), fox, Gradivoj Sredljev (Sredljak), IV5pp, Joda, Kristin Peiser, Lesnina, majstor, Nenad Bajlo (Bajlo), Nevena Sredljević (Nina), plek, rakija, rebfpt.prg, regal, rođendaonica, Ryu (Raja), šećerana, tablić, Tasa Radenkov (Carp), tozna, UbiquAgora (UA), vekšmajzl, Vera Vraneš, zzzzz, in serbian
20-II-2024 - 6-II-2026