01-III-2021.
23rd, girls' haircut. Their bangs were already falling over eyebrows, so Nina took them one by one to the bathroom. They don't protest at all, just visit the mirror in the anteroom, which is now back from the upper floor - it hangs by a single nail and it's a big body sized mirror (same one as we had back in the US, and likewise costs 5$). For a while they rocked it, so to avoid the danger we moved it upstairs then.
Went thrice to Springfield this week, to them it's now "rainbow house" and insist on going exactly there. Next house behind is some printery, with some rubbish generic name in english. There's no way I can reconcile a printery for large formats, with office cars in so many colors, to be in a graphite gray house, may gray fuck them. Dragana says her nephew worked there, after she went to extensive maneuvering to get him a job in the school where she used to work, and the whole entrance poked fuck at him for parking official car behind Lesnina, for it's a paintshop explosion. By the time I made the shot, he quit that job, said it was dull. It seems the job doesn't matter much, he used to work until a year ago at some foreign, well known and large firm, then cooled off his balls for months.
On 25th we went with girls to the old house, on bikes, ostensibly to collect the mail, mostly bills. Those bills are on technical minimum, we pay just the existence of the service - water and power we use only to wash our hands and to have lights inside, and for the mower when in use. The gas meter shows the same as four years ago. The phone is finally off! I cancelled the service long ago, but they kept sending the bills, which we kept paying for no reason for almost a year, then we stopped but they still didn't turn it off. We could have made calls to Madagascar had we wanted, from a formally nonexistent number... but what for. Now after a whole year they finally flipped the switch.
We cut the roses rather short, they grew quite wild and just walking around required attention. When I was carrying the branches to behind the house, where we pile the biomass, I stepped on the cover of the small manhole for the yard tap's valve, fully aware that it's fixed and safe since long ago, no matter that it's covered with leaves from that platanus on the street (it's twice taller than the house). But no, there's no hinge, it's just a piece of sheet metal just laid over the hole, so my foot fell those thirtysome centimeters in, and I stretched my full length on the concrete path, scraping a few knuckles on my left hand. Didn't have any of those since september. My right thigh got an excellent massage, though along its whole length at once.
Just like any other place we go to, Sanda and Linda have their list of things to do. If it's Springfield, then it's some climbing on the monkey rack, then some running with the ball, few minutes in the ball pit etc etc, then something to eat (used to be a small pizza while they liked, now it's fries), and to slurp as much of our coffees as they can get away with. In the old house, it's to enter the house itself, and ring the old alarm clocks repeatedly. Luckily dad had two identical mechanical alarm clocks to wind up, which are the main toy there. And then some vessels - little pots, džezvas etc, to play cook.
The weather is so nice that the apricots are on the brink of blossoming. The neighbor's small one already did. We got lucky on the banat roulette only twice in these tenth seasons, the other eight years we went bust. The violets already blossomed in the yard, now they've spread to the street side too. On twentysixth we took out the chairs, and the plank which plays the bench, so in the afternoon we sat outside a bit.
On twentyeighth we ran out of ideas for lunch, so I called the pizzeria (the one we like, there's a dozen of them), but they didn't respond. Perhaps they now close on sundays, some epidemic regulation, who can track that. So instead we called the fasteat on Belgrade road - it's only 2km further away than the one we visit on the way to Čankovo, but no traffic lights that way. Also took the girls for the ride. The Chinese are building a huge tire factory in the new industrial zone. How and what we'll breathe when it opens, nobody knows. We took a kilo of ćevapčići and a kilo of bela vešalica (a special thin cut of some pure meat, goes white when roasted, excellent).
Talked with Lena in the evening, says they're thinking of bying a house in Novi, the air in Belgrade is becoming visible too often, and that's the vojvodina side, turkish is worse. And now with inserting more buildings in the area, even this side won't be better for too long. They're still browsing.
Her study is winding close to the end, just a couple of exams until the diploma. It went somewhat slower than she expected, but that's not so horrible - she already clocked seven years of staž, and accumulated a heap of cash, so the time when the diploma will land is mostly irrelevant.
Today we finally got that pizza so it's two days when it counted as if I was the cook.
Before going to the 41st "frendz parti", I checked the email for a hundredth time this month, specially as I've sent a reminder yesterday that it's still not a full month since she promised "reply is coming, just don't know when"... and so yes, Melanija finally wrote, none of what she promised, but instead of how they took the death of Đorđe Balašević, how their son just couldn't get the "life is a sea" line, how from her professionally anthropological viewpoint it looks strange that he was given such a mass farewell on the strand, on Danube, "wat is it in our people, seems necropile, to love funerals and farewells, including good people fans of Balasevic, to stick into te crowd and to, witout masks and distance says goodbye to its saints (also vctims of corona)? Several analogies came to mind..." (the omission of h in a few places is my simulation of how she now writes - she tried with šđčćž in the first message, but now completely gave up and went all haircut latin).
In the evening, the party at Dragana's, of course. Borko by some miracle came two minutes ahead of us, it's usually the other way around. We brought a liter and a half of tutifruti 2019 (the best); a Roda we bought two bottles of roze, and specially this time, for her, four cans of budvár dark. Because somehow she dislikes wine after dinner, and also not when I drink it, says I smell much better after just brandy. And these two don't have much of a choice in beers - she has something useless, one lion one deer (that I wouldn't drink either), and he what Lidl has, which didn't impress me at all, it sure is german but is called in english. Just generic, neither fish nor meat, house brand.
We had to split early, because she had vaccine scheduled for 7 in the morning. About photos I somewhat experimented with flash slanted backwards and sideways, in her little white kitchen it always turns well, light everywhere.
The next day (2nd) I did the pictures. When she went for a walk with the girls, I also posted them, wrote back to Melanija, sorted out a few things here in Byo, day done.
Mentions: 26-VIII-1978., Byo (Byo), Čankovo, ćevapčići, Dragana Vitas (Dragana), frendz parti, Jelena Sredljević (Lena), Lesnina, Linda Sredljevich Aquilla (Linda), Mališa Borkovski (Borko), Melanija Tisarević, Nevena Sredljević (Nina), Novi Sad, Sanda Sredljević Aquilla (Sanda), Springfield, staž, in serbian