Lena landed yesterday, came home neatly and without fuss. They put the pastic spruce back into storage, i.e. the unfinished bathroom upstairs.
The kids are a bit nervous, not real winter, early cabin fever. Somehow it seems it was colder in Virginia then here and now.
The 91st frendz parti at Borko's. I called him the evening before, so I wouldn't have to be dežurni by the phone - it still doesn't ring when suspended - the better that I did, because he was in Žabalj (the divorced father of his oldest grandchild visited there, from the US), and who knows when he'd call. I planned to take the thicker jacket, there was some rain and wind during the day, but the jacket's in the car since wednesday. When we went off I noticed the rain has stopped, the wind is weaker and it's all in all better weather than last monday. Just the same, didn't even think to light a cigarette while she was in Lidl buying wine, I waited in its lobby. Walked on after that, and I kind of felt the vibration from the phone, took it out, checked, nothing. Then I realised it was the jacket zipper chafing against the jeans, similar short vibration. Five seconds later, the phone rang. Haven't heard that sound in months - it was Dragana, to announce that Borko is coming to pick her, and it's now a matter of who gets there first. They did, but only by a couple of minutes - when we came by the entrance, the staircase was in the dark, but nobody responded when I rang, so I guessed they were already above the 2nd floor (3rd american), upper ones have a separate stairwell light switch and timer. And indeed they were there, they actually heard when we rang. Didn't ring the 2nd time, the dentist was closing his office at the ground floor so he opened the door, no need to get buzzed in.
Dragana said she was shocked that she managed to get me on my mobile. Well, it was still within two minutes after my last check, didn't get to sleep yet...
The brandy of the day was the 2019 tutifruti (somehow I found a bottle on which it said exactly that), then the roze. He chopped potatoes into samall cubes again, to surround the rolled chicken, and the surprise of the evening was the sesame salad - a good idea, turned out quite well, maybe he overdid it a bit on sour cream and cream cheese, and, wait for it, kitnkes*. Wasn't as thick and firm as expected, didn't need a knife to cut it, but the taste was right.
The conversation zigzagged, pool wise, about just everything, even briefly about the blunders in calculating the 13,8 billion years of universe's age, this time with an additional foray into the difference between space and space (or rather the universe and the space) which is the same, it's not that the universe may be expanding into a space, but rather being created where there previously wasn't any, and how it became clear that the known amount of it is actually smaller than we thought, because not only the theory by which the expansion was supposed to be slowing down is obviously disproven, but also the calculation of the universe's diameter is also out, because it was based on some constant speed of expansion times time. The speed of expansion being now variable, and the function describing its change is known in only certain points over the last fifty years, beyond that one whistles (v. house dictionary).
Part of the talk were our preparations for becoming alone again. The eyeballed schedule is end of march, some day after Raja's birthday, so they don't travel in winter and we just start going to the garden. And we planned a hundred things to do.
One discussion meandered into a predictable direction. At some point I mentioned the ancient times when each band member was entitled to a solo, and quoted Ian Anderson's „specially drum solos, which would last... for days“, then mentioned „Pa šta onda“ and how their drummer once got lost into his second solo in „Suzie Q“, the rest of the band already packed and he was still drumming away. They even removed most of his set, he had perhaps four pieces left, and still noticed nothing, not even me taking a shot of him, with flash, from less than a meter. And then I recounted how inconsolable he was once (16-IV-1973.) when I visited him here on 25. maj, because his cat fell out of the window. And then fuck the solos, the story was now about him, they both knew him and both of his wives, whom he seriously fucked up, not really beating them but doing all other shit. The first one divorced on time, but the second had a son with him, who managed to pick all dad's traits before the guy threw the spoon. The kid turned out like father, dealt drugs, did jailtime... and then I don't remember which two tiny steps took the story two blocks closer, about S.L. who lived in my 'hood, was a subotar (i.e. member of seventh day sect, subota being saturday), had five children, one with an itinerant member, others with some L guy also from my 'hood (he was mentioned once, briefly, here), don't know which one of them was more nuts. Her eldest daughter was Go's classmate, I remember seeing her in some school show. And then they went for half an hour about how Borko was walking down the street with a friend, and S.L. was sitting at Šantawith Vanda, who was allegedly the best broad of 1953 vintage (deja vu, we heard the whole story last year). S.L. was by then for more than a dozen years in Netherlands, and this Vanda was also somewhere out. The whole story is a rehash, the part how none of her five children are talking with her, except one who is in her area, and that he described as „administrative connection“, is a complete rerun of what we heard at least once before. And he mentioned only six times that not only he saw Vanda only that one time, but (and I somehow sensed he thought he'd amaze us with such a revelation) never saw her before or after.
We all went for the wine, though Dragana refused to join us for the third bottle... but then it was some different one and curiosity won. She meant to call it quits before midnight, but eventually we got the cab at 1:30. Right down there, not walking over to the cab stop at Lesnina. Some talkative guy, a newbie, but I managed to explain in very few words where he should go to park right in front of Lesnina, so Dragana would have minimal path to limp to her apartment. She still isn't walking the best, the ankle is swollen, but said her sister found her real peasan'ts wool socks. She thought these would scratch and itch, but got used to them within an hour and they do soothe her. Now we'll see whether these would help, it's only three days, too early to tell.
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* kitnkes is how we mangled the german quittenkäse, quince paste, which then isn't really a paste, it's simmered into a mass similar in thickness to marmalade