12.

The oversleeper missed her sister's wedding, three job interviews and, just once, her own birthday party.

She slept through the '98 earthquake and the time a sheep-truck overturned outside her house (she awoke later to find her lawn half-chewed, the road strewn with lambs less lucky).

She's tried all manner of alarm clocks, physical prompts, hypnosis, drugs (illicit and prescribed) . . . but her body refuses to comply.

Everyone tells her the solution is obvious: get a man. That would just solve everything! Instead, she wakes when her body relents, sits at her bay window sipping tea and waits for the postie.