You know how people always say “The tree jumped out in front of me. It wasn’t my fault, really it wasn’t” and you never, ever believe them?

Well prepare yourself to actually believe it for once.

I’m not lying - a tree really did jump out in front of me when I was driving up to Mum and Dad’s last night.

I had been driving for around 2 and a half hours and everything had gone fine. I was paying attention, and I wasn’t even speeding and then a tree (very rudely, I must say) jumped out in front of me.

This is how it happened:

I was about 4 minutes away from Mum and Dad’s house (a little before the Supply bridges for those of you who know the area). Oh, I should mention that it was dark- really dark because there was a lot of cloud cover so there wasn’t much light from the moon either. I was coming up to a part of the road that got a little narrower and a car was coming the other way so I dipped my lights down (and consequently could only see a tiny way out in front of the car). I was travelling around 80km- a perfectly acceptable speed- and suddenly in the small area that was lit up in front of me in the middle of my lane I saw a tree (Well, half a tree that had jumped off the back of someone’s trailer after they had been trimming trees that were too close to powerlines or something).

Obviously, I hit it.

Hard.

And Barry is a little sore.

When I got to Mum and Dad’s I pulled branches out of his nostrils and from underneath him.

Thankfully, the tree (despite all its best efforts) didn’t do any major damage to either Barry or myself, but there is damage to his plastic bumper thing.

So this morning I was still feeling quite down in the dumps about the whole experience (and about exams and having to find a job and my lease running out on my apartment and everything) and I felt as miserable and gloomy as Eeyore (and I suspect Barry wasn’t feeling real great about the whole thing either).

But its amazing how much better I feel after a little sunshine, a proper check over Barry finding no major damage, choosing a new photo for my desktop background and having a haircut. Having a haircut is the best stress buster ever. Pity you have to wait for your hair to grow back before you can do it again.