Our son Nate is visiting his grandparents for several days, and of course, the house is quiet. For most people, this fact would mean more time for sleeping in, going on dates, and watching television. But no, Daniel and I are insane people, so of course, we decide to paint the entire upstairs and rearrange 75 percent of all the furniture we have.
Silly us. Who wants a vacation?
To see what everything would look like, we decided to move large IKEA bookcase first. The thing is five feet square and so far, has survived five moves without falling apart. All the traveling, though, has taken its toll on the discount piece or furniture and we’re always a little scared it will fall apart the next time we move it.
We decided to take a risk and move it up one flight of switchback stairs. With Daniel in front and me holding the back, we heaved and pushed for 45 minutes to get that shelf up a whole half a flight. At one point, I had to push with the last tiny bit of strength I had to save Daniel’s knee from being stuck under the stupid thing. And there it sat. No matter how hard we pushed or how strong we wished we were, the shelf would not move.
We were stupid and stuck. And furious.
The shelf - quite literally - blocked any progress the rest of the week until we could get some help from a friend. We stumbled around it for several days, mad at each other and ourselves. We felt silly for arranging Nate to be gone when we couldn’t accomplish anything.
I hate being stuck. I hate the feeling of working hard to only realize there is no appealing option and that you either have to live with it or wait it out. It’s incredible frustrating and often results in my petulant behavior. “Why do things have to suck?” I moan to Daniel.
Usually, after days of waiting and complaining, the answer comes quickly. Today, the answer came in the form of a friend who helped move the heavy shelf and the other furniture in under an hour. I came home from a quick errand and it was all done.
And I wondered again why we make such a big deal of an often small problem. Just a bit of change made all the difference in the world and life was back to normal.
The stuck was gone.