Set Backs

Do you encounter set backs often? Aren’t they frustrating? In my experience they usually come because of some short-coming on my part: something I should have seen coming but didn’t, something I have to re-do because of trying to take a short-cut, or it becomes necessary to go back and do something later that I should have done in the first place. Our latest set-back falls into all three of these categories amazingly enough.

We’ve actually been rocking right along on the living room. Mike hung all the dry-wall that we needed and I actually taped the joints and some corners that were unfinished underneath the paneling. For a first-timer, I was feeling pretty good about the job I did. We patched all the holes and pretty-well had everything sanded. Then we made a decision.

We decided that, since some of the dry-wall was stained dark brown because of the stain that was used on the wood paneling, we ought to use some primer on those areas to even out the color and keep that stain from bleeding through the texture. Good decision, right? Yeah, we thought so too.

So, we wiped down all the walls to get the excess dust off, made trip number 26 to Lowe’s since starting this project, and I began priming, hoping to have this step finished tonight (Saturday night). I stepped back to admire my handiwork only to notice that the wall paper that we had decided would not come off the wall and that we would just texture over was beginning to bubble up. I began to play with it a little only to find that it was coming off now in sheets.

The funny thing is that both my sister, Diane, and my dear friend, Cristel, both said something to me on Monday about this great product that will just take the wall paper right off. “Nah. We’re just going to leave it and texture over it. We don’t want to mess with it.”

So, something in the primer is releasing the glue on the wall paper and we can’t just leave it alone. Now we’ve got to mess with it. So rather than finishing that part tonight, we had to pack it in, and now I’m typing this journal entry.

Set backs. They’re a part of life. Especially when we try to take the easy road rather than the right road. And yet, sometimes set backs are unavoidable and have nothing to do with anything we’ve done. Our other set back from getting as much done today falls into this category.

Nathan has been a little congested over the last week or so. At first I thought it was just allergy related, then I figured it was just a little cold. But he never missed a beat. He kept right on plugging along, never had a fever, never acted like he didn’t feel well. That is, until this morning.

He got up just fine, but then he wasn’t all that interested in the chocolate chip pancakes I made for breakfast (there’s a clue that something’s wrong) and he just wanted to go back to bed. So, we let him, figuring that he was just tired from getting to bed late last night after being at parents’ night out at his day-care. Mike lay down with him for a little while, then came out and said he was pretty much asleep, so Sarah and I left to go to her soccer game. When we got home, we found out that things had gone down-hill right after we left. Nathan was now feverish and had thrown-up the little bit of milk that he drank this morning. Off we go to the urgent care clinic.

They say it’s bronchitis and we did get his fever down a little this afternoon. But Mike and I failed to get another dose of Tylenol in him soon enough and it spiked back up again, and higher this time. My thermometer read 102.3 under his arm at one point. Poor thing. We just checked in on him a few minutes ago to give him some more medicine and I got a temperature of 100.3. Quite an improvement, although he still feels pretty warm to me. So, we’ll be up again at 2 am and 5 am, and there won’t be any of us going to church in the morning. We’ll just have our own worship service right here. Maybe Mike will preach and I can bob my head up and down as I fall asleep during his sermon so he can see what it feels like.

Set backs. Between the time spent at urgent care and the time spent just holding our sick little 2 year old, we didn’t get a lot done today. And since we didn’t take all the wall paper off initially like we should have, we couldn’t do what we had planned to do this evening and we’re not as close to wrapping up this project as we thought we were. It’s frustrating. But we learn, dig in, work to get it done, and on occasion, take a break and just hold our kids.