Some Days Just Don’t Want to Be Days

Do you ever have one of those days that just doesn’t want to be a day?

Not necessarily a terrible day. Nothing catastrophic has happened. It’s just a day that seems fundamentally opposed to your plans.

Every simple task becomes slightly harder than it needs to be. Every quick stop takes three times longer than expected. And just when you think you’ve survived the worst of it, the universe looks at you and says:

Oh, we’re not finished yet.

The other afternoon, I had a very simple plan.

I needed to drop some parcels at the post office for the business, then jump in the car and pick Bowie up from school.

That was it.

Two completely reasonable tasks.

I had everything packed and ready to go. I’d done the mental calculations. I had enough time to get to the post office, drop everything off, come back upstairs, grab the car and make it to school pickup without any stress.

Look at me being organised.

Look at me managing a business, a household and motherhood like an absolute professional.

This confidence lasted approximately four minutes.

On the way to the post office, I ran into some of the girls from our building. They were standing outside the bottle-o, so naturally we had a quick chat.

And honestly, I understood the assignment.

Some afternoons require a trip to the post office. Some require a trip to the bottle shop. Some probably require both.

After our chat, I continued down to the post office—which, on literally any other afternoon, would have been empty.

But not that day.

Of course not that day.

On that particular afternoon, the line was out the door.

Apparently, every person on the Gold Coast had also decided that this exact moment was the perfect time to send a parcel.

I stood there doing the frantic mum calculation.

If this person takes two minutes… and there are seven people ahead of me… and I walk quickly back to the unit… and every traffic light is green…

Nope.

It wasn’t happening.

So I abandoned the post office mission and hurried back to the apartment. The parcels would have to wait. School pickup would not.

I collected what I needed, stepped into the lift with another lady from the building and went to tap my key fob against the reader so I could head down to B1.

A completely routine movement.

One I have successfully completed hundreds of times.

Except this time, the keys slipped out of my hand.

They didn’t simply fall onto the lift floor.

That would have been far too convenient.

Instead, they spiralled dramatically through the air, as if someone had suddenly switched the entire moment into slow motion…and headed directly towards the tiny gap between the lift and the floor.

The other lady and I both watched them.

Neither of us moved.

What could we do?

We simply stood there, united in horror, as my keys disappeared perfectly down the lift shaft.

Gone.

The precision was honestly impressive.

If I had deliberately tried to throw a set of keys into that tiny gap, I could have stood there for three hours and never managed it.

But accidentally?

Bullseye.

Now, I needed to get to B1.

The other lady was going to B2.

I thought I had managed to select B1 using the building app on my phone. But naturally, we arrived at B2.

I got out.

She remained in the lift and continued back up to ground level.

I was now standing in the wrong basement, without my keys, unable to get to my car and increasingly aware that Bowie still needed to be collected from school.

Eventually, after fighting with the app, negotiating with the lift and questioning every decision that had led me to this point in my life, I managed to get back to the ground floor.

There she was.

The lady from the lift.

“Did you get your keys back?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “I’m actually just trying to get to the basement.”

At this stage, retrieving the keys was an ambition for another day. I was simply trying to travel one floor downward.

That was the new goal.

Forget running a business.

Forget getting the parcels posted.

Forget appearing vaguely competent.

Could I successfully reach B1?

Apparently, even that was ambitious.

I eventually discovered that retrieving the keys from the lift shaft would cost around $300.

Three hundred dollars.

For keys I already own.

So I think they live there now.

They’ve chosen their new home, and I respect their decision.

I’ll be using the spare set.

And that’s the thing about some days.

They don’t have to contain a major disaster to completely unravel you. Sometimes it’s a long post-office line, a school pickup deadline, an uncooperative building app and a set of keys performing a flawless swan dive into a lift shaft.

All you can do is laugh, rearrange the plan and keep moving.

Preferably with a tighter grip on your keys.

Some days simply don’t want to be days.

And on those days, achieving absolutely nothing…but eventually making it to school pickup still counts as a win.