Are You Still Having Fun?

I just failed Property Law.

I think I'm still in shock. That's another $1200 I need to raise to pay for it, it's another semester tacked on to an already lengthy degree, it means I can't qualify for two of my chosen electives next year and most of all, I was pretty sure I'd done okay. I wasn't expecting a particularly good mark but I thought that I had at least passed.

I'm still in a kind of shock. I've just been too tired to be bothered crying over it, and my self-esteem was already at quite a low so I don't think anything can really drag it down further. Luckily, I was out with friends last night when results came through and I refused to look at my SMS results until I'd had at least three standard drinks. So when I actually did look at my phone I spent the rest of the night downing even more alcohol in an attempt to cope with it.

And hey, it helped...in a head-pounding kind of way.

See, I deserved to fail Torts. I did nothing for that subject, I skipped almost all my classes. Conversely, I went to almost every single one of Property, did all my readings, took copious notes. Yet I passed Torts and failed Property. Not sure how that works, but there you go. Life is cruel. Crueeeeel.

I suppose the shock of it will hit me later, and I suppose the inevitable bout of tears will hit me at some point...probably when I've been given the 50th conciliatory sympathy speech, because I actually feel strangely calm.

But a big part of this goes to my friend Kris, who was just so wonderful about the whole thing and knew exactly what to do to make me feel better. Besides making me down a few buckets of water to balance out the alcohol, she went out in the morning and got me a Sausage and Egg McMuffin, a hash brown, and what has to be one of the best coffees I've had in ages.

(Dude, you're the bestest.)

So...time to get on with it. I think I might actually do that Honours year in English now, if just to take a break from the horror that is law school.

And if I guess I had to repeat a subject, I'd rather it be Property Law because I did actually quite enjoy it, failure or no failure.

But if anything ever mentions the word 'caveat' within my earshot they will get brutally stabbed with a pen.

Worst. Morning. Ever. (A Comedy of Errors)

Today was a truly bad morning.

One might even call it a truly shit morning.

In fact, one might go as far as to say that this morning sucked balls.

I woke up late this morning. Again. This in itself was not breaking news, as I'm pretty much late to every single class five days a week, but this was especially bad because out of 18 lectures for Tort Law, I've only ever been to three this semester. I really shouldn't have picked the 8:30 a.m time, it's pretty much all my stupid fault for having too much faith in my own moral and physical stamina.

Anyway...I figured I'd still have time to get to my all-important English tutorial, as this week the entire class was dissecting my crappy little short story and humilating as it was, I was required to be there to receive feedback and be assessed (and probably humiliated). So off I trotted to open the garage door.

I pressed the big green button.

Silence.

Pressed it again.

Nothing.

Tried the other remote.

Nothing.

There was this little blinking red light on the so-called 'automatic' door system, a little blinking light saying, "Hah! You're trapped! I've got you my pretty, and your little Yaris too!"

(insert cinematic cackling)

I was already running late. But as I kept poking desperately at the door control, I tried to keep my panic under control. Never mind that my car was effectively trapped.

Okay, Daphne...don't panic. You're a thinking woman. Not one of those helpless little damsels in distress...c'mon, you work with electronics, what's the first thing you should do?

Aha! The manual override!

Manual override was duly executed, but during this whole ordeal, I still hadn't put on my little black boots, and I'd just scuttled around in a festy old pair of blue garden scuffs. I ran to put the alarm on, totally forgetting that I didn't have shoes, and then I locked the door.

It was then that I looked down and noticed that I was still wearing the festy pair of blue garden scuffs. And these slippers, aside from being totally old and dirty and hideous, were also five sizes too big as they belonged to my dad.

No problemo. I'll just get my house key and open the...

...oh.

Bugger.

I had left my key in the house, and LOCKED MY SHOES INSIDE.

Idiocy could go no further.

In my defense, I've been sick for the past few days (like pretty much everyone else, really) and was extremely tired and stressed and wasn't thinking straight at all. However, I do concede that there was a fair amount of sheer stupidity inherent in the act that wasn't sickness-related at all.

I stared down at the horrible pair of garden slippers, which clashed hideously with my hipsters and jacket, and decided that life was indeed, terribly cruel. I couldn't DRIVE with them because they were too big (I ended up having to press the pedals in my besocked state) and I certainly would not be caught dead at uni with them, and I couldn't also go up seven flights of stairs without tripping over my own feet.

And because I like to keep up my own running internal commentary to stop myself from panicking (I also talk out loud to reassure myself while driving), the inner monologue continued...

Okay, Daphne. Calm. You have a mobile phone.

So I rang my mother.

Unfortunately, my mother does not have a mobile phone. (This is all going to change tomorrow night, when I will forcibly drag her down to my workplace and I will personally buy her a cheap prepaid phone so that this does not happen again.)

Anyway, I figured that if I rang her I might be able to stop into her office and pick up her housekey. And then drive back and rescue my shoes. Unfortunately, she has the most useless receptionists ever.

The first one said she'd put me through.

Then she hung up on me.

The second one said dismissively, "Oh, I'll send her an e-mail and tell her."

"But it's URGENT-"

"I said I'll send her an e-mail."

Funny, last time I checked, my Mum's office WAS THREE BLOODY DOORS DOWN FROM RECEPTION. SURELY IT WOULDN'T KILL YOU TO GET UP AND PASS ON A FREAKING NOTE?!

So I sat there for fifteen minutes in the driveway. In my car. Alone. (It would have been nice if there'd been pouring rain and some atmospheric symphonic music, resplendent with doleful violins, but y'know, you can't have everything.)

And then the cat got her revenge for me neglecting to feed her that morning, and so jumped up on my car bonnet and stared at me through the glass.

I was meant to go shopping with a friend at 11 a.m, but obviously plans had changed- so I rang her and offered to pick her up from the station, as I was sick of just sitting there in the driveway watching my cat groom herself on my pristine metallic paintwork.

I told her what had happened. She said, "Wow, I'm so glad that I'm not the only one who's done that."
"Really?" said I. (I felt a sense of camaderie at the thought that at least someone else had locked themselves out shoeless at some point). "Oh, I don't feel quite so loser-ish then."
"Well, granted, I was quite drunk at the time..."
"Well, I'm plain cold SOBER and I still managed to do something this dumb."

I picked her up and decided that we'd go shopping- well, that I would shuffle into Chadstone as quickly as possible in my ugly hideous never-meant-to-see-the-light-of-day 'shoes' and buy new ones. So we ran into K-Mart and she kindly started seeking out Size 8s for me to try on.

You know how they say 'beggars can't be choosers'?

Well, they can.

I COULD have purchased $8 ballet flats in a hideous shade of plastic royal blue with BOWS, but I figured that if I was going to spend $40 on emergency shoes they might as well be decent ones...so we scampered upstairs to Target and I grabbed a pair of brown boots and bought them on the spot. Then I tottered out and we got a coffee.

And then to cut a long story short, we both shared a plate of dumplings from the food court and got food poisoning.

So after we met up with some friends at Camberwell, I had to scurry her back because she was literally about to throw up in my car.

I offered her the bag with my stupid garden shoes in it if she needed to hurl, because frankly, I couldn't have cared less if they'd been coated in vomit. Stupid shoes.

And that was my day.

On the upside, when my sister came home at night after a long day at the hospital, she had stopped in at Safeway to buy me a 'cheer-up pie' as she had gathered from my hysterical SMS that morning that I was having a shit day. So at least there was the comfort of apple berry crumble. I love having siblings.

I thought the trauma of the day was over, until I realised that I had lost the sore throat from last night and developed a cold instead. So now I have no sense of taste and I sound like a human foghorn.

On the upside, I just realised that in my congested state, I can do a really bitchin' Tracy Chapman impression.

Like, a really good one.

I think I'll just spend tomorrow doing Cher impersonations.