I blame it on sleep deprivation

I do.  I blame all of my problems on sleep deprivation, which I suffer from depending on the day (and the blunder).  Plus, claiming sleep deprivation is the only thing that makes this must-be-told-in-blog-because-it's-hilarious story mommy-blog-related...so there's that.

I've had a busy work week.  I was out of the office and playing stay-at-home mommy last week because my sitters were all out of town.  Enjoying themselves.  While I panicked about spending 7 uninterrupted days with my own children.

This makes coming back to the office with 20 voice mails, 100 emails, and who knows how many annoyed sighs at calls that didn't result in voicemails, not to mention the response to my "out of office" email auto-reply, rather less than pleasant.  I trudged through Monday in preparation for 3 hearings between Tuesday and Wednesday.  To a non-lawyer, this may not seem overwhelming.  To a lawyer, 3 hearings a week is a good clip to work at, not 3 hearings in two days.  Perhaps look at it this way - I have 7 hearings all month and 3 of  those were in 24 hours.  I'm really busy and important, dammit!

Monday night, I woke up after a terrible nightmare.  In my dream, I was sleeping in the middle of the day for some reason (sleep deprivation, probably) and woke up.  I started getting ready to go to my first of these three hearings and realized that it was 5:00!  The hearing was scheduled at 3:15 (in my dream) and I was late!  I turned to Kevin, "Shit!  I missed it!  I missed the hearing!  I'm not even late, like I completely missed it!  What the [bleep] am I going to do?  Should I call the court and just lie?"  (Disclaimer:  I would NEVER lie to a court official, just in case anyone comes across this and questions my impeccable, although sleep deprived, character.)  I woke up heart racing and in a cold sweat at 4:00 a.m.  Not an awesome way to start a day I'm already anxious about.  See part of the issue was that I had papers to prepare before both hearings that I needed to prepare before the first hearing (8:15) because I wasn't sure I'd have time in between to get prepped for the second hearing, which was in another county and only 2.5 hours later.

So, I'm all frantic all morning.  I get what I need to get done and I get on the road worried I'm going to arrive to court late.  I arrive to court late.  :/  Thankfully, so did everyone else party to the matter, so that was a win. I started to feel good.  I had 5 minutes to sit and breathe before anyone else wanted to even talk to me!  My client arrives, meeting goes well, we head into court.  Commissioner was in a great mood, cracking jokes, enjoying his morning.  Parties were actually working together, instead of against one another which is the norm in this business.  It was a glorious first appearance of the three!  I'm feeling good.  We part ways.  I step onto the elevator.

What happens next has already become legend, you know, to me.  So, I was in a hurry because while my first hearing went more smoothly and therefore more quickly than expected, I could really have used some extra time going through the file for the next case.  No one can ever be too prepared for court.  I'm waiting patiently as the elevator crawls from the 7th floor to the 1st.  I distract myself by playing peek-a-boo with the little girl next to me.  Sadly, she got off on the 1st floor and I've got to get through the Ground Floor to the Basement where my car awaits me.  The door opens and I start to step through.  In anticipation of a speedy exit and return to my office, I pull my keys out of my briefcase.  I bobbled them ever so slightly and they slipped out of my hands.  RIGHT. DOWN. THE. ELEVATOR. SHAFT.

Even the other attorney in the elevator exclaimed, "NO WAY!" like a 15 year old boy watching a friend perform Jackass-style stunts in a living room.  I would have thought that dropping ones keys down the elevator shaft, you know down that little crack between the moving box and solid ground, would be nearly impossible.  Apparently not.  Or I'm just oh so awesome that it could only happen to me.  As they were falling from my hands I thought, "Wow, it looks like those could fall right down that little crack between this moving box and solid ground."  Then I thought, "Holy &*!%sing shit!"  Then I thought, "I'm never going to be able to get home again because my car keys and my office keys and my house keys and my Mickey Mouse keychain were on there."  Then I thought, "No, seriously, how the hell am I going to get home."  Then I thought, "How the HELL am I going to get to my next court appearance."  This all lasted about 8 seconds.

I calmly walked over to the bailiff doing security checks and said, "Um, I just dropped my keys down the elevator shaft."  Dude just puts down his beepy wand and looks at me.  "Like you dropped them and they fell into the crack between the moving box and solid ground?"  Okay, he didn't say exactly that, but you get my point....it WAS pretty unbelievable.  "Yes."  "Well, that's not going to be easy to fix."  Little did he know that Mike, the maintenance guy, is actually a super hero and had them in my hands in less than 10 minutes.  So Mike?  Here's a shout out to you, wherever you are.  THANK YOU!  You proved both beepy wand bailiff and all unionized-county-worker-haters wrong when you ever so promptly returned my lost keys.  (Thanks for that Joey.)

If dropping your keys down the elevator shaft is akin to seeing 666, Mike was definitely the image of the Virgin Mary on my grilled cheese sandwich.  I'm pleased to say that while Tuesday did NOT get better, today has been glorious, thus I've taken the time out of my day to ignore my work and update my blog.  Oh, and I was really tired when this happened, which is probably because I have two kids, which causes sleep deprivation, which is why this story is appropriate for my mommy-blog.  Whatevs.  I'm done defending.  It's just a priceless story that deserves to be shared as many times as someone can stand to hear it and laugh at me.