And then everyone left, and I got a job

It has been a fucking long time since I last posted on here. I guess I'd better quickly fill in whoever's unfortunate enough to be reading this on what's been happenning.


November: Well, the HSC finally came to a profoundly anti-climactic end when I finished my last ever high school exam. It had been Society and Culture, I believe. We drove off into the bush immediately afterwards for our much cheaper, earthier version of the notorious schoolies.

Our version of schoolies didn't go for very long. It actually just consisted of camping by a river, drinking, smoking, and swimming. At one point we all journeyed across the river, away from our campsite, for a bit of a wildly unnecessary bush bramble. We left one of the girls behind at the campsite because she was asleep and is one of those people that you just don't wake up. The interesting thing was that this particular friend of ours was terrified of lizards, and exceptionally large goannas had been circling our campsite for most of the morning. We figured leaving a girl who was terrified of lizards alone with a bunch of large lizards was a perfectly dandy idea, because, you know, she was asleep. For some reason, none of us took into account the wild notion that people often wake up after they've been sleeping for a while.

We all eventually returned to the campsite, slightly sun burnt and incredibly exhausted, to find that our friend had mysteriously vanished. We gazed up the hill and discovered that she had not, in fact, completely disappeared. Rather, she had merely teleported herself into her car, a place where she would be physically protected from the goannas that, upon waking up, she had discovered were circlcing the tent.

Somehow, we all convinced the goannas that the three of us were remarkably fearsome and, as such, they should vacate the premisis. Getting our friend to leave her car and return to the campsite - now completely but probably only temporarily devoid of goannas - was a much more difficult task. 

After two nights of camping, I returned home. In the same day, I attended a job interview for a job I would later recieve and officially signed out of high school. Straight out of the exam hall and into the work force. For the next week or so I entertained an old and dear friend who was in the process of moving from Dubbo to Cairns, and decided to visit in the mean time. When we weren't drinking, being emotional, catching up or wandering the streets in a thoroughly existential search for meaning/something to do, I was attending training sessions for the job I would soon begin.

Suddenly, I found myself bidding farewell to my friend at the local airport, crying, next to another crying friend. Before I knew it I had started the job, which was to be a strange cross between Barrista, Till Person, Waiter, and Wholesale Delivery Boy. But for the first month, all I did was help move the entire business from one venue to another. That was quite the induction.

December: My workplace officially opened, and I was introduced to two new friends I would be seeing a lot of in the future; "Overtime" and "Wages".

Christmas came and we all sat out the back of my brother's house. I managed to move my entire life from one house to another in five days. There were gifts and deep conversations about things that happenned before I was born with people I never knew. There was beer, and wine, and pavlova. I managed to move my entire life from one house to another in five days.

The new year came in while I was on the toilet. The Dixie Chicks Greatest Hits played in the background as I heard Lola and her boyfriend shriek about the New Year. I rushed out, washed my hands, and changed the music to "Midnight Radio" - a glorious song from off-broadway musical "Hedwig & The Angry Inch" that I'd always wanted to play at midnight. We drank wine and peppermint tea, played scrabble and nibbled on chocolate before spooning in my double bed.

January: My new years resolution was really just to be healthy. But somehow January ended up as a month of alcoholism, parties, take-away and not sleeping enough. I went to work, saw my friends, got drunk and that was about it.

I was (of course) working when my mum and her husband left town in their caravan to travel around the country. I came home and suddenly realised that I now had to do my own washing and cooking.

Two of my closest friends turned eighteen in January. Both are from New Zealand and neither seemed very fussed about their coming of age. I owe one of them a pub crawl.

February: I'm not sure if anything remarkable happenned in February. I worked, a lot, but decided to start looking after myself at home. I re-entered the kitchen I had evacuated when the HSC hit, and learnt when to add red wine and what works in a quiche. The answers were "always" and "everything".

I ventured to Sydney in late February to celebrate a friend's 18th/go out clubbing/get out of the fucking small town I hadn't left since October. I took myself to Arq and then Bondi, where I snuck into the backpackers and intended to stay until sunrise. It became very freezing very quickly, and so at 5 in the morning I gave up, picked myself up off the grass and caught a bus back to where I was staying.

I spent a lot of that weekend on busses. I snuck a bottle of wine into the East Hills Hotel, caught up with a friend I hadn't seen since school ended at Coogee, and had a few drinks, Thai Food, and a go at the Pokies with my mum at Beverly Hills.

I sat at the airport terminal for two hours until my plane finally arrived at 7am on a Monday morning. I read Frankie for an hour, then we were there. I got off, went home, showered, ironed my uniform and headed to work.

And that about sums things up. I'm no longer a student, or a child. Working to pay my own way, rent and bills is thrilling and terrifying. At the moment I'm a bit under the weather, and for the first time, am really missing mummy.

So, it's next year. I'm sure a lot of people have made resolutions. I'm sure a lot of people have looked back at the previous year and given themselves a pat on their back for their achievements.

Let's have a look at what I got up to last year.

I spent most of January wandering around, confused. I'd go from the beach to a friend's house back to the beach again and occassionally back to mine. I would always wear Jeans when my friends dragged me to the beach, to avoid having to swim. This never worked, however, and at one point I was picked up bridal style and thrown into the water. I was not happy.

Sadly, I lost my grandmother in February. I won't make any jokes here because she was a woman who lived and breathed love, the epitamy of sweetness. I remember to this day a comment she made on all the pills she had to take. "I just give myself a shake and all the pills go in where they're meant to go" she'd say, making light of anything she was given. I miss her and regret not getting to know her as well as I could have.

On Valentines Day, I was single. And life was depressing. I wore a singlet over a shirt that day. I think it was that Valentines Day that one of my friends bought me a stuffed toy bear holding a love heart. There was nothing romantic between us, she was just lovely.

I woke up on St Patrick's Day at a friend's house, and slowly headed home with Nell. The next morning, we woke up and made Green Pancakes & Milkshakes to celebrate St Patrick's Day a day late.

In April I think I went to Dubbo. My old dear friend Brodie moved there two years ago and I rarely get to see him. It was lovely. He showed me a terrifying manga animation while I was there, after which I proceeded to scream and jump on top of him. We also went shopping with his now-ex-girlfriend. I learnt all about Dubbo, what life was like for them in Dubbo, and about how a friend of theirs had contracted Herpes. I haven't seen either of them since.


Honestly, my winter was quite a blur. I went to parties and at one point made out with someone, but other than that I don't remember doing much. Other than being depressed. It was in July that I became interested in Sarah Blasko.

In the September holidays, I went on a school trip to Vietnam. It was absolutely astounding. None of us wanted to leave Halong Bay. It was a truly gorgeous place, unlike anything I'd seen before. We went canoeing at one point and saw the most adorable monkeys in existence. The only one in our group that had brought a camera dropped it in the water, so we decided to stay and closely observe the social structure of the monkey's society. They had a habit of jumping out of trees and falling down several atmospheres but remaining fine nonetheless. Much like the way that the Vietnamese had a habit of driving recklessly but managing to avoid nearly all collisions. I honestly think less accidents occur on Vietnamese roads than Australian roads, despite our strict road rules and their lack thereof. Or perhaps they just don't make a fuss when accidents occur. That sounds like a very Vietnamese thing to do.

At some point I became avidly interested in baking. I don't know when or why, but somehow it became a hobby of mine. The number of cookies I made last year is terrifying. I once baked over 100, with mum's help, to sell at a CoastOut stall. They sold really well, but after that, I never wanted to see another cookie again.

I also got into riding to school. I think this was 83% due to the fact that I'd lost my bus pass and I couldn't be bothered putting up with the crap bus drivers gave me when I got on. Sure, having to pay to catch a school bus bothered me, but what bothered me more was how rudely I was treated by the bus company. There is no need for such derision when someone who is clearly a student and has clearly caught the bus almost every day for a year lacks a bus pass. I don't even know why bus passes are necessary. If I'm going from my home to school and back every day, clearly I'm a student. I have never heard of someone pretending to be a student just to hitch a free ride from their house to a school.

In December, I went to see Regina Spektor in Brisbane with my friend Lola. It was beyond words. Her voice she takes me somewhere else. She manages to tell someone else's story so well, again and again. Her songs aren't manufactured to fit a mould - she herself said that something like that each song could fit a different genre. She creates such real characters and real stories, and then puts them into beautiful melodies.

I made a lot of new friends last year. There was a lot of drama, and a lot of good times. A lot of memories you don't expect too, not all of them drunken memories. I have one memory of dancing to Christmas Carols in Brisbane while going mad from the heat.