Catch me if you can

Okay. Lots of things have happened and most have been detrimental to my mood, which has been consistently terrible since Wednesday.

Firstly, The Academy Is… has officially called it quits. William announced it yesterday. It’s not entirely unexpected – with them all being all over the place – but it’s still sad. TAI was one of my favourite bands, and they’re one of the few bands that I’ve known since before their official first album. I wasn’t there for the whole 8 year journey, but it had to be 5 years at least. That said, I completely understand where they’re coming from. We’re all practically the same age and if I think of how I have changed, and what I’ve wanted to move on from, through the last 8 years, it only makes sense for them to feel the same. Such is life.

But I will miss TAI terribly all the same. Though I’m sure the boys will pop up in other things from time to time. I’ll always have three albums I adore and, of course, the memories – seeing them play every time they came out here, the meet and greet, the surfboard…oh dear god, the surfboard *headdesk*

On some level it feels like 2011 is holding up a giant neon sign declaring ‘It’s over. You’re grown up.’ And I can’t say I particularly care for it. It feels like everything has ended, the last remnants of life before responsible adulthood have all crumbled away. And honestly? I’m just not ready yet. This adulthood thing…it’s not good. I’ll have to be dragged kicking and screaming into it, and I’ll have to be caught first. Ah well. At least I’ll always have Green Day.

On the topic of responsibility and reality and how much it sucks, we were informed on Thursday that the house we’re in is being sold. You know what that means – it’s moving time. Again. I’m not going to lie to you, internet, I was utterly devastated by this news. I love the house we’re in now, it’s pretty much the kind of house I’ve always wanted. I love the deck and being able to lie in my hammock and just let the world go by. I love that it has a open, sprawling kitchen. I love that everything is on levels. I love that I have a room that’s not a shoebox. I love that it backs onto a reserve so it doesn’t feel like your fenced in and stuck in suburbia. I love that there’s even wildlife popping up these days – at the moment we have ducklings waddling down the street. Ducklings. And I love the area, with shops nearby, great library and the beach 20 minutes away. Just…yeah. I’m very disappointed. If I was three years old, I would chuck a giant tantrum and refuse to leave. And I’d expect my parents to sort it out.

Unfortunately, that sort of attitude doesn’t really work anymore so instead I’m saddled with a feeling of responsibility and general unhappiness. See? There's that adulthood thing again. My parents aren’t taking it too well – especially my dad who takes every reminder that we rent as a personal attack on him. They're not natural renters (which is why they keep building/painting etc at our own expense and inadvertently pushing the property values up, idiots that we are) and it hits dad very hard that he doesn’t have a place of his own. Despite my numerous attempts at convincing him that owning a house in Sydney is actually rather shit cause you’re stuck with a ginormous mortgage that you’ll probably never pay off, he still gets depressed about it. But you know, the simple fact of the matter is that my parents gave up a house and a comfortable lifestyle when they moved here, and I think it makes him feel like a failure that he can’t buy a house here. Frankly I think having an great standard of living is way better than being saddled with a huge debt-in-house-form but you know, whatever. When it comes to packing up all your crap and trying to find a new place for the third time in two years, I can understand why the lack of stability makes him miserable.

Of course, despite knowing me all my life, my parents still fail to realise that I am highly tuned to other peope’s emotions and the fact that I have a habit of suppressing my own in favour of carrying theirs goes completely unnoticed. But when I’m stressed and I snap, I’m the one who ends up in the dog house. Good times.

Anyway. We’ve applied for a new place so hopefully we’ll get that. It would be as straightforward and as painless as these things can be. Which probably means it won’t happen. What? I’m a natural pessimist. It helps me manage disappointment. The area we’re looking at is about twenty five minutes from where we are now…in fact, it’s just down the road from the doctor’s surgery I used to work at. It’s further away from my current job, so that’ll mean even more traffic (thankfully only 52 days to go) and it makes the weekend job I got kind of annoying as well (what used to be my local shopping centre is now a 30min drive away.)

It’s a nice area and I'm trying to be upbeat about it, but it’s definitely not as great as where we are now. Unfortunately the houses in our current area are going for about $800-$1000 a week, which is pretty steep – especially since I won’t be contributing to rent next year. But you know, all things told, it’s probably better to move. Both the 'rents have messed up their knees and the stairs weren’t really helping things. The house we’re hoping to get is freshly painted and carpeted and quite big, so there won’t be a lack of room at least.

Oh whatever. Doesn’t help to ponder these things. It has to be done and that’s it. We’ll deal. It’s more a case of it being unexpected…and being too comfortable were we are. I am going to do a major clean out this time though – I’m not lugging all that junk around again. I’ve reached the point where I’m quite happy to be ruthless. Ebay all the things!

In other news, yes, I finally got a second job. So I’ll be working pretty much all the time from mid November until Christmas eve. At “normal” work, things continue to be entirely batshit insane and one of the ad reps made a complaint about me to management on Thursday because he doesn’t like my attitude. I am cheerfully setting his car on fire with my mind. My parents aren’t speaking to me because I got annoyed at them for keeping me out all day Saturday after I was promised it wouldn’t be a late one and because I made the mistake of telling them I just wanted to be left alone, which they’re now taking to petty extremes. I’m not going to apologise either cause I’m still resentful of the fact that I always have to be everyone’s emotional support and yet the minute I slip up, that’s held up as some sort of trademark behaviour. It’s just like at work – no one ever notices when you’re doing things well, but make one mistake and you never hear the end of it.

It’s especially aggravating because I only went along on Saturday to help them out, a) by driving into the city and b) by keeping mum company as I know she doesn’t like going to these rugby things by herself because dad is useless and usually abandons her within 2 seconds flat (he is like a toddler, you have no idea). And I voiced all my reservations before we left so they were well aware of how I felt. But my dad doesn’t think, ever, so he agrees to things on a whim and so, at 11pm, I’m in Chinatown with a bunch of middle-aged couples. And all of them keep telling what a good daughter I am, how they wish their kids would come out with them and blah blah blah. Do my parents think so? No. Two days later, I'm still a pariah. Charming.

BUT! It’s not all annoyance. I attended a lovely High Tea at the Shangri La hotel yesterday, courtesy of L. It was prefectly decadent and exactly the right kind of escapism. Plus I got to catch up with R and K for a bit, always nice and relaxing. My friends always know when to save my sanity.

Now, back to work I suppose. The way things are going here, I won’t be surprised if I’m working till 7 or 8 every night this week. Sigh.

Music: Daytripper - The Beatles