Julie Ringel is Going to Heaven

Bad news. Very very bad news. I called Home Depot before 10:00 to start my stakeout extra-early. Indeed, they had already received a shipment of a/c units that morning and were ALREADY SOLD OUT AGAIN! I almost killed myself. Dave chastised me that I should have been there at 7 a.m. Who would have known? They told me noon! I thought I was ahead of the game.

In a depression, I posted something about it in my Facebook status, which I rarely use, and imagine anyone rarely looks at. But someone did. Julie Ringel saw it. She emailed me that she had a unit we could borrow. It was a window unit, which is not supposed to work with our side-to-side slider windows, but she could show me how to jimmy it together to semi-work until we could find a portable a/c for sale in this state (we finally had to buy one online). Dave, recognizing the severe import of the situation, cancelled a meeting at work and drove out with me 40 minutes away to procure the life (and sanity)-saving appliance that I could not carry by myself.

The unit, once paired with a wooden dowel, a sheet of plexi-glass, some tape and a towel to stuff in the gaps, DID THE TRICK. We put it in our bedroom after lunch. I did not leave that room (with exception of once for three minutes to shovel in some carrots for dinner in the hot kitchen when I could stand the starvation no longer) all day. At 5 pm it was 106 in the shade outside. Inside, in the rest of the house, it was 100. In our icebox of a bedroom, it was 85.

Pixie and I lazed. We lolled. We laid on our backs and rolled around in sheer comfort, staring at each other in rapture. I took some naps without waking up dehydrated from sweat-loss. Last night we slept through the night. Julie Ringel, you saved our lives. Julie Ringel, you're going to heaven.