Like sands through the hourglass, only on my driveway ...

These are the days of my f***ing frustrating week.

FYI, DIY involves much WTF.

I'm putting down a patio off the back of our house. No big deal, nice weekend project. Well, more than a weekend, really. Here are a few things the nice short instructional videos on the intertubes assume vs. our reality:

• Your patio site is absolutely flat, level, and free of stones and other debris.
  
  Au contraire mon frere. Our back yard had a slope that rivaled the Matterhorn. About a two foot drop over eight linear feet. So it had to be rendered level. No problem, just a few hours of sweaty work, tossing excess dirt over the fence into the field. Except that during the last ice age, some dick head glacier decided that our yard was a perfect spot to ditch some moraine. Every few shovels full, I hit a stone, many the size of tennis balls, some cabbage to watermelon size, a few the size of New Zealand. At this point, Mary convinced me that minions were the answer. So we hired two high school sophomores to do the digging. I figured it would take them a day at least to do the dig. The boys arrived at 9 am. At 11 am they were at the door asking what's next. Much can be said for strong young muscles. 

• Spread 3 inches of base gravel, tamp it down, and lightly water it.
  
  Done. Three yards of gravel were delivered and the minions spread it out evenly.

• Scree 2.5 inches of paver sand over the base.
  
  Right. The patio is 20 ft. by 8 ft. The paver sand they sell at the local Home Depot comes in a bag about the size of a party favor bag at a six-year old's birthday party. Enough sand to cover maybe an index card. I'd need something like 457 of these bags to complete the job. Home Depot had 9. Which was just as well since the cost of 457 bags of sand could fund NASA for the next three years.
  
  So I went to a local sand and gravel outlet to order the appropriate quantity of sand and have it delivered to my driveway. At the counter was a stone-faced (hah! get it? Sand and gravel place, stone-faced? Anyway...) young woman who responded with a blank stare to all of my attempts at beginning a human style conversation. I could work with that. I wanted sand, after all, not a fireside chat. She jotted down my specs: 20'x8'x2.5" and went to a back room to do some math. When she came back, she told me I needed a whole truck full of sand. 13.3 cubic yards. I thought Holy Crap! that's a lot of sand! She reran the numbers and came up with the same answer. OK, I said, you guys are the sand and gravel experts.
  
  A couple of days later, a dump truck backs down our drive and disgorged what you see in the accompanying photo. 
  
  This picture was taken after the minions had carted the needed sand to the patio area. 
  
  That afternoon I went back to talk with the charming sand and gravel automaton to explain my problem. She did the calculations again and again came up with 13.3 cubic yards. I reiterated the facts of the situation, the reality on the ground, as it were. I stressed that my patio was now covered in 2.5 inches of sand, the use of which took only a modest divot out of the Mont Blanc at the side of my garage. She stood her ground. Figures don't lie, she seemed to imply, evidence notwithstanding.
  
  Could they come and pick up the excess? I asked. No, she said, we don't do that.
  
  Next day, I called the president of the company and explained my situation to him. He did his own calculations and also came up with 13.3 cubic yards, and bolstered his argument with talk of tonnage ... 7 tons, I believe he said would be needed to satisfy the specs I had given him. Slowly, I said again that I only meant to cover 8'x20'x2.5" and that I had Googled sand and gravel calculators, plugged in my numbers, and had come up with only 1 cubic yard. He mulled a bit, threw some numbers out again, did some multiplying and dividing and, finally pinpointed the problem "Oh, you're right," he said. "I should divide by 12, not by 2." He offered to give me credit. I said I'd be willing to eat the delivery charge if he could arrange to have the sand removed.
  
  An hour later, Joe the delivery guy drove up and surveyed Mt. Silica. "Can't you use it somewhere else?" he asked. "Nope," I replied. "Can we just push it off the drive into the field there?" "Nope, I want it outta here," I replied politely, because Joe weighs about 250, stands 6'5" or so, wears a wife-beater shirt, and didn't seem to be in a chatty mood (seems to be a theme with this company). He turned around and stalked back to his pickup. I'm assuming the sand will be picked up in the next couple of days.
  
  So, yeah. Building a patio is a piece of cake.