Thursday, July 30, 2009

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.

4 comments:

Valerie and Mercado Family said...

Go Julie! I'm glad you're enjoying your 85 degree bedroom!

melis said...

wow..who knew it got so hot there! we've been having nothing but rain the whole summer...almost every day! it's very atypical here as well...what a strange summer

Staci said...

A/C is an absolute MUST in the third trimester (even if you live in Antarctica! I am so glad that this Julie Ringel hooked you up. Reading the last few posts was pretty painful. Now I can relax again!

Oh, and tomorrow is the 31st! So that's good, too!

Emily said...

I'm glad you finally found a unit! You know, I looked on the computer around 1pm there and what the temperature was, and it said it was only 85 degrees in Beaverton on weather.com. But from what I'm hearing elsewhere, it sounds like weather.com lies... it was pretty much right on with what people were saying the rest of the week.