Be Careful What You Pray For

As you can probably tell from my last post, I have an extreme desire to have some sort of communication and/or spiritual experience with Naki. I have prayed for it consistently since he died. I realized a little while ago that such an experience would be an overwhelming spiritual one in nature, and had the realization that I had better start preparing myself and begin working on my spirituality if I indeed expect to have such an experience.

I've also been simultaneously praying that if it would be good for the girls, that they too could have some sort of spiritual experience with their Dad. I completely trust God on both counts, that He knows what's best for all of us, but would really really love for them to have some such experience to draw upon at significant times in their lives when they desire to feel him close. I've especially prayed for the little ones, since they more than the other girls will have no memory of their Dad.

Lately, Ane has been saying "Dad!" or "Daddy!" with extreme enthusiasm, and then either pointing off or looking off in the distance as she continues to say his name over and over. I quickly look, trying to see with my spiritual eyes, what she must be seeing. It is making me exhausted and disappointed since I never see what she is obviously seeing. I began to feel discouraged in my efforts to be stronger spiritually until I realized that I would take this trade off any day. If I knew that she would get to see him instead of me, I'd do it in a heartbeat.

Pests

Last week I had finally got the last babe to bed and was making my highly-anticipated way up to my own bed...my new bed, I might add. I can't remember what I've written on here, so I know that I'm running a risk of repeating myself. But while my Dad was staying with me he pulled all the paint that I was storing out of the garage, took a scrap piece of wood from the remodeling, and then painted a little swab of each can of paint on it. He was diligently going around the house getting everything in tip-top shape for me, and had decided to touch up all the nicks on the painted walls. I COMPLETELY steered him in the wrong direction, not intentionally, and pointed to the shade that I thought matched our bedroom...a light green. I then headed off to run errands, and returned home to find my bedroom armed and ready to go into battle...the walls were my old walls adorned with much darker green streaks and stripes and dots of war-paint. Yup...time to repaint. So, after getting the walls done I decided to follow through with Naki's and my plans to get new bedding...something we'd wanted to do for some time. I decided to get the new pillows and quilt and such but to leave the same sheets that we'd always had...something a bit nostalgic that reminds me of us that I can keep close to me. I'd only had my new bedding for about 2 days and was luuvving it. That night as I walked to my side of the bed to pull back the covers, I jumped back in horror because there were these little black bugs crawling ALL over the pillows. Upon closer inspection, I found TONS of them on the table beside my bed...they'd made the fateful hypnotizing flight up to the lightbulb of the lamp on that table, and had immediately paid the ultimate price and had fallen to their deathbed. I started to walk around the room, and found many many more...on both windowsills especially.

It. Was. Gross.

Completely Gross! I didn't know what to do, where the heck to start cleaning them up, and how to figure out where they'd come from! After a lot of whining to Ginny, and vacuuming up the dead bugs, I eventually found the culprit...the plant on the top of my dresser. I don't know if any of you have ever experienced those little black bugs coming from any of your houseplants, but they are pests! They remind me of fruit flies that appear when your bananas are too ripe in your fruit bowl. I moved the plant into my bathtub, and then over the next 24 hours would douse it REAL good with the spray that kills those guys. I just left the plant sitting in there, and was amazed and grossed out to see all the bugs crawling out of that thing and then dying on the bottom of my bathtub. I had to take a picture for all of your viewing pleasure. Keep in mind, that these bugs are pretty teeny...so the fact that you can see something on the bottom of the tub from a distance tells you how many there really were.

So tonight I figured they'd all died by now, and no more were coming out as I continued to spray the plant throughout the week. Lucky for me, they were all STUCK to the bottom of the tub. Yes, that's right. When all I wanted to do was crawl into my bed and read, I was instead srubbing hundreds of bugs off the bottom of my tub.

Earlier in the afternoon, I got a couple of other pictures of a pest I actually like. I discovered that Ane knows where I keep the cereal...







I MUCH prefer this kind of pest, although she doesn't act so thrilled when I squirt her with a water bottle to make her behave.