22-II-2025.
More or less nothing whole week. Days go by... just like that, waiting for the winter to pass. She knits, sews a bit (that coat is left half finished), I'm poking into the mrz (wrote the album chopper, turned out simpler and faster than I thought it would... not too precise, it may mess things up, but I won't smooth the edges, there can't be any smart or universal solution, unless I'd go for some trial/terror method, random guesses or whatever, each of which would mean taking half an hour to spend over each album which doesn't have clear silences between the songs... well fuck that, it's good enough as is). I also wrote here some, mostly the current events. The general impression is that the psycho's standing is flimsier by the day, and if he's throwing lots of those among the lower echelons under the bus, the 50 arrested was just a start, on the other side he's dialing the lies and rhetorics to 11 („opens mouth once, lies thrice“, the sign said). And, as the cuntholes from Dveri said, „can't be that the lower and the middle are stealing millions of euros while the high are all honest“.
Go and Stanley talked with us on sunday almost until one again, and then went to Costco for some shopping. Of course, they again didn't have the time to find everything they wanted, but they significantly improved their stock and refilled the fridge. She went on putting stuff on her website, what she was doing in recent months, chronologically starting with what she was doing while they were here. We, afterwards, decided that nothing else makes sense to start doing after one but to sip the rest of the rakija, just enough of it was left. The entertainment was thus delayed until monday, but I didn't feel frustrated, just a bit lost in the calendar, and thought we delayed it to tuesday. But no matter, there will be more.
Nina had quite a snow on wensday and thursday, sized as the one from the end of 2009, knee deep. Luckily she can work from home so no problem there. With Lena we spoke regularly on tuesday. Tanja is crawling skilfully now, even passes under them barstools, made a full round while we watched.
On monday morning some pain woke me up, in the general area of... well, bones, joints, muscles between shoulder blades, as if I slept on hard [surface], plus some undefined dull pain through the middle back of the chest. That was before four in the morning. Got up, had a smoke, went back, found a position where it hurt sufficiently less to sleep, and by the time I woke more than half of it was already gone. It vanished through the day, but left me expecting some cough or flu or some such, and on tuesday afternoon there it was. Slime, not too much of. The following few days I'd cough in the morning and when going to sleep, just to clean up the lungs, and not even close to what I had two years ago, when cough would leave me with so little oxygent to almost faint. Happened only once this time, for a second or two. In the evening, between the second coffee and the MMS, a cup of warm milk with a teaspoon of honey (coffee spoon being too small). And it more or less passed in three days. The fourth day (saturday, 22nd) itt came back, a bit in the morning, and then quickly stopped.
Lena said yesterday she canceled the Aitchbeeowe subscription, they increased the fee, complicated the terms and the repertory is... well, standard, so I took to rewatching the Dune-Sisterhood. Second time, just like Vilnev's (Villeneuve... fuck the Frenches) movie, I don't have the feeling of having missed anything the first time, just that I knew some things in advance so lot of the text changed meaning. Still, in that regard, they can polish Straczinsky's boots if he lets them. Too bad he gave up on the reboot of Babylon 5.2... which would have been something. But this ain't bad either, I rewatched the first half last night, and plan to stretch the remainder over three days, the plot condenses towards the end, the situation shifts radically every couple of minutes, that's to be seen slowly. When that subscription expires, guess by end of the month, there'll be nothing to watch anyway. [And then I didn't stick to this plan at all, saw it in one go and it's not really so complicated].
On the other side, I'm into second week of watching Wenders's „Till the end of the world“, the five hour [one], at ease, as if it was a series, and the serieses I also watch as if they were long movies... Actually, the format is becoming increasingly popular, maybe since Twin Peaks 3 or even before that, when the time limits were removed, the length not being subject to the timeslot conditions - the given number of movie shows in a theater's day, or the certain number of minutes between ads on some teevee channel. Everyone watches them on the web in their own time and rhythm, can pause/resume at will. The length doesn't matter, give me the story. If the story is more complex, add hours as needed.
And this five hour version doesn't look slow at all, the story doesn't stall, there are no weak parts, it chughs along in its own pace and sticks to its own esthetics persistently and uniformly.
Someone mentioned Čurda on burundi, even Časlav from Osijek found that in Istra there's a place with same etimology... And there I remembered the atlas we had in 2009... Wish I took a shot of that at the time. Not too late, though, that surely wasn't thrown away, so I told Nina to, if the album ever resurfaces, take that shot. I mean, all the jokes came true: you bay an atlas in America, and find out that your city is absent from the map, but Čurda is there...
Slept until noon on sunday, dreeming some confusion - as it the year was 2000 and we were in a supermarket somewhere near the coast, there's a longish sequence at the cash register, which was crowded just the way it was in the times of smuggling in Romania, and on the parking I scout for a place to return an empty cart so when I take the full one I won't ramble, and can't find one. In the hotel we're on the roof terrace and I watch a few times how some winged contraption reshapes itself into a room sized box, attaches itself to the façade, covering the terrace of ab upper floor's room, and then climbs down as an elevator... well some delivery service it is. And in a phone booth I find a couple of tools that she bought, of which one is a plier with three handles and some rustfree steel balls on top where they connect. And around the village there's an ongoing race of various homemade motorbikes and quads, and I watch as one trike, where the right rear wheel is twice bigger than the left, so the axle is slanted, hits a bump with that larger wheel and tumbles. Well, so much for watching them funny videos...
Lena told us not to hurry, so we took our time with lunch and got in the car eventually at half three. The weather was morose, +3°, wind not too strong. No place to park, drove a full circle and in the end parked 400m away, not too far but still my fingers ended stiff, what with the tote with the eggs in one hand and the eos70 in the other. At least I didn't have to fumble with my phone with wooden fingers, as we met Milan at the entrance, waiting for a delivery of food from Divali. The couriers usually go up, but Api goes bonkers when they ring, barks like crazy, and they just got Tanja to sleep. So we came in with him, and Api was really quiet. Didn't matter, she woke up in 20 minutes, and then we had good two hours of fun with her. I shot a nice video of how she's rapidly approaching the lens, and I quickly pulled it back just when her little fingers almost grabbed it. She's growing nicely, is strong. She just acquired an ankle, which was still compressed last time, and now can be spotted, will look nice.
The apple pie was a kind of miracle, even better on day two. While sitting on a plate it looks like šlingeraj (v. house dictionary), becomes apple pie once you bite.
Arrived home by half eight. Meant to fill the tank in Čenta, because the fun with the fuel may start in a few days, it's been a while since the last one. This time the NIS should be under american sanctions as a russian firm. On the other side, Trump 2.0 is just negotiationg with Russians, and these sanctions are courtesy of Genocide Joe, so maybe this bullet may whizz away... We also rushed for the bathroom, so drove straight home. Didn't even drop by Mere, did that on friday.
After so much sleep, I didn't hurry to go to bed, stayed until half three, and didn't fall asleep fast at all. Got up by seven, in order to get out of a complicated dream, which was at least a material for a whole series, with a fully developed new culture... of which just a few images remained in my head, and a couple of ideas. There was just too much of it, and too complicated to write down, specially as I remember more the shape of it than text. And there was a lot of materiel in there... Wish I could have recorded at least a few scenes and the text, rendering it would be easy, finding guys to insert characters and dialogs shouldn't be a problem, the series would be insane.
24th, a frendz parti. My memory of it is fuzzy. Dragana was eager to go somewhere, but we flatly refused to attend a play in Dom, the acoustic is desperate and we can't understand a thing. On eighth of march, then, a concert of fado music, to which Borče immediately remembered that he's got some of it in his phone and wanted to play it right away... He got a consensual fuckoff, „don't play it, you did already“, but not just of redundancy, but no matter what kind of phone you give him, from his hand it will sound awful.
We recounted the attempt to sell the old house, and then they tried to talk us into opening a retirees' club there, with this same playlist (of course, I switched the mrz to the high school playlist)... um, yeah, may do, theoretically, with the rule against shooting the piano player (i.e. whoever doesn't like the music may keep mum or leave, no third option)... Well no, fuck that, I don't need that kind of headache, I don't even find the time to do what I already started. But okay, we'll do a frendz parti there once this year. When we find the time to get things in order there.
There we walked over the rest of the old neighborhood, because two more houses are on sale - the Susjetka (v. house dictionary), i.e. her daughter, sells the front part of the house, and Dunja also sells hers, meaning to pay off the half of it to her sister, but at her asking price of 100000€, which she will get when I get 50 for ours, and five years more pass.
I guessed wrong, only 0,5 l of quince, although we each had three shots (he four), but then I didn't wait for the ladies to empty theirs. Must be the shots are somewhat smaller. [nope, I misremember, it was we two he three] For dinner we had pohovan'd drumsticks and thighs, luckily somewhat smaller, so everyone had one of each, which went well. She made those hundreds of times, we even reminisced how Violet was able to eat four drumsticks, the larger ones, in a row... But these were never made for a frendz parti until now.
No idea how we got to that, but at least I shook off my old frustration, on account of that patriarch from the nineties, who had the guts to expell me from the nation, as he once said „can not be a Serb who is not of orthodox faith“... yergonnatellme, you old trash, better go whip the pedophiles in your rank before telling me what I can not be (and a minute more of such noise). I get into such bouts, guess the time has come to unload all the frustration from the nineties... And this was probably triggered by some more remembrance over the glorious ninetythree, the cashless compensation deals, half[ pig]s and a jar of lard rated a weekly salary. The recurring theme, we can't pass two months without pulling that one.
Along the way we heard which taxi unions punished their members for going to get the students from Vršac (the 588, 611, 566). The only guys I'm aware of and aren't listed is 622, which I never rode with. May be the time to switch.
25th. She coughs, nose runny... entertainment is delayed until we're both hale. That is, I'm okay, I have to cough out the slime two or three times a day and that's it, but hers is ongoing. At least the frost is over, I even had two cigarettes outside, lizarded it on the hill.
Slept through the twonysixth. Me at times, she at others, some of it both. We still managed to drink our fill in the evening, and her temperature dropped and we felt somehow better, and then we hit the hay and slept it out as if we didn't catch any in the day. The kids didn't call, only Lena sent a selfie from the gym, said she finally did a pullup again.
The following three days weren't much different, we cough, sleep, go nowhere. Only on thursday I went to detelina to buy fodder for hens and cats (and Najka remembered to tell me to wait while she brings the bags from the yard...), just when she had a crowd, live chicken delivery on thusdays, and a truck with fresh delivery was also there.
The kids are also mostly absent from Telegram. And we delay the poor man's entertainment, lest we not cough in the middle of it. And it's not anythng horrible nor anything much, it's just the stubborn slime, have to cough two or three times until I expell it, and it's lasting long enough now that I even built up some abs... And no, didn't lose weight, I'm at 85kg since new year.
Well, Go did send this shot on first, the trees she sees from the kitchen, followed by the appropriate clip from Twin Peaks, when agent Cooper asks the sherriff what's that... ah the Douglas fir, magnificent tree.
We spent the first, of course, watching live feed from Niš. Here and there the throat tightens, it is touching when you watch live as your people meet themselves. And even the two hours when we took a part ourselves, that was emotional by itself.
On second the spring has broken somehow, even the hedgehogs woke up to lick the plate with cat food. She weeded up a couple of rows and sowed the peas. We spoke with Go in the evening, saw them all and stayed so until one. Stanley's dad has wicked in... his shenanigans and life in a car full of trash aside, he's in a sanatorium or something at the moment, at Medicare's expense (and he could get Medicaid as well, but that's not federal, that's state of Washington), he's barely eating anyhting, as if too picky about food. And lacks any will to get out of bed... At least he's almost done with the fucken Bentley, the tranny is replaced, the beast of the engine is back in place, don't remember exactly what he said, some 400 horses, a vee twelve... and desperately bad design, it's just crammed into the available space and then hundred hoses threaded wherever it was possible. The horrors.
We talked until one, and then entertained ourselves, had a drink afterwards (less than usual), all in all the solemn opening of the spring. True, the cough woke me up before seven, but that's no problem, I'll jošiti (v. house dictionary).
On third, a fresh photo: Lena, Tanja and Api in the new elevator. It took a while but it got there. Now few more months for the even floors one to be done, the majstors aren't leaving soon. After lunch and the second nap (quite short, it seems I was missing exactly those twenty minutes) I went out to have a smoke on the bench, and tried to call I.Z., it's been decades since I congratulated her birthday... and didn't get connecte this time either, left a voice message under strange circumstances. The phone was counting the time of connection, while I heard the busy signal. I did hear the „you got the...“ recoded prompt and then heard a crackle... Well, I said a happy birthday and told her my email, and if she writes, she writes. Not that I'm in for reheating the sarma, it's more that this Byo influences me to like to know what happened later.
Ten minutes outside prompted me into action - I took the van key, to take it for a walk, check if battery is okay. Starts, goes, so we went to Mere for groceries. They're out of sour [water, aka mineral], but they had the granules for the cats, and thee peeled canned tomaties, we bought a box with a dozen.
Afternoon, lo, Sanda calls, guess to brag about their second cat, some bangladeshi aka bengali, thin and shorthaired, but similar to ours by everything else. At least we also saw Linda and Nina, and talked properly.
Mentions: Api, burundi, Byo (Byo), Čurda, detelina, Dom omladine, Dragana Vitas (Dragana), eos70, frendz parti, Gorana Sredljević (Go), house dictionary, Jelena Sredljević (Lena), Linda Sredljevich Aquilla (Linda), majstor, Mališa Borkovski (Borče), Milan Nastić, mrz pladžer, Nevena Sredljević (Nina), pohovano, rakija, Sanda Sredljević Aquilla (Sanda), sarma, Stanley Berger, Tanja Nastić, Učubić, Violet, in serbian
22-II-2025 - 1-X-2025