22-IV-2025.
Sunday, 20th. Slept somewhat short, so I chipped off a pause before lunch, when Lena already announced they've departed, and woke up when they arrived. I think this two parter was five hours total, and it seemed quite enough, felt just fine.
Lunch... my dear surpassed herself. Young beef soup (for Lena without noodles, yet another special diet, her thyroid is now in counter phase, which is still better than the hormones, she ate three plates [full]). The boiled [meat] from the soup, shards, turkey things from the oven, pohovan'd (which Milan just loves and isn't shy with it, takes two, sometimes even three steaks), cole slaw (no sugar this time, and it's only a teaspoon anyway, the diet again).
Baba, of course, fed Tanja, the little[ one]'s appetite is really good, she's lively, strong, firm and curious. We spread the beach mat on the same spot where we always do, such is the geography of the big room, and then she also sat in the grass (we moved on friday, second time already) and played with the watering bucket. The lilac on the hill is in full blossom, smells fairily, so they sat there as well for a while.
A visit to Springfield before autumn was also considered, i said wdik*, I'm not going there except when taking foreign citizens with me, it's a tavern for foreigners. Um... maybe we could get Tanja a putovnica [cro: passport], she's got the rights through her grandmother. Okay then, so be it.
Milan even took a nap, I know how it is, mother-in-law's lunch. Then he received Tanja to crawl over him a little, and we enacted one 'd fors iz strong vid dis van' when I charged the flash. All in all, it was good. We packed most of the meat for them to take home, lest we eat it till thursday, as happened last week with the party leftover roast.
Then Nina called and we heard in detail how the big parting passed. The current guy is somewhat on hold, until her internal dust settles, they both agreed that she's not quite ready yet, took rain checks both. The kids are OK, we even specially had a good look at Raja, fuckit a whole guy, seemingly all of a sudden. He's got it all, our long fingers and limbs, and the phllipine long spine, he'll be a frajer and a half. The cherry she replanted from here ten years ago finally blossomed, but the whole west half of the crown is somewhat withering. Maybe doesn't like the soul, not good for cherries, better put a pear, we saw them grow nicely there.
And then, orderly, Go around half ten. Anita recounted a dream, this time not about shopping at Costco but rather about being in Sokobanja and we left and she stayed but wasn't distressed at all, went to the pool... Neša had a haircut, fits him nicely, he's a face. Like I said many times, Bowie always wanted to look like that and cunted for it wasn't working. And he had a new joke:
What do you call a horse living next door?
A neighbor.
Stanley is, it seems, finally selling the big Toyota, he set a due date to the guy to come up with the rest of money, or else he's returning the downpayment (while keeping 500$ for storage cost), he's got a new buyer. With his boss, pretend partner, he has a different deal, says „for your customers you pay me hourly like before, for my customers the 40% is too much, you get 20% plus what you take on parts“. Not that the guy agreed, but didn't complain much either.
We dispersed around half one, then continued with the cherry, not overdoing it, three and a half shots were just the amount. At least I slept a proper length afterwards. And so this stereo easter passed, what with nobody even mentioning it, except near the end of the talk someone remembered to add „we didn't dye the eggs this year“ and the response was „neither have we“ - i.e. nobody did.
During the day I heard on burundi that the trial production of water from the new plant is starting again, guess about sixteenth time. We let it flow a little, something murky came out, aha, takes a while to wash out. A while later it really cleared, but didn't taste like anything much, and it was tepid at that. Tried it again on wensday, well not bad enought. Luckily, the change doesn't influence the taste of coffee and grub.
Twonyfirst. She made a pilav out of the young beef from yesterday's soup (I always have to bring a picture into my head, not to pick the wrong word among pilav, đuveč, sataraš and podvarak, to me they're like Milorad, Milutin, Milenko i Milivoje Milić, I have to stop and make sure I don't mention a wrong [one]), a beauty.
May it not go unrecorded... This wave of protests has so penetrated everywhere, as if the Bitef spilled over, and these events have become so commonplace that they go almost unnoticed, except when we take a part [in them].
The concert by the dry bridge. Two violins, Teleman, Bártok (and someone forgot to bring the notes for Mozart). One microphone with a weak portable PA system, and the violins were not amplified. Considering the place where it was held (by the bridge on dry [land]), which is a big open space without façades to provide any echo, we even heard it well.
The cause for the gathering is almost bizarre - the MZ [local community, burrough] Mala Amerika is practically isolated, there's the two bridges (the little and the yellow, which was built on dry, before the river shortcut was dug under it), and the four dams lead nowhere, because they either hit the railway or pedestrian zone or the elevated park, no proper roads over them... Except this one, it could connect two streets, but there's a fuckup, there's a gas station on the once right bank, can't run a street through a gas station. But an irregular unpaved country path can, and so it does. When I passed that way seven years ago, it was as wide as a normal lane, now it's about four lanes. When it's dry, it's all dust, when wet, mud. MZ is cunting for eating all that dust.
So the zbor of the MZ organized this protest/concert, to gather the neighbors and to bitch about the problem. The atmosphere was, thus, a bit surreal. Even the cops lined up to prevent anybody from, as the violinist girl said, „concluding, based on his own knowledge and experience, that he'd drive the bus this way“ (an allusion to „Who's singing back there?“ cult movie).
Thus I wrote this morning on burundi. What I didn't write is that we rode our bicycles to there (just like at least fifth of the attending did, those who aren't from the end). We also saw that older guy, about our vintage, whom we remember from out MZ, for weird eyes - when he opens them wide, right lid goes all the way up and the left only halfway, looks half weird half rascal. We sat on the bottom stairs of the dry bridge (and I didn't offer to carry her up, just remembered that I once performed that feat). There was Joška with missus. He's also shooting around, I actually think he does that for the living. Now that they're alone in the big house - son is a doctor in Slovenia, parents buried - all the things for which they never had the time are now due, all at once. „If I ruthlessly delay some things and carefully reshuffle the others so that there's no idle run in between, maybe next year I'd be able to catch two weeks off, fuckit with five projects at the same time...“.
We didn't stay to the very end, it matters that we came to see and be seen, to be accounted for, it was our dinner time already and the bladder had its demands too... But at least it was a good ride. And I tried out the photo bag, it's good.
There was a guy with incredibly long hair, we just kept glancing and asking ourselves how does he wipe [his] ass. Two and a half times longer than my record from seventyfive.
When we pulled into our garage, we noticed the kittens crawling around. So they weren't in that box behind the abrihter (planer)(or maybe initially they were, cats are prone to move their offspring) but rather under the sink. Five [of them]. Of course, I lifted the flash and made the shots right away, easier to count that way. After dinner I sat to process the shots, and sent that one with the kittens into the platoon chat (as I did with the one above, with exactly the „d fors iz strong vid dis van“ for description). Aur and a half later Linda called to ask how many kittens were there and what are their names. Well at least we saw Violet, the main cat kuma, textless this time.
The kittens are Džimi's, but she abandoned them and the care (and nursing) passed on to Zelena. On tuesday we moved them from the garage to the terrace, lest they roll into the basement and then into the spillover pit, where we'd never find them. Stole is slaughtering chickens so the other cats are there for the feast, there's always somethng for them. Whenver any other cat comes to check whether there's anything to eat (cats can ask for more every 20 minutes), Zelena shoos it away. It'll be an interesting week.
On wensday she was even fiercer, nobody dared poke a whisker, Zelena would hiss and even left the box to beat up anyone who'd dare to enter. Her three last year's, now already grownup cats, of which one seems as if already becoming somewhat extended, we didn't even see. Rundek and Vafl (Waffle) just walk by and disappear.
Thursday marked the beginning of return. They slowly returned, one by one, DŽimi, Belobrk, Vafl, some of the brothers Rok (from Alan Ford, though all three are females), and even Rundek was briefly seen. Eh, just when we hoped that some won't know how to return. And I've debugged the english version of Byo - why did it fail to refresh the linked articles - because the dates of links I pulled from the serbian version instead of english. As soon as I fixed that, it regenerated few hundred articles where the link was newer than the article it links to. Finished inserting links to Žitni wherever mentioned, which I started the previous afternoon.
Made another batch of noodles, didn't in a long while. She made the wide a couple of days ago, for the narrow ones it takes two.
The quarantine was completely revoked by friday, everyone was allowed to return. Rundek finished shedding the fur, he's now in completely summer, subdued gray edition. He's specially funny while shedding, because he does it from nose to tail, and by wensday he looked like wearing seven skirts - his winter fur is yellowisher (try to translate „žućkastije“ better than this) and longer by a whole inch than the summer.
We kept sipping every even evening, once three and a half, once reached the fifth, it got us going. Around the third we began sifting through memories, all the places we were and things we did and „...you know, when I sum it all, and the how many years was it, least twony thirty, when we not once went out in the evening, didn't go for a vacation, and stuck to our 'if I really like it I don't care how cheap it is', and here even our computers aren't any beasts, our shooters aren't the pro class but rather the higher middle, I'm inoculated against hifilis, and we spent so many year without even having a drink, the cars I always drove good old but reliable, and my bicycle was never spruced up, looks like nothing but rides well, and I never minded my wardrobe much... everything could be cheap or done without, but here now since we're living normally, we haven't changed our habits much. Except one: meat. We eat meat to our soul's desire. And we live nicely“.
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* i.e. šgjz, šta ga ja znam - what do I know; when pronounced the serbian way, phonetically, it's almost understood
Mentions: Alan Ford, Anita Jennifer Berger (Anita), burundi, Byo (Byo), frajer, Gorana Sredljević (Go), Jelena Sredljević (Lena), Joška Apro, kum, Linda Sredljevich Aquilla (Linda), Milan Nastić, Nenad Berger (Neša), Nevena Sredljević (Nina), Ostoja Čaković (Stole), pohovano, Ryu (Raja), Springfield, Stanley Berger, Tanja Nastić, Violet, zbor, Žitni, in serbian
22-IV-2025 - 2-IX-2026