12-XII-2021.

On 4th, Violet pulled out a molar, two upper left. Three shots, each focused on her shirt, not on tooth in hand. But her smile with a fresh hole was excellent, on fourth.

The girls are more and more into coloring. There are coloring books to buy, but Nina also prints a few sheets from time to time and they color that. Just now they ran out of paper. On sunday (7th) I went to the brzožder (see house dictionary) by the cemetery, to bring a couple of burgers (not pljeskavice, the recipe is different). Raja and Violet eat the meat, they take the somun (kind of pita-like flatbread)... except this time we nearly ran out of somuns, he started eating that too. He ate it all, except a few crumbs he didn't like. What was that? Ah, they mixed it up, so he got a pljeskavica instead of burger, it contains chopped onions. At least these guys have both and call them right - others will sell it as pljeskavica but you'd get a burger, no onion. The other brzožder near the community center is open at unpredictable times, seems to be workday mornings are almost sure but rest of the times you never know, so that's the option only when we're in the area. Wish it weren't a sunday, just 40m from that one by the cemetery there's a little bookshop, could have bought paper.

In the afternoon went to Lidl with the girls. Until six weeks ago we'd take two carts, of different sizes, and would give the girls a ride through the shop, sometimes one per cart, sometimes both in the larger one (where I also take the big 6l water bottles and a sixpack or two of Knjaz mineral water, 1,75l bottles). Usually it was Sanda in my cart and Linda in hers. But now they're into taking kiddie carts, one each, and they push them and maneuver them around. The items go into their carts, mine is for water and larger items.

On monday nothing, Borko announced he'd report when his dentist releases him... well, not yet. On tuesday I repeated the brzožder run, ordered, walked to the bookstore, got the paper, lit a cigarette, walked back, the burgers were ready just then, paid, took everything home, finished cigarette as I was leaving the car. Perfect timing, to a second. The girls were nicely surprised with the paper, took their pencils box right away and the table was occupied for at least an hour.

There's sometimes a scene when Sanda draws random lines over Linda's coloring sheet. Whether she envies her precision and patience, or just hates her own lack thereof, who knows. We chide her, she appologizes, then repeats it the next day (on 10th, then 11th). I suppose we'll get her out of the habit.

On wednesday there was a kind of decent weather for sawing - a quiet day, nothing falling, ground dry enough. I cut most of the branches, and got started on the thicker parts of the trunk. The engine ran out of čorba just as the sun set - well, that was the last of what they poured in the shop. She gathered the twigs and branches in front of the terrace, where the previous heap was (from the lilac I thinned two winters ago), and we can drag it into the basemet, through the window, as needed.

On friday (10th) Melanija sent a brief email. I congratulated her birthday again, at correct day this time, and she said I could have written more. Well, I'm waiting for that more from you since july... but okay, I wrote the history of our wallnut tree, it's a once in a lifetime event, and finished with „your turn now“. We'll see.

Went to Springfield with the girls in the afternoon, and Linda insisted that I climb intside with them. Well okay, why not. I did get in before, but never climbed all the way up. This time I did, and at least I got good shots from there (nokla just damn works), shot straight and not through the webbing. While I was climbing with them, at some point I hung on my left hand while climbing down and didn't let go of the bar on time, so it hurt my shoulder for a moment. That's the shoulder I slightly disjointed weeks ago, and which hurt somewhat in just about that position, and now... wait... good, it healed. Just when I was thinking of, perhaps, looking for a bone setter.

When they had enough, the staff already started preparing the place for some kid's birthday party, so we went to the outside unit, the glass cage. We had coffee (warm nes), they a pancake each (with nutella, just more liquid than that from a jar, perhaps because it's warmed up) and a kilo of ćevapčići takeout. The latter just vanished for dinner, Raja and Violet have built an appetite. We guesstimate that they'll enter puberty together, which is sheer gain for Nina, with four children she'll have that carnival only twice.

Yesterday (11th) she made winter salad again - onion, peppers, cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, salt water - so she started lunch a bit later. We ate around 13:30 and I somehow wasn't hungry at all until we started laying out the plates, then suddenly I was very hungry. The chrono diet is strange, how you get into the habit. Presently my weekly cycle is 81,5kg on monday morning, then next morning, after a friends' party, it's 83 or even 84, then by next monday it thaws down to 81,5 again.

Now that these sittings are few and far apart, dentist may fuck him, we took to tasting them on our own, which is usually one liter a week. We tried the sweet cherry so far, then hare trišnja, skipped sour cherry (it's mixed with the old one), and this week the tutifruti 2.1. Next is 2.2, the overfilled cask. She says she won't even try this year's apricot as long as we have some of the one from 2017. Allegedly brandy takes a few months to sit in glass, while whatever needs to dissolve or oxydate does so (and the sweet cherry had some funny taste, but only the first sip from the first shot the first time - and not much of it, my moustache lifting muscle reacted with bare 0,2), but this old apricot is some miracle*. That was the mislaid unlabeled cask we found this summer while looking for cask space, and somehow this brandy tastes waaay better than I remember it.

Today, finally, snow. Linda woke up first, around noon, and didn't notice at first. It's so nice to hear someone so suddenly delighted.

A nasty wind blew all night, banging the sheet metal roof of the terrace and the padding beneath roof windows. Had we not cut the walnut, it would have fallen now, or would lose a major branch. The apricots lost some, but minor and already dry ones. They lay on the chicken coop roof, where we already have some biomass layer. That would need sweeping... or not, better this way.

They made two forays into the big white during the day.

In the evening Dragana called, just like that (and to check about monday), complains of some fucked up ear inflammation, with some tiny blisters with a funny name, they burst and then bleed a little, then dry but new ones sprout. But she's over the antibiotics now, she can drink... Told this to her and she said „could this be furunculi?“. That would be funny, „furuna“ is an older expression for a furnace, having little furunčići in the ear... checked via SMS, she replaid „no, it's bulice“ (whatever, never heard the word). „At least it's not buljice“ (bulja is ex-slang, now pretty mainstream, word for ass).

During that talk another of typical turns happened, she mentioned how she couldn't just spend the day in the bed, has to get up for a smoke, she never smoked** lying... cigarettes, that is. Told her of this later, and she says Dragana and I are the special case of perverse, in the sense that anything that anyone says (can be construed as) relates somehow to sex. Well, maybe we are trained that way, and in this case she just saw herself walking into this one of her own making... and why let it go to waste.

Less than an hour later, Borko calls and reports of dental battle lines: the old bridges are down, the new is not up yet, his teeth are filed, he looks like a vampire, so if I'm making a masked party, he's got half the outfit done already. The new bridge should be up on tuesday or wednesday, it's made somewhere in Belgrade, so each step involves some communication and a day's delay. So we're back to normal on twentieth.

Thirteenth, with the girls (both three!) in Lidl, then Roda. Not much fuss, the one scene (about who'll push the cart) lasted less than three minutes. In Roda she went with them to buy craproom paper and munchies, while I went to theirs-theirs („win-win“, which is njin-njin when read as yuscii, and „njin“ is a variant of „njihov“, theirs), but then they are a murky outfit indeed, the logo on the bill says Tehnomanija... Still, they are near enough and I'm buying just mice, for zmajček and cimet. The guy knows his wares well, and found me a model of the price and quality I went for, but he speeks such a high pitch that I was almoust equally amused by my own attempts to nott laugh. The mice are medium gamer class, the leds are argeebee cycling every couple of seconds, that's how it's worn nowadays.

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* almost wrote „some kind of miracle“, and then stopped right there - what if someone asked me to name those kinds? I'd just stand and stare, I don't know any valid classification of them.

** to smoke (to someone) - do a blowjob. Everyone knows it, also not slang anymore.

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Mentions: cimet, čorba, ćevapčići, Dragana Vitas (Dragana), house dictionary, Linda Sredljevich Aquilla (Linda), Mališa Borkovski (Borko), Melanija Tisarević, Nevena Sredljević (Nina), nokla, Ryu (Raja), Sanda Sredljević Aquilla (Sanda), Springfield, Violet, zmajček, in serbian