Dealing with critters

I was reading through some old blog posts just now as I took my new blog layout for a test-run, and I found one from a few months back where I mentioned that a spider had taken up residence in the corner of my den. I'm sure you've all been wondering how that story resolved itself, so here is the dramatic conclusion!

The spider stayed there. It never moved. Well that's not true; when I plugged my glue gun into the outlet by its web, it scurried further away from the plug. But that's it. I'm such a chicken when it comes to spiders. Finally about two weeks ago my mom stopped by, and she kindly removed the spider and every last bit of its giant web. My mom is my hero.

Now I'm dealing with another spider. This one spins a web in the corner of my front door every day. Every evening when I come home, I knock the web down. It just really irks me that this spider is using my beautiful yarn wreath to anchor part of its web. By the time I get home the next evening, the web is up again. You would think this spider would learn its lesson. Then again, it probably sits there all day thinking, "you'd think that girl would learn."

I kind of think God is trying to toughen me up by putting these creatures in my apartment. I mean, if I ever want to live anywhere other than my sterile second-floor palace, I'd better get used to sharing my space with a few members of the arachnid and insect families. At SOS this summer, my work group spent the week helping to renovate a roach-infested kitchen. There were cockroaches everywhere. Everywhere. As in, pouring out of the walls, immune to bug spray that made us humans unable to breathe, crawling on our feet everywhere. It is truly a testament to the power of faith and prayer and doing all things through Christ that my group members and I were able to overcome our fear of bugs. My heart broke for our homeowner, who dealt with (and is still dealing with) these critters every day. By the middle of the week they hardly bothered me at all, and that is huge for me. I won't go into detail about how I overreacted when I realized my leg was dangerously close to some spider eggs... baby steps, right? But after that week I felt better about the fact that I would one day not live in my suburban bubble.

Fast-forward to tonight, when I discovered a huge roach in my bathroom and my heart nearly stopped. I'm proud to say that I didn't call anyone to come over and kill it (yes, that crossed my mind). I sprayed it to death with wasp spray (that's all I had, and I don't even care that it's not safe for indoor use). Then I wrapped it in a paper towel, double-bagged it, and said a prayer that it was really dead. But, no matter how I did it, the important thing here is that I took care of that nasty, crafty roach all by myself! Perhaps that was God's little reminder that he's still working on his plans for me.

I hope I never get tired of celebrating these little victories :)