Why was the hooker hanging around our front yard today..?

She heard a couple of guys were going to lay a stone patio and wanted to see how they’d do it

Yes, it’s down. It was a comedy of errors, though, I must say…

Monday I went to Maplewood Nursery on Springfield and ordered a pallet of stone for $200 and a cubic yard of gravel – total cost plus delivery, $285. I was assured that we were #2 on the delivery list for Wednesday.

I hurried home and called a guy we know who does odd jobs for $$ and offered him some bucks to come and help Gerry lay the stones. I felt we were set.

I was teaching this morning at Knit & Stitch when Gerry called at 11:00 to say the stones hadn’t arrived and he wanted me to leave the class and go get 400lbs of fill dirt. Oh, yeah baby -what I do is so damned unimportant that I can just drop the bag I’m binding off for a student, rush to Home Depot and carry 400 lbs of fill dirt to the car with my sore shoulder. Uh huh. More calls ensued. Apparently the owner of the nursery was making the deliveries and had his own idea of the routing schedule, our delivery was last. The guy we hired and Gerry did some other odd jobs, dug a trench in the front yard where we have to lay a pipe, other stuff.

The truck arrived at 2:00, a dump truck – and it did just that. Dumped a pallet of stone and the mound of gravel dust onto the driveway. The driver smiled at my husband and said rather nastily, ‘Have fun!’ then drove off. When the pallet fell onto the driveway many of the stones broke apart (the whole reason I’d bought an ENTIRE pallet was to get larger stones.)

I was extremely pissed at this – I called Maplewood Nursery and spoke to the nice (but ineffectual) guy again who said he’d ‘talk’ to the owner – yeah, lots of help there. Then I called Visa and requested a claim form because – tada – I paid for the stones with my Visa and hopefully I’m covered under the buyer protection thingy. Most of the stone was not usable in the manner we’d intended, it was so small. Luckily I had purchased more than we’d need because I thought we’d do our back patio the same way in a few weeks.

In this whole mess, though, everyone kept their composure; Josh was great to work with, Gerry was a champ (his unreasonable request aside); and we finally got the ‘patio’ laid and sprayed down with water by 5:00 pm. Great job. I stupidly carried some of the stone and laid it in place – big, big, big mistake. I know I’m an idiot, please don’t tell me… I’m going to go soak my shoulder.