The Éξοδος has begun

T has been trying to move into a place of her own for several months now, ever since she was rusticated by the Universally Excess for not getting herself off scholastic probation.  (Like many another freshman, she found being a Party Girl much more fun than doing difficult coursework, and didn’t apply herself hard enough to the core science courses required for her major.)  For weeks we’ve had a string of attempts to find a place she could split with one of her female friends, each of which ended in nothing when the particular friend wasn’t able to make the nut for her half of the expenses.

Finally T gave up and decided to find a place on her own.  She’s working two retail jobs that add up to forty hours or more per week right now, so she thinks she can do it.  With a rental agent’s help she found and signed the lease on a one-bedroom apartment in northwest Austin, where she’s going to try living with her boyfriend to see how that turns out.  She got the keys and began to take possession today, moving over her bed and Art Deco armoire she inherited from her uncle.  She’ll move the rest over the next several days, and plans to be completely moved by Friday, her twentieth birthday, as a birthday present to herself.

L is looking forward to being able to move her sewing supplies into T’s old room, leaving M with a room of her own for the first time since she was born.  M is not thrilled by this at all.  She despises and, I think, fears her own room, probably because it’s so dark back there, and she’s very much afraid of dark.  She’s unhappy with the idea that L is going to begin making her sleep there, and unhappy with the idea of T moving out.  (M does not handle change well.  She tries to run over it the way she does everything that doesn’t suit her exactly—by stomping around, sulking, or snivelling.)  This is likely to be bloody difficult for some time to come.

Here we sit like birds in the wilderness.  Fnord.