fate

i am not a big believer in things like fate or destiny and i have for a long time struggled with the idea of faith. actually no i havent struggled, i just dont have any. but some things have happened lately that really make me wonder.

first there is the italy thing. i knew about this conference last year and hoped to be able to go but couldnt see how i/we could afford it so put it out of my mind. then someone suggested i should ask the faculty for support when i didnt think there would be any forthcoming, and i got it with relative ease. its not like theyre paying for everything, just the airfare, but once i had decided it might be possible to go, it has become possible. i have even started saving my pennies:


haha. really, these were left over from the trip to amsterdam last year. this should be enough to buy me a latte in the piazza venezia. ok maybe half a latte. anyway, we leave sydney airport wednesday afternoon and i must confess to being overly excited and somewhat weirded out. how is it possible that this time next week i will be sitting in a workshop in the gramsci institute in rome with all the big whigs? too freakin' bizarre. we are in rome for 4 days (two days workshops) and then travel to sardinia where there are 5 days of conferencing and activities. sorry, i'll stop now.

but this is not the weirdest thing that has happened. for a while trent and i have been talking about leaving The Can. we came here for work (his) and he has never liked it, workwise or for living. i like living here and the knitting community is fantastic and i really really love the cold, but i do miss seeing my uni friends etc everyday and i have never really acclimatised to living inland as opposed to the open feeling of living on the coast. so anyway, trent decides to quit his job and just see what happens and almost immediately is contacted about opportunities in sydney. there was one job he really liked straight away and he had a phone interview earlier this week and went up yesterday and they made an offer on the spot. we didnt even have time to worry about it. he will get some kind of official-on-paper offer today and starts there on may 14. all contingent on contracts being signed etc, youre never at ease till the ink is on the page, but still...

so thinking about working in sydney means thinking about living in sydney. unless we're living in a fantastically renovated terrace in newtown we have our doubts about living there again, not the least because now we have TWO dogs and the rental market up there is a killer. so we were thinking about camden, close enough for me to get to wollongong, big houses, lots of land, but a bit of a commute for trent. and then we thought about helensburgh, that would have been a perfect compromise but all the houses we looked at there were 'no pets'. so wollongong itself was being contemplated.

so im in wollongong wednesdays and thursdays, and after teaching this wednesday my usual dinner-mate wasnt around (something about being stuck in port moresby!) so i went to get some dinner and thought, i'll just drive down to the beach where we used to live and eat my dinner there. so i go do that and there are a few big houses now but not much else has changed and it was very nice. so then i thought, i'll just drive around the corner and check out our old house. it was a little beach shack right opposite towradgi (pronounced toe-rodgee) beach. and what do you think i see there? yes thats right people, a For Lease sign. its the back house on a battle-axe block and in the front house live the landlords, geoff and vicki. i ring trent and he says go knock on the door so i do and geoff and vicki are still there (they now have a little baby called Lily, awwww) and i tell them that we are looking to move back from canberra and they immediately offered us our old house back, at less than the current market rent and they will wait for us to get our shit together here. they have been doing some work to the house and its in better condition than when we lived there before and it just felt like home and its all too weird really. i told them i would wait to hear if trent got his job and would let them know.

here is the house as it looks today:


here is the view from the end of the driveway!


so it looks like the end of may we're out of here. too weird. it just happened too easily, and i am starting to think there is someone watching our back.

meanwhile, the second waratah sock has turned a heel:


now i must go do something normal like the grocery shopping.

hope everyone else has some good luck come their way today!
k xx