Help with updating Panels - pausing mid-method

Question

I am developing a relatively simple card game (a version of the wisconsin card sort test, more specifically). The user clicks on a card in the top row to match it, receives feedback for a precise amount of time (ie, a popup appears for exactly 1 second declaring if the match was correct or not, and then disappears). After the status disappears, the next card must flip.
So, I have a top row of four cards, which are fixed.
The next row is the cards that have been matched to the top cards (selected by the user).
The bottom row shows the next card, to match to the top row.
The problem is, I can't seem to get the window to update in a time-appropriate manner. I want the user to receive feedback after clicking one of the top row cards for a specific amount of time, either in the form of a dialog, popup, or even simply painting the panel itself). Then, after that specific amount of time has passed, the status clears (either the popup or dialog disappears or panel resets), and then the bottom card flips to the next card, and the match is placed below the card selected.
The problem is, I cannot seem to get the status to appear and then disappear. I have tried causing the Thread to sleep, I have tried putting the Model on a separate thread and then causing that to sleep, and then updating the model, and I have also tried just hacking it (ie, doing a while loop and calling Calendar.getInstance().getTimeInMillis() until the correct amount of time has passed). With all of these attempts, the frame will simply not update until AFTER the pause, but I absolutely MUST have the status reflected back to the user for a specific amount of time.
It seems as if, based on my reading and understanding of how swing works, that it's waiting until the very end of the method to update the entire panel. Right now, I have a Model class holding all the card information that extends Observable, and calls setChanged() and updateObservers(). The View/Controller class is the Observer, and the update() method is definitely being called (based on the printlns I have placed). However, I have tried a seemingly infinite variety of repaint(), invalidate(), validate() calls within the update method that are not executed until the model's entire method is executed.
I am not sure if this is a threading issue, if I should try and put the Model on a separate thread, or if I should be ensuring that building the View should all be done on the event dispatch thread? I feel like I've been running around in circles, this seems like a relatively straightforward thing to do but hasn't been at all.

Answer 1

Thanks, I think I've gotten closer - I hope this is an appropriate example of an SSCCE.
So, I'm having trouble understanding how to stop the timer after the second has passed. The println that I'm calling from the actionPerformed method is being called continuously, until I kill the code execution. And if I click the panel again, the popup hides immediately instead of pausing a full second.
import java.awt.BorderLayout;
import java.awt.Color;
import java.awt.event.ActionEvent;
import java.awt.event.ActionListener;
import java.awt.event.MouseEvent;
import java.awt.event.MouseListener;
import javax.swing.JFrame;
import javax.swing.JLabel;
import javax.swing.JPanel;
import javax.swing.Popup;
import javax.swing.PopupFactory;
import javax.swing.Timer;
import javax.swing.border.LineBorder;
public class TestHideStatus extends JFrame implements MouseListener {
     public JPanel mainPanel;
     public JLabel mainLabel;
     public JPanel statusPanel;
     public JLabel statusLabel;
     public String statusString;
     public Popup popup;
     public int numTimesClicked;
     public TestHideStatus() {
          numTimesClicked = 0;
          this.setSize(500,500);
          mainPanel = new JPanel();
          mainPanel.setSize(400,400);
          mainPanel.setBorder(new LineBorder(Color.PINK, 3));
          this.setLayout(new BorderLayout());
          this.add(mainPanel, BorderLayout.CENTER);
          mainLabel = new JLabel("Click this panel to get the status");
          mainPanel.add(mainLabel);
          statusLabel = new JLabel(" YOU CLICKED TO GET THE STATUS");
          statusPanel = new JPanel();
          statusPanel.add(statusLabel);
          this.setVisible(true);
          addMouseListener(this);
     public static void main(String args[]) {
          new TestHideStatus();
     public void mouseClicked(MouseEvent e) {
          numTimesClicked++;
          System.out.println("Clicked the main panel");
          PopupFactory factory = PopupFactory.getSharedInstance();
          popup = factory.getPopup(this, statusPanel, 300,300);
          popup.show();
          ActionListener hider = new ActionListener() {
               public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
                         System.out.println("Should be hiding the popup");
                         popup.hide();
                         mainLabel.setText("Now switching the text label after clicking " + numTimesClicked);
          Timer timer = new Timer(1000, hider);
          timer.start();
     public void mouseEntered(MouseEvent arg0) {
     public void mouseExited(MouseEvent arg0) {
     public void mousePressed(MouseEvent arg0) {
     public void mouseReleased(MouseEvent arg0) {
}