How I lost $100. Twice.

It has become a delightfully predictable part of my Christmas that my parents buy me a $100 voucher from Borders. I like it because it's the kind of present that keeps on giving all year. This Xmas, as we left Ma & Pa's place, we put all our pressies in a big box and brought them home, to add to the ones that were already here from Xmas eve with C's family. Long story short, I asked C a couple of weeks ago, where my voucher was put after the box was emptied. It turns out the box wasn't emptied, but filled with torn wrapping paper and left out for Mr. Recycle. I'm sure the voucher was in the box, having spent the last two weeks looking in every conceivable place an envelope could have been put, then looking again and again and again. (Truth be told, I'll probably have another look later). I even went through our envelope bin that gets emptied once about every six months. It's a waste paper bin that lives under our desk and when bills, rates notices, bank statements come in, the envelope goes in the bin. It needed emptying the other day, so I went through every last bit of rubbish there to look for my voucher. No luck. Monday was my birthday and of course, there was some money in my card from Ma & Pa. So I, not really being able to cope with my loss, think fuck it, I'm just going to use my birthday money and buy another one. When I got in there and explained that I'd like one $100 voucher to replace the other lost $100 voucher, they explain that if I, or whoever bought me the voucher had the receipt, they could track down that card and cancel it if no money had been taken off it. Whoop-de-doo, thinks me. Mum will have the receipt; she's that kind of person. I can get my hundred back. Sure, it means I'd have to tell her that I'd lost the card, something I was hoping to avoid (Yeah, sorry Mum, I threw your hundred dollars in the bin), it meant that I could get it back which would kind of make it all okay again; all's well that ends well, and all that. After talking to Ma was when I lost the hundred dollars for the second time. She told me "Oh, the receipt had an offer for a further ten per cent off any purchases made before the end of January. SO I GAVE IT TO YOU". Mum's bringing the credit card receipt round on Monday, so I'll see if I can get anywhere with that but I'm not holding out any hope. Incidentally, Tuesday night saw me going back through the recycling trash looking for the receipt. I'm having a lot of trouble letting go of this. It's really put me behind in the general scheme of things. When I was 16, two friends and I found some gaudy costume ring and sold it to a jeweller for $15 so we got $5 each. I won $15 on the pokies at the Coomealla club when I was 19. I was given $20 too much in change once from some guy at the central markets. I would normally have gone back but he'd been rude to me because I'd asked a stupid question about his cheese so I figured it served him right. Then I found $10 on the ground last year outside Baker's Delight in Blackwood. That put me about $50 up. Now I'm $50 down. And I'm thinking of giving my birthday money back to Ma simply because I can't be trusted with $100 from her, so I'd feel better if she put it into her super or something. Maybe I should sell my 2 full cans of Duff on Ebay to recoup the loss. They've been in the fridge since 1997.