Emily’s Room – ORC Week 4

Week One | Week Two | Week Three

We are wrapping up the fourth week of the Better Homes and Gardens One Room Challenge.

This week did NOT go as smoothly as I had hoped, for a number of reasons.

1. I didn’t have my favorite stain for the roof, Special Walnut, so I had to go with Weathered Oak. Still nice, but not what I was hoping for!
2. There were a few storms with wind that kind of ruined my outdoor painting experience – think oak pollen landing in your paint.
3. Easter, anyone?
4. I ran into some health issues unexpectedly!

Stain Wars

I have a slight preference for Minwax’s Special Walnut. If you mix it up with Weathered Oak, it looks really beautiful on furniture. However, my husband used it up for his trailer, so I found myself unexpectedly without it! I came to terms with not going out to buy more stain, since I had a gallon of the Weathered Oak at my disposal, so I’m going with it.

The good news is I was still able to get a little video made up for you guys!

Stormy Weather

I like to paint outside, where I get out from behind my computer, enjoy the sounds of nature and give my eyes a chance to adjust to real world vs. computer screen graphics. I do NOT like, however, when oak pollen and whatever other allergens land in my fresh paint. For some reason, the color white really attracts those little gnats too.

This week, there were some uncharacteristic storms that came through the South Texas area (thankful for the rain though!) and whipped up some winds that kind of kept me away from my painting goals. So, I fell fairly behind on my projects!

Easter

We had a wonderful Easter – we started with Easter egg dying.

We went with the shaving cream trick this year and I like the way they came out!

The next day we had our early morning Easter egg hunt, which I incorporated her cabin bed into – much to her delight!

From there, we went to church and then followed that up with visits to family. We have both sets of family in the area, so holidays are extra fun!

It also means that holiday weekends are extra busy, too. So, I didn’t get to make as much progress – and when I did….

Unexpected Health Issues

A while back, I wrote a piece about how stress impacts health and my experience with that. I have a heart issue called Sick Sinus Syndrome that I take Metaprolol for. At barely 30 years old and a pretty avid runner for the past 12 years, it was pretty lame to get that diagnosis and the accompanying symptoms. But, it’s sunk in at this point and I’m excited when my running improves with the medication.

But last week, I was getting low on my medication and so I called in a refill when I had a single pill left (I break them in two to half the dose per day). Well I didn’t pay close enough attention to the fact that I didn’t have any refills! So, they had to get my doctor’s authorization and that took a day or two. By the time I had the time to pick it up from the pharmacy, I had been off of it for maybe 2-3 days.

Here’s an important fact that I didn’t pay enough attention to:

Don’t Stop Taking Metaprolol Suddenly

Yes, apparently that’s a no-no. I must not have read that part of the instructions and I surely don’t remember anyone telling me this, but it can be bad news! I had some increased chest pain and shortness of breath and some significant exhaustion. I figured it was heat exhaustion, but it was only 82 here, which is NOT hot for this area. I had to sit down quite a bit this weekend.

Reading the insert when I picked up my medication, it said something along the lines of :

Don’t stop taking this medication all of a sudden. Increased chest pain and heart attack may occur.

I don’t know, this seems like maybe it was something important that someone should have talked to me about? Either way, I’m still alive and back on my medication. It took me about two days to start feeling normal on it again – the first day back on it my heart was 45-50 while walking around a lot…

But then I ran 5 miles for the first time since my diagnosis!! So the medication has kicked back in and I’m getting back to my new baseline.

So all in all that was probably the biggest reason for my delays during week 3. I don’t plan to catch up during Week 4, surprisingly. I plan to charge ahead with the demolition and flooring and fit in the painting where I can. If I can sneak 4-5 nights in after Emily goes down to bed over the course of the next two weeks, we should be golden. Plus, I need to get the main meat out of the way!