Life and times of an almost-adult

This post is going to be boring.

I can tell you right now. I'm giving you plenty of prior warning. Feel free to go elsewhere and read up about the science behind paint drying because it's guaranteed to titivate you way more than this insipid post will.

Because today, I'm talking about tax.

Yep.

Tax.

And not just about tax. We're going to be deep diving into all matter of wonderfully mind-numbing topics like life insurance, medical cover and your personal will. Get excited.

This comes about because I have decided I'm not a very good adult. I am an excellent almost-adult –  a hybrid between a youth and a real person, but lacking the kind of worldly skills and knowledge that make me an actual real person. I do almost-adult with breathtaking effortlessness. I have almost-adult down to a fine art. I can pay my rent on time. I know I need to set aside enough of my monthly salary to pay bills and buy Oreo stash. I can even scrimp a few coins together to put into savings. But those savings are not going towards a nest egg, a nest or even the branches said nest is meant to rest in. That money is being put away so I can fly off to some far away country and spoil me, myself and I. This is what makes me a fully-fledged almost-adult. Selfishness.

There are just responsibilities in being an adult that I don't understand, nay comprehend in any capacity. And I was never told that I would need to know or care about these things. When I was innocently flicking through the glossy pages of Cleo and Cosmo at the tender age of 14, no where was there any guidance on 'how to complete your annual tax refund' or 'what the hell is a medicare levy'. Zilch. 'How to make him hot' though, well, that I got down pat.

Needless to say, in completing Tax Return 2013 (during the aforementioned Vitriolic Chest Infection Which Almost Claimed My Life) I remembered how useless I am at pretending to be a real person. I couldn't get the damn thing done without calling my mother on numerous occasions to make sure I wasn't going to get put away for tax fraud. Granted, I ended up getting money back (which is, of course, all going towards the 'Kristen Returns to America 2013' fund) but I don't think I got nearly as much back as a real adult would have. Apparently, there are all these tricky tricks and loopy holes that are lost on me as an almost-adult, but which real adults are using to swindle oodles of tax rebate out from under the tax man's nose.

I may be able to pay my rent and buy Oreos, but I pretty much toss everything else in the 'Parents Still Take Care Of That' basket. Like

Medicare

Private Health Insurance

My last will and testament

Electorate enrollment

Scary banking things I shouldn't be in control of – like credit cards.

Green slips.

Pink slips.

Registration.

Car insurance.

Loans.

Mortgages.

Stamp Duty.

Brain explosion!!!!

As I said, not a very good adult. At my age, my parents had bought a house. I can barely commit to putting my name on a lease. And I can't even chalk it up to being a generational thing. All my friends appear to be doing an excellent job at crossing the almost-adult-to-fully-fledged adult divide. They're buying furniture - 'investment pieces'. An almost-adult is too transient to buy furniture. We choose to pick up our furniture from the side of the road. We naturally shy away from anything that requires serious consideration and any kind of remote financial investment.

Oreos, however. Oreos are worth it.

Why 'the end of the world' and 'being sick' are kind of the same thing

I've spent the last week being sick. 

Not the kind of sick where you get a sore throat, a sore nose and sore eyes from watching midday movies and Ellen re-runs. Oh no. That would be a walk in the park with a cup of Messina compared to what I've been through. 

To say I was on my death bed is not that far fetched. Okay, yes it is. But my level of sickness was definitely up there. I was horrendously ill. I was an incubus of viral plague. My aches and pains had aches and pains. I had the kind of vitriolic cough that could have been misinterpreted as a nuclear warhead. I was inflicted by sudden and horrific coughing attacks which left me crippled and exhausted. So I would cry. And then call my mother. 

When life is all clean and shiny, being single and independent is a cinch. But as soon as things go ass up, I tend to drop my basket. I become needy and pathetic. So I call my mother on hourly intervals, requiring her reassurance on everything I do. Making toast. Taking medication. Attempting to do my tax return… Sometimes I just call her to remind her that I'm sick and therefore need extra doses of her spiritual maternal goodness. 

Anyway so here I am, laid up in my two-bedroom Bondi apartment which is getting smaller with every hour that I stay there, calling my poor mother every five minutes and fighting to breathe through the mucus that has taken up residency on my lungs (wasn't that a pleasant image). When I reach the conclusion that I am most definitely going to die here in front of the midday movie, I decide to go to the doctor. 

The good thing about reaching my level of intoxicated illness is all sense of personal presentation goes out the window. On went the track pants I've owned since I was 13. On went my ugg boots. And out the door I slumped not even bothering to put on a bra. 

And it was in this moment that I became overwhelmingly thankful I was smart enough to rent an apartment that was not only 200 metres from the beach, but a mere 100 metre slumping distance from a doctor and a pharmacy. This has now skyrocketed to the top of my list of renting credentials. Forget about built-ins and the pressure of the shower head. Being able to mooch up the street and straight into the hands of your Russian doctor and his prescription book has become the pinnacle of prime real estate in my weeping eyes. 

So there I am in the surgery waiting room – braless, feverish and coughing – while my fellow patients eye ball me like I'm a container of hazardous waste. My doctor, who's last name is too Russian to pronounce, took one look at me and put me on antibiotics. I cried and he sent me home. 

That was five days ago. Since then, I have watched every episode of The City, eaten a box of Oreos and become so accustomed to napping that I had to stop myself from nodding off around 11am today. I haven't called my mother in 24 hours and I managed not to get self-inflicted constipation from overdosing on Vitamin C tablets. 

#winning. 

When did...

When did...

- I start being tucked up in bed at 10:30pm. On a Friday.

- I stop coming to work smelling like last night's booze-laden bad decisions.

- an awesome night involve the words 'couch', 'pinot gri' and 'curried sausages'.

- I stop looking forward to being just that little bit older, so I wouldn't have to pull out my ID all the damn time.

- $20 get me one cocktail. Instead of two jugs of spirit and mixer from the Embassy Hotel and a hell of a good night.

- I start wearing comfortable shoes.

- I start bleeding rent. Oh wait... I've always bled rent.

- I stop living with six people in a six bedroom house which had more hair straighteners than power points to plug them into.

- I start buying wine. Because I like the taste. 

- I start having informed conversations with my parents.

- I start having to check if a man was wearing a wedding ring before chatting him up at a bar.

- I begin chatting up men in a bar?

- Men stop chatting ME up in a bar?

- the thought of waking up on a Saturday morning with a hangover the size of Switzerland become enough for me to politely turn down a drink.

- I start eating quinoa because I liked the taste. Oh that's right. Never.

- The words duck pate and blue cheese make me salivate.

- I start making lists about how depressing my sad twenty-something life is? 

Let's try this again

I have decided to start writing again - because it's good for my health, it's good practice, it gives me something to do. The same could be said for exercise, but I'm going to pretend like that realisation didn't just come to me. 

It's been awhile since I blogged. It feels a bit like a fall-back, a type of therapy, really. But instead of having someone else go through my head with a fine psychological comb, I can just vomit everything out here and go on my happy way. I'm none the wiser to whether or not you enjoy it or hate it or have any kind of human reaction to it whatsoever. 

What's happened since the last time I blogged? Well, lots really. Not enough to write a biography, but enough to require a lot of gin. I'm still up to my old tricks. Getting in to mischief, finding myself in genuinely odd situations, having the occasional existential crisis. You know, same old same old.

I'm fully-fledged mid-twenties now. I've done all the things a twenty-something is meant to do. Got herself a HECS debt she can't afford, lived with an assortment of bizarre housemates, gone travelling, come home, worked, not worked, tried not to accept money from her parents but accepted it out of necessity and had the same quarter life crisis which seems to creep up on all Gen Y-ers who's parents told them they could be whatever they wanted to be. It's been a tough gig but someone had to be KH. 

So ,it's time to welcome you back to the palava that is my twenty-something life. I can't promise I'm going to write regularly. Hell, I can barely remember to clean behind my ears most days. But I do promise to talk a lot of crap. I'm particularly good at that.  And I'll try to make you laugh, but there's a good chance you'll end up cringing instead. I know I do.