Just a Typical Tuesday - Plus Paint

I'll bet you never thought about who does this:

Neither did I until I met the man of my prayers. When I found out that painting parking lots was a part of his repertoire of day jobs, I never looked at them the same again.

You know how when your dating someone, pretty much everything makes you think about them? Well, whenever I saw parking lots (which was whenever I walked outside) I thought of him.

As if I needed more to obsess and be distracted about.

Much to the relief of anyone I share the road with, this affliction eventually wore off. In fact, I hardly think about this job much at all. Plus, he does it a lot less frequently now than he used to.

But then come the days when he gets the phone call that requires pulling the airless-sprayer out of the trailer, cleaning it out, and loading up on tens of gallons of traffic marking paint from Sherwin Williams.

Some jobs require working through the night for multiple nights (like the mall), because they are full with cars during the rest of the day. Then, there are places like restaurants, which you can usually paint during the day by avoiding the busy eating times.

Today's job was painting the lots of three small buildings owned by the same company. The job should have taken 2 hours at the most. My husband prepped the machine ahead of time to make sure that everything was ready for a smooth and effortless job.

After he'd painted about 5 lines, the sprayer stopped spraying. He later determined that a microscopic reflective glass bead, (I know, TMI) had gotten stuck in the tip of the sprayer. So, I got to run across the street to a shop and buy 4 small paint strainers through which we proceeded to strain the...5...gallon...bucket of paint.

SO...you have noticed that I have made my way into the story. I don't go with him to every job. But lots of jobs, especially when he doesn't have other help, I go.

One of the translations for the mate God gave Adam was, "help meet" or "help mate." And I completely agree that this is one of my most important roles as a wife. It's just that sometimes...the truth is...it's hard.

It's hard to help when the work doesn't involve just sweeping your hair up in a nice bun to take a dance class but rather sweeping hundreds of parking stalls with a heavy wire push broom...

When help doesn't mean moving and choreographing dances for work but moving large paint-soaked boards around to mask off areas...

When help doesn't mean spraying a pan to bake in but spraying paint on a big handicap sign stencil...while trying to hold it down with my feet...and not use too much paint so we don't run out...

Even driving the stick-shift truck with the trailer attached, can be...hard.

These things are hard, mostly just because I'm not used to doing them, and, well, I can just be sort of a wimpy girl when I'm doing something that's new, or that I'm sure I'm so good at, and just really don't want to screw up. And it can get...frustrating...to say the least.

The good thing is that my husband has patience, and a lot of confidence in me to ask me to do the things he asks me to do with him. Sometimes I think I want him to just be satisfied with me sitting pretty and being a dance teacher. But he's not. He wants and expects more. He wants and expects my help at "his" jobs. And believe it or not, I'm glad. (Just don't tell him)

Don't get the wrong idea. He helps me out constantly with "my jobs." I don't think I've ever asked him to do one thing, but yet he's found and wired great sound systems for the studios I teach in. He's cut and edited music for me, and even took my Pilates class last year to bolster enrollment - and to tighten his core, of course :)

In fact, at first it would surprise me that he was so willing to help me do something that he didn't have to do. See, I come from the world of "what's yours is yours and what's mine is mine," and "take responsibility for your own mess," etc. If you don't take care of yourself, look out for yourself, nobody else will, right?

Nope, as for me and him, we're a team. The other day, we were walking next to each other, and I noticed that our hands were bumping awkwardly together for a few seconds before he took my hand and held it. I thought to myself that this is similar to our walking together through life. Amos 3:3 asks how two people can expect to walk together, if not by agreement? If we try and walk closely together, but we aren't in agreement, and if we are both constantly thinking about going our own direction, the walk will be very clumsy, at best.

Anyway, the rest of the day was par for the course from that first mishap. He had a hose burst when the engine started smoking, and 2 trips to Home Depot later, we were finally on to the second business, and had lost much of our profit for the job.

The first time he went to Home Depot, I stayed back to sit with the paint spray machine at the gas station. Two men pulled up in a van and asked how much I wanted for it. I laughed to myself and thought maybe this was my chance to end our problems for the day. But using my better judgement, I replied, "Not for sale!"

We continued painting, and the new spray tip kept giving him problems, so he'd have to stop and adjust it every few lanes.

Why do days like this happen?
Days when it just feels like someone is throwing...junk...at you...non-stop?
And you know what's harder than every single hard thing I mentioned above? Is having thing after thing go wrong, and not being able to do anything to fix it. Is watching my husband get so frustrated, and me not being able to make it better.

Five hours later, with two scoops of ice cream in hand, (one lot we painted was the Baskin Robbins) we were finally on the road home. We ate dinner and now we're sitting, watching an old movie on TV.

Tired. Sore. Worn out. Together.