26-V-2021.
The optician has a nice terrace there.
With fresh plates on Joda we went... nowhere this day. Her glasses lost a hinge, and the weather was nice, so we got on bikes and took the girls downtown. Met a bunch of folks - while she went under the bridge to the optician to see what they can do, I was still locking my bike and there comes Grne. Then around vodotoranj one lady from the inspection, talks how they're worked to exhaustion, for months they work even on weekends, dežurni on the border and what not.
Next we met Vera's mother, with granddaughter, so she and Linda and Sanda chased pigeons, ate popcorn, or just ran around for almost an hour. Afternoon passed, bunch of good shots.
To Čankovo we went only the next day, with new plates. Nothing was stolen this time, the neighbors are away. Picked some early sweet cherries in a bag. With how spring is like nothing, with so much rain and little sun, it's good that we got this much ripe. The kids ate them all (Violet and Linda mostly). And in the last couple of years nobody wanted to eat them. Go figure.
On 29th was Nina's birthday, but we didn't mark it. Made a few shot on the second cake, left over from last week. Went with the girls to the old house, could use some mowing but still not urgent, and at least I cut the vines where they started regrowing. Finally heaped up the thorny rose twigs to the big heap in the near corner (beneath our old bathroom window), so next time I can come close to the rest of the vines and chop them off too. Found some footstool, quite low, so I could sit and make really low cuts. My crouch is so bad that I hurt after two minutes. Never learned how to do that properly.
Found the old car wash brush... fuck it, this thing is from 1967. It was bought for fića when it was new. Took it home, will need it.
On thirtyfirst I thought I'd pedal to the dentist, but it rained again so... Joda. At least I got rid of the smell of iodine from my mouth. I'm done with the dentist for a while, time to think of ways to repopulate my jaw, it was depleting long enough.
Go has an ongoing situation with the house in Virginia Beach. The guy who is still there was the housemate of Nina's kum. Now kum bought a house somewhere when he got a chance. For as much as his stepfather screwed him up, he still left him enough money when he died, so now this guy was left alone. And got scared somewhat, got delusional, allegedly the house wants to fall on him or what, the upstairs is sinking... and although they were paying some ridiculously low rent, 750$ when the rest of the street pays 1200$ and up, and now for these few months that he was alone he paid just 500$. But no, he filled his pants and the house is out to get him and... the last we heard is he passed the keys to Nina's father-in-law. We'll see.
On 2nd we took Linda and Sanda to Čankovo - knowing we won't be doing much. We made the water system work for this year - having somehow put the new gasket on the hand pump last time, this time it was easy. Got half a kilo of sweet cherries. In the evening I got the baby seats out of the van, so Nina mumbled something about "freedom above safety" (and I'm not sure how safe it is to drive while kids scream behind your back).
On third we went to Lena - Nina had another round with her dentist. She'll have to finish that soon, because Lena and Milan well move to the other end of town by fall. The kids, all four of them, first enjoyed the playground for almost an hour, then we all went (without Milan, who was indisposed) to Pitch, where we haven't been for months. The standard good dinner, half of it takeout. Fed the sparrows with lepinje (sort of flatbread) which aren't as they used to be, seems their baker managed to optimize his production line, two swallows were enough to cross them out of my list.
The wedding plan is well progressing, they already reserved the place (last splav upstream on the left bank of Sava, the "Black kitty"), which is literally down the street from Pitch to the river. We only have to come. OK, she wants to make a cake, and her wedding gown is offered as a starting point - to be retailored or recycled in any manner. (ended up with sending Lena the pictures of it, and she got some ideas from it, she'll sew her own) It will be a small modest wedding, just thirty people, and it seems the folks from Varaždin won't be coming. And I was hoping to see them. Well there will be colleagues, a programmers' wedding... and that'll be something to observe, a wedding completely organized by the young couple. "And when the folks with children go, we just go from splav to splav and see how far we get".
On fourth we went to Čankovo again, and while passing through the hungarian village she saw flowerbeds in someone's front yard, as is customary in this village, which reminded her of her aunt in the south, which then led to remembering Magi's mom, whom we havent called nor heard from since when I bought that water heater, and then Magi herself... and at exactly that moment my nokla rang in my pocket. Magi is here, when can we meet. We set it for tomorrow evening.
In the garden I was supposed to mow some more, there's no end to that, but since they broke into gonk again (stole the handsaw, bandaid, bag with hot paprika, big kitchen knife), I mowed the part around their path, and then started moving the junk to our side of the wall, where the path crosses it. Also cut some branches they used as handholds on our side. Contrary to my convictions, I didn't try to neatly line up the junk to use less space. This time, I laid it as haphazardly as I could, to make it the least stable. The next step will be the old chain link fence, with barbed wire on it, and then the dozens of loops of sisal thread to tie things off at random.
We thought, on fifth, to take Linda and Sanda to Magi, so after lunch we first took them to Lidl and Roda, to get groceries and have them run around, then planned to keep them asleep until 18 and then go. But no, even the extra time we sat with them at Roda, she went back twice to buy more nibbles and water, a real picnic - nothing helped. They stayed awake until 17:45. So we went alone.
Joda is all kind of shitty, being so under the sweet cherry, the lice attacking the young leaves at the branch ends (make it) ooze something sticky, and it all drips on the car. Not quite a resin, but close. Washed the windows twice last few days, doesn't help.
Magi looks solid, takes some time to get used to her wearing glasses. Surely looks far better than this winter over skype, which added 20 years on her - lousy camera, bad light. The hair she fucked up intentionally, gone is the wavy flame of chestnut red, now it's something... nothing special. She's still got stature, didn't plop off in all directions, but she's not the gorgeous one who she was. My chick still looks far better, even with five years more and even some face lines.
And the life in France is ten times worse than here - they still have curfew, any movement has to be registered in advance, walk up to 1km from home, missing a signature somewhere costs 135€, walking 1,1km from home costs 135€ etc etc. More than half of tourism is shut, big unemployment. And most of the production is long exported to Vietnam, China... and now it's a shortage of this or that every now and then, because of fuck that.
Mentions: 06-III-2023., Čankovo, dežurni, fića, gonk, Gorana Sredljević (Go), Grne, Jelena Sredljević (Lena), Joda, kum, Linda Sredljevich Aquilla (Linda), Margita Gunaroši (Magi), Milan Nastić, Nevena Sredljević (Nina), nokla, Pitch kettle, Sanda Sredljević Aquilla (Sanda), splav, Vera Vraneš, Violet, vodotoranj, in serbian