Irony, irony; and why I'll never hire anyone again

All summer long, I picked up fallen limbs and piled them under one of the trees. Once I asked Steve to get his crew to clean up the back of the lot, so he ran the mower over the dead leaves and left, and charged me 30 dollars extra. The pile of limbs grew and grew, till it was almost as high as me. You can say I should have started out piling them on the curb; with 20-20 hindsight, I can see it now.

One reason I piled them all neatly together was that I expected Jerry to break them up for kindling for his fireplace in the winter. That's what he did last year. But this year he didn't.

I went out yesterday afternoon to pick up the white thing that I thought was trash, and found that it was a ceramic pot that I had left standing under a tree after planting what was in it. A few feet from it was the pile of limbs; the rain/flood had deposited them neatly beside Jerry's driveway. It had also floated the wooden frame of Jerry's flower bed out into his driveway.

Now, instead of worrying about how to get the pile of limbs about 50 yards out to the curb, I only have to move it a third of that distance. Of course, the water compacted it all till it isn't nearly as high and brambly as before. Also, the dead leaves and twigs from my yard form a long line this side of Jerry's driveway to the back of his lot. My yard, especially the area under the trees, is clean as a pin.

All of this just gives me something else to worry about, like messing up the neighbor's property. The wind already, 2-3 years ago, blew one of my trees down onto his garden. There's nothing funny about it, but the imp that sometimes sits on my left shoulder laughs its head off at the irony of it all.

By the way, Jerry's name isn't Jerry, it's Jared.

My basement is truly flooded, this time. Last night the water was about shoe-sole deep, and the mildew scent was overpowering. When I started the car yesterday afternoon, it coughed and groaned before the starter caught, and I left the motor running at CVS while I ran in and got my prescriptions that I had called in.

I know exactly what must be done: Hire someone to install a sump pump. Hire someone to haul off everything in the basement except my deck table and chairs. Hire someone to clean, de-mold and paint the basement.

In addition to my impecunaeity, so far I have not been very good or lucky at hiring people. Citing: Allen Bergal for landscaping. Martin's Tree Service to trim limbs out of the trees. Lee Kingry, The Window Factory, to replace the deck. Shane Mozingo, handyman. Atchison's Landscaping and Turf to correct what Bergal did to the lot. Willis Cain, partly to correct what Kingry did to the deck and chimney.

My experiences in hiring people have made me suspect that hirees just don't take a woman and her cash seriously--except when it comes to taking the cash. Now, I apologize if I'm 'way off base with this, but it just seems that way to me. They tell me they'll be here Monday, and I assume they mean next week, or at least this month, and sometimes it turns out they meant sometime this year. Or next year. They tell me the job will take a week or ten days, but what they leave out is that the week will be spread, one or two days at a time, from early spring to midsummer. I'm through, I tell you.

I'm not going to hire anyone else, except Murray's Garage to come out and start my car when the battery corrodes again and won't respond. It always amazes me when Murray's Garage tells me they'll be here in 30 minutes, and they turn up the same day.

From now on, when somebody needs to be hired, I'm going to be very busy practicing on my horn. I mean, working on my novel.