Not the most auspicious way to start the day...

Yeah, that's my car. Backed up to the dumpster bin. Why? So I could climb into it. ("It" being the dumpster. Yeah, I climbed into a dumpster. Awesome morning.) How did this happen and why would I do such a thing at 7:00 in the morning? Because yesterday, when I was cleaning my kitchen, I accidentally threw an envelope in the trash that was supposed to go in the mail. (An envelope with three, count them - three, insurance checks that were meant to go to the bank for deposit.)

Luckily, I woke up a little earlier than planned this morning and I was taking advantage of that time to get all of my outgoing mail and faxes organized. (I tell you what, I need a personal secretary to take care of all my incoming and outgoing medical/insurance forms these days.) I had everything paper-clipped and ready to go, when I realized that I was missing the envelope to the bank. I frantically went through all the mail that had come in over the last week - not there. I un-paper-clipped everything and flipped through sheets of paper to see if it had snuck into that stack - no such luck. I took everything off the counter, just to make sure it hadn't been buried by the Pushing Daisies dvd's that have taken up permanent residence on the corner of my kitchen counter - nothing. ... And then it all came crashing back to me, how I'd cleaned off the counter yesterday afternoon and had sorted everything into three stacks of paper: insurance forms to be faxed, duplicates or other financial info that could be shredded, and *gulp* non-essentials that could be thrown out. ... I'd taken a big bag of garbage down to the dumpster on my way to church yesterday.

The deposit envelope wasn't in the stack of forms to be faxed, and it hadn't migrated to the shred bin in my bedroom. Holy poo. I'd thrown it away.

I immediately broke into a cold sweat. And then I laughed. And then I sweated some more, which prompted me to put on another layer of deoderant (ridiculous, but true). And then I went into my room and changed into the longest pair of pants I own and threw on my grubby old tennis shoes (I wanted as much of my feet and legs covered as humanly possible), threw on a t-shirt that I wouldn't care if it got smeared with pizza sauce and other grody trash goo, and I headed outside.

Luckily, I invest in the stretchy Glad bags. (I say luckily, because not a lot of people in my apartment complex spring the big bucks for the stretchy bags, so that made it easier to sort through what was possibly mine and what for sure wasn't.) It took about five minutes to grab and search through the trash that I could easily grab from standing outside the bin and just reaching in. ... Too bad a lot of people had thrown trash out after I did yesterday, and my bag had been buried.

For lack of a better option as to how to get myself up and into the dumpster, I backed my car into it (literally - I totally hit it with my bumper), climbed onto the trunk of my car and hoisted myself into the dumpster. One foot in and one foot out, straddling the side of the dumpster (not a position I'd recommend, fyi), I was able to pick through the trash bags until I found mine. I ripped it right open. Right there, on top of a pile of cream cheese icing I'd thrown out was my bank deposit. (Yeah, the envelope was totally encrusted. Frosting everywhere. The good news? The checks were still legible, albeit a little grease stained. The bank will never know, right?)

All in all, it wasn't too terrible. ... Not that I'd recommend it. (Either the accidental throwing away of hundreds of dollars or the having to dumpster dive to retrieve said dollars.) But all in all, it wasn't too bad. I'm just so grateful that I realized that early in the morning what had happened, for two reasons. One, trash is stinky enough in the morning, when it's had all night to cool down. The mere thought of having to dig through warm, sticky trash makes me want to grab a bowl. Two, the trash gets picked up Monday afternoons. If I hadn't realized this morning that I was missing that envelope, it would have been long gone by the time I got home this afternoon.

When you look at it that way, I lead a pretty charmed life. (Just call me Pollyanna.)

Of course, I say it wasn't too bad today. Just wait until tomorrow, when I'm sore in diverse places from having to use major muscles to climb onto my car, let alone into and then back out of a dumpster, before I fell off my trunk onto the parking lot. (I'm really looking forward to that little reminder of today's activities.)

Two thoughts come to mind:

Truth really is stranger than fiction.

I wouldn't have any luck at all, if it wasn't for bad luck.

My life. It slays me. (And someday, someone's going to make it into a movie and I'll makes lots of dollars off the dumb stuff that I do on a semi-regular basis. ... At least, that's what I like to tell myself when stuff like this happens.)