In the Nick of Time

 On Thursday, I got the letter which said "On behalf of the University of Newcastle I am pleased to offer you a place in the Intensive Open Foundation program blah blah blahdee blah.."  I was disappointed that it wasn’t printed on gold leaf like I had imagined, but it’s good enough.  

Intensive Open Foundation is a program where you study 2 subjects in-depth over 1 semester, and at the end of it they give you an ATAR, which is a ranking for university admissions in NSW, the same as what school leavers get.  It’s completely free and counts as full time study with Centrelink, so I get Austudy.  Oh yeah… I’m going to be living it large on $450 a fortnight.  Cue maniacal laughter.  And then at the end of it I can apply to Macquarie uni and do a real degree, hopefully B Arts/B Sci (together).  

Only difficult thing about all this is that Newcastle is a whole other city.  My science subject is at the Central Coast campus, which is just a 1 hour train ride, but the humanities subject I reeeeeally wanted is at Callaghan, and the internet is scaring me with talk of 2, even 3 hour commutes.  I’m more than happy to do that right now, but the reality of it might change my mind.  I get 2 weeks grace to change my subject choice at least.

On Friday morning, I gave my notice to work.  I had exactly 2 weeks until the bridging course I want to do started, so the acceptance letter came just in time.

Fun fact: I’ve never properly given notice to an employer before.  Both of my previous jobs I was casual and I just upped and left one day, both times halfway through a shift.  I didn’t know what to expect but giving notice wasn’t so bad, not nearly as awkward as I’d anticipated.  I might make a habit of this in my future employments… which won’t be until after this semester.  YEAH SUCKERS!  Funemployment FTW.  I got my spreadsheets on point, I got my running total budget planned out, let’s do this shit.

Today I notified my landlady that I’m moving out next month to move back in with the Palex & Jones.  I am sad because I like my little room and also because the landlady’s baby left with his grandma to go visit relatives in China on the weekend while I was out, so I didn’t get to say goodbye properly to the little dude.  He’s so cute.  Sometimes he sees me and gets really excited, trying to jump out of people’s arms and making happy baby noises. His grandma has to hold him for ages while we have a baby noise conversation and I say dopey shit like "You’re a crazy guy!   Who’s a crazy guy?  You are!"  Oh well.  I couldn’t hug him this weekend anyway, even if I had been home, because I have some weird virus that was living in my stomach.  I thought I spewed it all out, but apparently it decided to hide out in my throat instead. It’s persistent.

Jumping back to misjudging the awkwardness of things, I did come home early yesterday to give notice & rent to my landlady, but she wasn’t here, and when she came home she went straight to her room with her husband and proceeded to have sex with him that I could hear.  It’s not toooo bad, I mean she’s probably around the same age as me so not heinously old, and they weren’t too gratuitous about it, but I didn’t feel like tapping on her door to hand over money and have an in-depth conversation about my lease after that.  No need to ruin someone else’s post-coital glow with business talk.  So I just shut my door and put some YouTube on to drown out the muffled sounds until I felt it was safe to go to sleep, and made sure I was home early again today.  I guess if I lived with my  mother in the same house for almost a year I would be champing at the bit to have some loud sex too.  It’s not the first time I’ve heard this kind of activity either.  I believe I may have been an aural witness to her son’s conception.

Ah, my room.  So few people have visited my room, but those who have say one thing when they see it:  you don’t have a lot of things in here.  That’s right, I don’t.  It’s wonderful.  Things are shit.  Things will drown you.   I love to clean my plain little room and then sit on my bed and look at the trees outside.  There’s a Japanese maple outside that goes bright red for a couple of days of the year.  I spend very few waking hours in this room but I’ll miss it, mostly because there’s nothing in it.  And the floorboards.  I always knew I hated carpet, but never so much as spending these 2 past years living on floorboards.  

But there’s no looking back.  I’m out of that stupid job, I’m no longer a directionless waste of space, and I won’t be split between 2 homes anymore.  Now everything will magically be better and everyone lived happily ever after.  Amen.