Three French hens and three Indigo Girls

Yesterday I did one of those silly little web things on LiveJournal which took a bunch of my declared "interests" in my LiveJournal profile and made a "12 Days of Christmas" about them. If you go there now by clicking the link above you won't see it, because I friend-locked the entry, so I shall reproduce it for you here:

On the twelfth day of Christmas, slightedeyes sent to me...

Twelve woxlans skiing

Eleven trobaritzes writing

Ten movies a-jogging

Nine gymnastics bicycling

Eight troubadours a-reading

Seven frogs a-swimming

Six penguins a-moving

Five co-o-o-oncerts

Four road trips

Three indigo girls

Two religious studies

...and a literature in a coffee.

Get your own Twelve Days:

Sure, it's silly, and grammatically questionable at parts, but it's amusing overall. I'm particularly intrigued by the notion of a third Indigo Girl. Is that like the fifth Beatle? Is there someone who ran around the playground at their Decatur elementary school with them, or who was also an alto in the high-school choir, claiming she woulda/coulda/shoulda been part of the folk-rock duo's success? I mean, folk-rock "trio"? This amuses me greatly. Heh.

Yes, that's what I spent yesterday doing...blogging, live journaling, listening to Indigo Girls and other guitar-toting trobaritzes (eleven of whom are apparently coming to my house for a writing party, as noted above, though only eight troubadours will be there to read what we write--not sure what that's about).

Note that nowhere in there did it say I was studying for Torts yesterday. It's not that you didn't read the paragraph closely enough. I absolutely spent yesterday willfully and wantonly blowing off preparing for my Torts final. But I certainly spent a lot of time listening to Indigo Girls and Swamp Ophelia!

Then, this morning as we the few, the proud, the handwriters gathered in our small classroom, segregated from the laptopping computer exam takers, we took our seats and said our hellos and so forth. It was bloody hot in there and one of the windows at the other end of the row was open. I stood up to open the one near us. At first it wouldn't budge, but I quickly realized I needed to turn the little secure-latch things on top of the bottom sliding pane and to do so I needed to move the blinds. I was attending to that when the nice middle-aged Long Island lady proctor said, "Would you like the window open? Oh, maybe one of these gentlemen can help you. Would you help her open it?"

Are you kidding me? I said, "Right, I might need help, I'm very frail." Then I opened it. "Oh, look!" I cried. "I opened it without a big strong man!"

Then I sat down. OK, maybe I was a little tired and cranky, but I had my fruit smoothie and my coffee going. I was settling in. This was an open book exam, and I placed my text, notebook full of class notes, and law dictionary on the table in front of me. It was then that I realized all my fellow test-takers had one additional item--the Restatement. Which I conveniently forgot to bring. Oops.

What is the Restatement? Oh, just the definitive source for tort law information. The relevant guidelines compiled by the American Law Institute. Adopted into law by many jurisdictions. Looked to in deciding many a case.

I actually thought for one split second, 'Is it only 8:20? Should I run like a bat out of marathon hell back home to get it?' And then I thought, quite simply, screw it. (Maybe not exactly "screw" it, but this is a family blog, after all.)

How does one forget to bring the Restatement to an open-book Torts law exam? Seriously. SERIOUSLY. One would have to be utterly out of her head. If I had for one instant so much as peered into my Torts text yesterday, it might have occurred to me to put the Restatement in or near my bag. But I didn't. And I think it's probably sitting on the floor of my room, underneath Friday's New York Times article about the Golden Globe nominations and whatever else I've tossed on top of it since I last touched it. My classmates have become used to my cavalier approach to law school, but this takes the cake.

But there is some good news, guess what. I really didn't need it. Why? Frankly, because I know my stuff. (family blog! family blog!) And I take good notes in class. And it's quoted in our text in parts and when I flipped through the text I was able to cite all the relevant authority I needed. And I would just like to state here and now that I do believe I knew the answers to the questions on my Torts exam. And so, despite life (which is, as you know, only life after all) I don't think I failed. I mean, who's to say, really? Failure is so hard to precisely define when it's a mandatory curve. But I loved the exam the way I have loved my Torts experience all semester long.

Now I must go to work, and then tomorrow I will try really, really hard to actually study for Civil Procedure, which comes Wednesday, because I should probably study for SOMETHING at least, shouldn't I?

Oh, third Indigo Girl....where are you hiding?