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It's been a special week in Uglyhoma. If you hadn't read before now, this past weekend (from Friday until Monday night) The Hater and I did not have AC in our apartment. It was hot, and according to the inside thermostat, the temp sat anywhere between 85-95 degrees most of the weekend.

Maintenance had promised me that it "would be fixed first thing Monday morning." Imagine my surprise when I called from work around 9:30 that morning and the nice lady in the office "hadn't heard anything about it." She said she would leave a message for the manager and took my number.

I called The Hater at work. This was not acceptable. He called again on his lunch break, at which time someone in the office told him "I think they're working on it now."

That may have been true, but when he came home from work at 4:30, it was still a sauna. He called me at work. I asked him to call our very best lawyer friend in the whole wide world.

The Hater said that he called the apartment office, and the guy who answered the phone said that the work order for our apartment had already been completed, but he "could put in another one if he wanted." The Hater told him that, indeed, the AC had not been fixed. He related that this did not make him happy and he used an ugly word in asking him to find someone who could fix it. Ugly words happen sometimes when there's tension and insomnia.

Call our best friend, The Lawyer, I said. I *knew* that he would fix everything.

The Lawyer called our apartment manager and explained that this kind of thing was not acceptable. He expected this to be fixed by the close of business "today". The manager hung up on him.

Maybe ten minutes later The Hater calls me back to say that our friend, The Lawyer, was on the "threaten them and make them do something" case. Six minutes after that a very angry apartment manager called me at work.

How dare I call The Lawyer before letting her know there was a problem! She was tense. (I thought it wise not to mention that I was tense, too, but from not sleeping for three nights because it was too hot to do anything but sweat.) I explained to her that I *had* called at 9:30 and left a message for her, and my husband had done the same on his lunch break. Then she was tense because "we just got the part in today. You were told that we would not get the part until today." No, I explained, I was told it would be *fixed* this morning. It's different, fixing and ordering. I didn't think that was a small nuance. It didn't matter, she was mad and hung up the phone while I was mid-sentence.

To think, wasted wit. What a shame. Not my problem that her office staff is incompetant.

I drive up to the apartment ten minutes later. The Hater is scowling at the maintenance men from the porch. We go out to a neat little Mediterranean restaurant in town --- because it's still too hot to cook.

Now The Hater is tense. There's lots of tension.

But when we returned? There were no more people working outside. Instead, a new unit was in the neat little row with the other, older units. And our apartment had started to put out cool air.

It was beautiful. I slept all the way through the night... all thanks to the bestest best friend in all the world, my HERO, The Lawyer.