04-X-2025.
Itt's gotten cold, really well, it dawned at +7 yesterday. Second day in a row with heating turned on, and she replaced the terry cloth blankets with the quilt. We meant to go see our granddaughter on sunday, but when it's this cold the Belgraders stay at home and there's no parking slot for me. At least Lena sent us a video where she's reading a picture book in french, to get Tanja used to languages, and she's laughing heartily, how's mom talking so funny.
Wrote an feature for mrz, to show, when I press the << button, last 200 songs, so I can see what was it that I heard, and then I can hear it again (or delete it) if I wish.
Most often I use it to check the length of my catnap, just look at the last song I remember hearing, and what time it was.
Now that we're buying ripe young cheese from the Russians (cheese is local, they only own the shop), and they also have good butter, and she's making pašteta often, the problem of what to spread it on became, well, a problem. I love bread and fondly remember it, but 99% of what's sold is industrial junk, bare starch and chemistry and half-baked. I did find some decent bread, „without yeast“ (which is correct inasmuch as there's no industrial yeast in it, it's the domestic yeast from the air, self-grown), in the bakery by Svetofor. It was good while it was fresh, but what I bought for the party three weeks ago sat enough hours in the open and then in a plastic bag, not the thing anymore. So she went on to revise her old recipe, the one from 24-IV-2012., just it was this time a recipe from some character from yootewb, who measures it in grams, not cups. So we went shopping, to Lidl first. They're still playing their ad on the PA, but not louder than the regular announcements. Didn't bitch loudly this time, just sent a middle finger salute to the ceiling. We didn't buy much, two whole chickens, four jars of instant coffee, two cooking chocolates, carrots. Met Juliška, she was really pleased to see us - we rarely see each other in the yard.
In Roda, the serekeš shits, because it's constipated, when she selects 'other amount', it immediately says 'we are not in the possibility to perform the transaction'. Training the folks a bit, y'all get used to live cashless. She's in the mood to visit her bank and just lift some 100-200 thou. We found black flour, type 1100, rye [flour] we already got, there'll be bread. There was also some material for burundi:
here a bit ago two smoking [ones] from Roda. First, at the cash register, I see „camel compact watermelon“. Finally, I'm fed up with them noncompacts, every now and then something's jutting out, you keep toppling things while you maneuver to park it.
In the lobby, another odvratising* piece of work, „1000 pafova... vejpovi“. Okay, I know what a pafov is, it's a... er... rhymes with valov; and them vejps must be new word for vepar, I guess. [paf, vejp - untranslated puff and vape; valov - trough in the pigpen; vepar - male hog]
Fare's movie reviews are literary language compared with odvratizelese.
After pondering it over and over for a few days, I went on to finally write something for suština. To connect to the last article, which I wrote two years ago, about the window upstairs, with moonshine in the dirty glass, which never got washed since it was installed. And how now I can't repeat that photograph now, because fuckit the fire, it's a different window now. I found a proper shot, of 11-X-2023., where the pane with broken glass is featured. And I even posted the shot, wrote a couple of paragraphs... and then she came and mumbled something. That was enough, I was really on the fence, barely talked myself into finding something to write that would be worthwhile, and then procrastinated for five days... and now I just pressed control double yoo and never looked at suština again. Not as an author, not as a visitor.
Sunday, more or less nothing the whole day. Evening, new pearl from Neša - „what you call a master of duping? - a super dooper“. „Man who coaches actors who have stage fright - stage coach“ was my reply. My joke flopped, he didn't know what a stage coach was.
For frendz parti she went through five variants of what to serve for dinner (candidates - pohovan'd trotters, granma's specialty; pizza as an entree, sekelj (székely) gulaš and two-trhree more I forgot). Eventually it was 'bečkerečka tajna' (secret of Bečkerek) (20-VI-2020.), of which I thought she already made it once, but nope, I misremembered. The difference is that she won't do it with rice this time, but rather mashed potatoes, which she means to mash with a mixer, to make it lighter and airier. There were also a few variants for the entree, including gibanica, but eventually it will be projice (cornbread muffins) and ready sluces from grocery.
...and then that changed too, not projice but žužu (joujou, I guess) pogačice. I'm quite used to such changes of plan and not knowing the menu until the last moment, but she outdid herself this time. And she mashed the potatoes with the hand gnasher. The rest was as per the last announcement. Of rakija, the leftovers of the 2019 apricot. There's still a liter and a bit in the small cask. And it went well, we still poured another half shot when she already brought the main course on table. It won't cool down so fast anyway, these steel pots are a miracle. Half liter vanished.
First Borče recounted the new house, its layout. Said the house had a hundred faults, as nobody lived in it for a number of years, a lady bought it to retire into it, did some redecoration and fixes but not to the end, and then changed her mind and went to live in Germany, sold it. He got the front side of the house, and the daughter (and her husband and kid, whom he barely mentioned) the rear. They're still busy with it, the bathrooms were still done the day before, a vukašin was missing (which he mentioned three weeks ago), so he didn't have the time to scout the neighborhood. Daughter, though, found everything already, where are shops and bakeries, what's good where, she manages swimmingly.
It turns out we held two-three presentations - the bečkerečka tajna, including the story how it played only one season in Domaćin and never more, how is the reverse engineering in a pot even possible; about chlorine dioxyde, of which we already spoke previously, but this time they got one beer bottle (of those six or seven she painted fifteen years ago, which were sitting on top of the kitchen top cabinet) to try themselves at home, with a by-the-way remark that there were cases when it cured autism, so if it helps with his grandchild, it helped, and for her as well, if it eases her ankle trouble. Third, chronologically first, I had to show latest news - a photo of Tanja reading a picture book while leaning her back against Api, and then that video with the picture book in french, which she found so funny, and gave the book to Lena three times to read again. Such a language, so funny. And then a small lecture on growing yeast out of nothing, even brought the jar where it grows, with the mandatory „I love bread and remember it fondly“, to which Borče said „that was about sex, wasn't it?“. „I love female bread too“.
And then that picture made of cloth leftovers, which to me is spitting image of the landscape, seen from our acacia grove towards the river in Zajač, which Dragana didn't get the technique until Borče passed his fingers over its surface and grokked it... aah that's the trick.
We didn't [talk] much about politics, but once Dragana mentioned Vučić, I had to present the report on the performed research, that I did find a complete and uncut video of him, Toma Mona and Mali eat the baloney, three and a half minutes longer... and he's not eating it then either, the extra scenes are of him claptrapping to the camera. The psycho isn't capable of even scoring one at home, and if he made the whole circus around that baloney, aiming to show how he and his two ministers also eat it, why didn't he do it for the camera, why didn't he do the thing around which he made the whole show.
I reduced the shooting to one rapid barage, six shots in one minute, ciao gbye. We did look nice, but no need to repeat the same shots each time.
And of course, when she served the pancakes and the darkened apricot pekmez, vintage 2019 or who knows when, there was the unavoidable „whoa, you're killing us...“. Two bottles of wine were gone, though with the help of us two, who drank the last two glasses after 1:30, when they two were already in a cab, let it not go to waste.
Tuesday, chatting with Lena, Tanja doing whatever she was doing, it was Api that was the problem. His prostate swelled, and he ain't young, seven and a half, needs to go get (chemically) castrated. Luckily, they have a good veterinary in the end. Milan felt sorry for him, but then it's worse to see the dog suffering, so he went into some quasipsychic attempt of understanding a dog's life, that dog didn't even ask to be born (and who did?) etc... Lena told him to bring a bottle of whiskey for the vet, and just when she thought he didn't even hear her, there comes a selfie of Milan and the vet, whiskey in some coffee cups.
In the afternoon Žuca called, IV4 is gathering on tuesday, the 14th, in Klek again, but inside this time, it's getting a bit fucked up to sit outside. Um... don't know whether I feel like going at all, you aren't coming to my place either. Well, if anyone calls offering transportation, okay, won't refuse.
Went on reading Reynolds in the evening, and about midnight here she is, sleeping failed. Um, haven't poured anything. And the last night's apricot? Ah, yeah... Hit the hay at half four.
Wensday, 8th. Ran out of cigarette paper. My bike's left pedal came loose again, so I tightened it again, this time a bit firmer. Quite a wind. Went to serekeš first, didn't do that in a while, guess once in june and august, used to do that monthly. It had money, my pension having arrived the day before is still not the main wave, which is about ninth, tenth. The other time when they leave serekeš empty is when the utility bills are due, so this time I was on time.
On the way back the wind dwindled to nothing, incredible silence, I hit the right speed. After lunch (jučetina - v. house dictionary - leftovers of yesterday's bečkerečka), a new[s?] arrives that at 3:20 an „explosive gear“ was thrown att Springfield, guess it was a bomb, fuckit, those with timers aren't thrown, they're laid. There, I was there this morning, the serekeš is bare 100m away, and there was no sign anywhere that anything's out of normal. Ah, yeah, see it now, it happened on 19th of september.
Bread is made by new recipe. The yeast is grown a bit differently, the previous recipe was oversimplified. This one ain't complicated either, just requires a bit more attention and not much work.
Thursday. Bread turned out great, just like it used to be but even better, and has that full fragrance. In other newses, our fish, the larger one, died. Only one left now. Now thatt we could finally see them, through that purified water. The mayor even stated that the water is now verified as potable, which is bullshit... My comment on burundi:
Special pearl is that Salamura said that „it means they have a healthy and right drinking water again“... as if it was right before 2004 and then went bad. The water is the same as it always was, it's that in that year the water sellers' lobby was formed, and the allowable amount of arsenic was lowered in the regulation. As late as 2003 the then city gov't, when Goran Knežević Aflatoxine was the mayor, put pumps on street corners and had their pictures of themselves published at opening them. A year later they were dismantling the very same pumps.
The datum of some dozen years ago was that what the Zrenjaninians spend buying water in two years is roughly the cost of the water factory.
Okay, my bullshit too, the regulation wasn't changed, it was simply not applied theretofore, the quality of water was known and it was in use regardless, and there's not that much arsenic anyway, and one grows resistant to it, there was no endemic nephritis here. Actually nothing wrong befell us, we grew up on that water and raised the kids.
Friday. Poured more of that nineteen apricot, celebrated the doček of the fire anninversary.
On sunday, just when we were ready to go, Dragana called about tuesday. She'd like to go but then also wouldn't, seems to be waiting to be offered transportation just like me. Well, if it appears, it appears.
Then I experienced a relativistic moment while driving to Belgrade. The local portals announced roadwork between Perlez and Čenta, and driving around Perlez I anticipated the obstacle. While I didn't believe they'd exactly work on a sunday, I did expect them to leave signs and machinery on the road, leaving it unfinished, just marked and causing a proper congestion. Convinced I'm still circumnavigating Perlez I kept watching for signs of congestion on the horizon... and spotted the entrance into Čenta. I drove for those seven-eight minutes entirely on autopilot.
Api completely recovered from the visit to the vet, only Lena still recognizes the spot on his spine where the fur is slightly ruffled, where the fluted chemical castration tablet was inserted under his skin. It's reversible, but then he may be a bit old for those things when it wears out. When we arrived he barked for all the money's worth, was very loud at the staircase and of course he woke Tanja up. She did get enough sleep by then and was in a good mood. I made a bunch of shots of her smiles. As Go said later when I posted the photos, „wow how super she wears that honey smile, kisses from her aunt 😘😍“... but not once have I managed to get all the teeth in a shot, she'd have to open mouth widely for that. Current layout is 4-2-1-1-2-4 up, 4-1-1-4 down.
The grub was ordered from Valter, we had a pljeska each, Lena some chicken, Milan ćevapčići, all good and plentiful. We took the rain check on the last third of ours, took it home for dinner, it's just too much to eat in one go. Tanja ate whatever was cut small enough for her, appetite is not a problem. After lunch I like took a nap and like didn't, couldn't sink. Tanja stuck to the tradition we already formed, to leave me for some fifteen minutes, then climb on the couch, and this time didn't lie next to me, but across, her head cradled between my head and shoulder. At least Lena took shots of us lying so, for posterity.
Driving back I finally noticed what they fixed by Čenta - they patched what they patched with softer asphalt last time, which the trucks pressed out so it became concave and pushed out a convex piece, looked like a wave. Doesn't look as if it was done any better this time. That part of the road is now 51 shades of gray. Around Perlez the sun was really lwo, real october sunset. She saw me trying to record some of it, so she took the eos70 and knitted a few. This silo by Perlez came out almost as a spectre. And the atmosphere at Mere was just whelmed right, when I saw this scene, I knew I had to take a shot, and I got the right moment when she went in to return the cart.
We bought stuff which is eaten with bread, because we finally, again, have proper bread. Here, fourth day in a row, even though it's a bit drier than on day one, it's still elastic, doesn't crumble, and exudes that perfect symphony of fragrances. We agreed to take a loaf to Dragana so she can see what we're talking about.
Email from V.G., the mathematicians will meet this year too. Me being without Viber, I was not consulted, as she changed phones and lost her contacts, so eventually now she remembered to tell me, seeing how Borče didn't. It'll be on 23rd, and finally not in the Army home, but across the river, in some čarda under the bridge. I hope it sports less echo. And in some way I feel more at ease for not being in the organization, I've had enough of that. My part is to call the two-three of my patients, first Z.H. in Subotica and I.Z., of course.
Nina is in Deesee with kids, hosting that Frayser guy from Scotland. They're pals for years, always on the same team for Overwatch. He brought some specialties for the kids from his home end, and there's a shot of Linda with a scottish cap - the cloth being the proper tartan, and a bright red fringe on top, but the cut is... I had to comment: „шкотска шајкача“ (scottish šajkača, qv.). Which Stanley managed to read, despite being out of practice with cyrillic. He's still got it. They don't have much news, the cars come and go, the majstor is almost done with the house in Virginia Beach, we barely saw Anita as she's buzzing around with her new best friend, and (since a few days ago) at her place too. Neša we saw in the end, and I sold him the joke but it failed, he didn't know what 'stage coach' was, a joke requiring explanation is a flop. But his one about 'Anita will get a speaking ticket' was the buzz of the evening.
And now to revamp his old machine, of unknown year, to take over the duty, as gugolj is really too old now and barely manages.
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* 'odvratajzer' was invented on ppp, from 'odvratan' - disgusting.
Mentions: 24-IV-2012., 20-VI-2020., 11-X-2023., The fire, Anita Jennifer Berger (Anita), Api, burundi, ćevapčići, doček, Domaćin, Dragana Vitas (Dragana), eos70, frendz parti, gibanica, Gorana Sredljević (Go), gugolj, house dictionary, IV4, Jelena Sredljević (Lena), Juliška, Linda Sredljevich Aquilla (Linda), majstor, Mališa Borkovski (Borče), Milan Nastić, mrz pladžer, Nenad Berger (Neša), Nevena Sredljević (Nina), pašteta, pekmez, pljeska, pogačice, pohovano, ppp, rakija, serekeš, Springfield, Stanley Berger, suština, Tanja Nastić, Zajač, Živana Armatović (Žuca), in serbian
4-X-2025 - 5-VII-2026