Keeping it real

My book came out yesterday, with a cover, and pages, and an isbn and everything:

The Writer and the Overseas Childhood: The Third Culture Literature of Kingsolver, McEwan and Others.

http://www.mcfarlandpub.com/book-2.php?id=978-0-7864-4900-2

In order that my ego not revel too long, or that my soul not transcend the bounds of mundanity, fate determined that I arrived home after work (first day back after vacation) to discover our ac broken, again.

It's not so bad as long as we still have some power, but it is a bit uncomfortable.

The zinger: the receipt for our July 5 repair of the ac had been on the floor in the kitchen corner all month.  I knew exactly where it was.  But yesterday, mysteriously, it was gone.  I needed the receipt, for ac repairs are costly, and if the company installed a faulty part I darned well didn't want to have to pay for it again.

I searched the basement (in case the cats had taken it for a toy).  I searched my mail bin (in case I absent-mindedly had put it somewhere sensible).  I searched the recycling (which is where is ought to have been if not somewhere sensible).

And then I opened the garbage.  Fruit flies lifted from the rinds of the morning's cantaloupe.  Things oozed from detritus warmed by the afternoon sun in our currently un-airconditioned kitchen.  A doggie poop bag (tied shut but still gross) cradled a rotting tomato.

I sorted by hand until, under a dripping styrofoam container that had held chicken breasts, I found the receipt.  Wet, bacterial, but legible.  I left it out on the back porch to dry and then sealed it in a zip-lock bag.

Today the repair company has been singularly unhelpful.

I am contemplating putting the receipt back in the garbage, under the festering chicken container, for a while before I hand it to them for perusal, IF they ever show up . . .