I sit on the couch and watch TV whilst surrounded by boxes and mounds of shit. I started moving three weeks early because I wanted to get enough of a head start to have a little break, and because now that school is over for another year, I don’t have anything better to do.
In the weeks leading up to the end of class (and the beginning of freedom) we all make a lot of plans for our holidays. Now, I know I will eventually do something fun, but I think the first week or so is spent in the inertia of university life – I’m quite stunned by my freedom, and in not knowing exactly what fun activities to start with, I just do nothing.
I’m packing slowly, and enjoying (lamenting?) the fact that the boys are either moved out or on a working holiday and I’m all alone, holding up the forte. It doesn’t matter, because pretty soon I’ll be moving to that little share house in Kingston, right?
Oh….so wrong.
When it was coming up to exam time, I was in the midst of finding places to live. Poor timing, but what are you gonna do? That’s life. I figured it wouldn’t be too hard to find two or three people to share with, since there is about 30 of us committed to the same hospital for the next two years. But again, I was wrong there too.
I didn’t find anyone to move in with, and all my time spent searching for the perfect 4 bedroom house was now all a giant waste. With very little time up my sleeve, I started searching share accommodation. If I couldn’t find some mates to move into a big house with, I could find the big house already full of people and rent a room. I entered my price range into the search engine, and ticked the ‘must love pets’ box. The search resulted in exactly 1 property, in Kingston.
“That’s fine,” I thought to myself. “I only need one property.”
I made plans to view the house, but told myself to have low expectations, as long as there was a fully fenced yard and the place wasn’t 4,000 kilometers away from the hospital, I’d just take it. I mean, it’s not like I can expect to live in the lap of luxury forever, right?
Today, I drove to the house, all the while making grand plans of calling to disconnect my electricty tomorrow, and emailing the dog farm with my new address. 2 minutes after walking into the house, I had decided this was not going to be my new address.
There was no lock on the front door, and let’s face it – since this part of Kingston tensely nudged the boundaries of Logan Central, a lock if not a gun was going to be an essential. The house – which was really the ’self contained’ bottom floor of a two story house – had all the natural light of a prison cell, which made sense when I took a look at the bedrooms. Imagine a piece of blue cardboard, dimensions 12” x 6”. Now, in your imagination, build little walls around the edges of the cardboard, and randomly put in a tiny little square window measuring 1” x 1” somewhere more than halfway up one wall and near a corner. Finally, curl the four corners of the cardboard floor.
That’s what the bedrooms looked like.
The backyard was as huge as was described, but somehow the ad failed to mention half of it’s sizeable expanse was covered in weeds that may or may not be young sequoias, given their size. I imagined a pup getting completely and utterly lost in such a jungle.
The upstairs neighbours are apparently quiet and friendly students. However, the luck of the guy showing me around failed when a 300 year old toothless man came down the stairs to empty an entire carton of empty beer bottles into the bin.
I told him I’d be in touch, and then – tires screeching – legged it out of the dump.
“Fuck,” I thought. “Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck. Where the hell do I go from here?”
I decided to drive back to the Coast, and make a stop at the university (where I am now) to jump back on the real estate websites and pray something new had popped up in the last few days. Habitually, I check facebook before anything else. As I logged on I thought to myself, “Wouldn’t it be nice if Beth* emailed me about wanting to move in,” knowing full well that it would be more a ‘hollywood’ moment than a ‘reality’ moment. Beth and I had briefly spoken about moving in together months ago when we found out we were at the same hospital, but had never broached the subject again.
I log in, and find 1 email in my inbox:
Hey,
sorry its taken so long to reply. I havent had the net so been rather difficult.
well, Im not sure where you are keen to live, but I may have a place, my sister has just bought a place in Kingston, its only one station form the hospital, so its much closeer than marsden. Marsden is actaully rather difficult to get too.
You can still have a dog, infact there may be a dog there as well. Possibly an idea
It would prolly on be $100/week plus expenses.
what do you think??
Beth.
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Well. When God closes one door…
*Name has been changed for the usual reason.
