july 1979.

My parents and granma went to Borik again, leaving us alone in the house. On one hand, that was cool, we had the run of the house and were, amazingly, deemed mature enough to be left alone. On the other hand, it was yet another sign that mom didn't really like whom I married and that we were doomed to fail in whatever we planned, so we'd be criticized left and right and helped rarely, mostly for demonstration purposes and then our graditude will be weighed. Which mostly worked, but never the way she wanted it. So they left and we had the house, just like they'd do almost any of the next years. Amazingly, there's Sneca on a picture with them.

We decided to redo my, ahem, our room. The three big surfaces covered with collage of newspaper photos (and some real life printouts, e.g. the poster for that diskoteka in Zadar, the poster I printed for Sleš, a toilet paper dispenser, a drawing in black ink I once did) are getting off the wall. Eči came by, I remember I wrote his (later often repeated) sentence on the freshly liberated surface: "krozviri pa ćeš krozvideti da je krospo" (throughpeek and you'll throughsee that he throughfell - the actual prefix should be pro- instead of kroz-, which means practically the same).

We then applied wallpaper to all the walls. The adobe, actually pressed clay, was good and smooth, it was actually replastered back in 1963 or even earlier, it's that the corners were round and the walls bent slightly inwards as you went up. The knowledge of differential geometry helped some, so I knew what can be done by maneuvering the roll, and when the scissors and boxcutter had to be applied. The wallpaper was somewhat stronger, slightly laminated, so it wouldn't stretch, no matter how wet. So we'd use the floral pattern to create invisible overlaps - cut around a flower's edge so there were no straight lines where the pattern breaks. The walls with four different purples and projection screen were now brownish-greenish pale floral pattern. Not bad, actually.

The floor. We bought a piece of carpet (made by local carpet factory, which was quite good and famous, exported into Iran at times) cut to measure to cover the whole floor, cut its edges where needed (around the cocklestove furnace, which was a thing built of glazed ceramics, and the door frames). Then applied slats to the edges, so it would hold and the edges would never roll up.

Next came the furniture, some slovenian stuff we bought from, IIRC, the shop that was at kinta, i.e. in the same house where the tavern once was. It was delivered by a truck, and a couple of days later a guy came to put it all together. It had a two-winged cupboard, two upright shelves, a bridge (that would connect these at the top, while leaving enough space below for the couch), a low cabinet, a writing desk and a chair. Now fourty years later all of these pieces are still in use, it's just that the bridge is outside, on the terrace, not looking well.

We worked together, specially on the wallpaper part. Her belly was quite big. But now we were ready, the baby has a place to come to.

After doing all that, we decided to make that pear armchair (aka bean bag). She sewn it easily, what with the zipper where needed, and now it was only a matter of filling it. The filler should be styrofoam grain, which wasn't sold anywhere, so the only way left was to get any chunks of styrofam and crumble them... okay, let's try that. We tried all sorts of tricks, serrated knives, a rake, anything. We sat in the hot summer evenings in front of the garage, dying of heat, our hands full of these tiny white balls sticking to skin, full of static electricity. And whatever you do, they won't fall off, just stick somewhere else. You clean your hand and in the end have it now on both hands. By sheer accident we found how to make them fall off: blow. The humid air from lungs seems to have dissipated the electric charge.

One such evening Loba and Magi joined us, and for a while we were making good progress, until some brandy appeared and then we didn't get much done.

Eventually the bag was partially full, perhaps 40 to 60% of what it was designed for, and it never could serve as an armchair, but it had some advantages as it was, and found use - like supporting your back while you lie on the floor and want to get somewhat up.

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Mentions: Borik, Endre Felbab (Eči), kinta, Margita Gunaroši (Magi), Mika Zelenić (Sleš), Slobodan Šumić (Loba), Snežana Stojanović (Sneca), Zadar, in serbian