I Hereby Unvolunteer

I had booked helpers from Dolly to move several items today, but saw a note this morning saying that our helper had “relisted.” (I never saw anything about the second helper, but there were going to be two.) I guess that’s a nice way of saying that the person said, “Instead of being on the work list, I’d like to be on the non-work list!” I called Dolly and the pleasant customer service person said he would get busy trying to find another person, though he pointed out that this would have to be someone who chose the task; they can’t assign work. I politely said I would prefer to cancel the project, as it was supposed to have started 15 minutes prior, and to receive a refund, which was no problem.

I texted our estate sale lady to see if she had an idea regarding movers, on the theory that she probably knows a thing or two about getting an object from Point A to Point B, and I also started looking around online. I had been thinking Two Men and a Truck could be a possibility, but the reviews for the ones in this area were pretty awful. Then an app called Thumbtack came into view. Whereas booking the Dolly had literally taken more than an hour, as each thing to be moved had to be specified in detail and then double-checked, triple-checked … 75 times checked, all I had to do at Thumbtack was to describe in a freeform field the nature of my needs.

Along with downloading the app and setting up my account, the whole thing can’t have taken more than five or ten minutes. Immediately after I pressed the submit button, Thumbtack suggested three possible vendors. Two of them sent electronic messages within about 60 seconds, and one of the two also telephoned. I arranged to have the latter come today at 2 p.m. They arrived at 2:30, having advised by text in a timely manner that they had had “a lil truck problem.”

They moved a dresser, Mom’s exercycle, and Dad’s air compressor over to my sister’s, and brought back an enormous toolbox and La-Z-Boy loveseat to put with the items for the estate sale. I asked my sister if the dresser had arrived intact, and she said it had, but that she wasn’t sure if she would use these movers again. They had arrived without straps to secure things, and the U-Haul van they were using didn’t have a ramp. She had noted, as had I, that one of them—these were college students—was wearing Birkenstocks. So was I, but I wasn’t going to move a toolbox that weighed about 200 pounds.

Earlier on, I was thinking about all the things I could have fixed around here now that I know about Thumbtack! The movers were perfectly fine for what we needed today, but not top-notch professional movers, so that tempered my enthusiasm a little, but it still seems like a good app to have. I told my sister it was a life-changing moment: “It’s okay to be an old lady!” There will be help for the things I need help with.

The orange oil does not seem to be discouraging the carpenter bees at all, though for some reason, the lady bee keeps starting her hole-making operation over in a new spot. I warned the movers about the bees, and one of the two looked alarmed. I dislike bees myself—that is, I’m afraid of them—but I do not want these bees, or any bees, purposely harmed. I advised the movers not to swing at them. These particular bees are very large. It occurred to me that this might bee (sic) a problem on estate sale day. Someone might swat at our bees and get stung; maybe someone would kill one of the bees.

A couple of years ago, I noticed a pile of sawdust underneath that bench just as someone was arriving to fix a little gas leak in the basement. He pointed out the hole in the bench, and before I could speak a syllable, he sprayed into the hole with the can he was holding in his hand. The bee burst out of the hole in agony and died just outside it, on the driveway. It was awful. That’s how I knew what this was when sawdust appeared again lately.

I am planning to leave here on Thursday, so I offered my sister the opportunity to undertake an exciting special assignment: Using Thumbtack to find someone to get started painting that bench ASAP, before the hole is complete and the eggs laid, in which case we would have bees hanging around until maybe September. We agreed that I would undertake the exciting special assignment, and that she would oversee the phases of the operation that occur after I’m gone. I ran the whole thing by our meticulous interior painter, assuming this would be outside his purview, but just wanting to see, or perhaps he would know of the right painter, but he offered to pick it up and take it home and paint it in his garage. That is absolutely ideal: If there is no bench for a while, there should be no bees, and when it comes back, it should no longer be of interest to them, though I am definitely prepared to deploy clanging wind chimes; I might do that anyway.

It was 89 degrees today, sunny, humid, breezy. The breeze makes a big difference when it is hot and humid.

I scattered the grass seed I bought the other day and watered the lawn, and I took a walk, followed by dinner on the deck.