Do you believe God is sovereign?
This is not a trick question.

Give this question a good hard think before you answer. If your answer is yes, that is very good.
And then my next question for you will be -

Do you realize how huge this is?  What this actually means?  
The enormity…

Over the last couple of years my family has come to study and begin to understand that God being sovereign is, um…
more
than we ever thought. 

Adjectives escape me.
As do nouns. Verbs. Past participles…

I guess I’m kinda getting off track here.

Anyway, I was appalled to discover that I never really did believed in God’s sovereignty until these last 2 years, until we started studying reformed theology.
Seriously.  Until a few years ago I didn’t even know what the word theology meant. And I thought being reformed was just another way of saying born again.

I imagine most professing Christians do reply with a yes when asked the sovereignty questions point blank. But when it really came down to it,
this Christian,
me, 
denied the truth of it right and left with my actions, with my interpretations, all the while still proclaiming it with my tongue.

Even now it’s somewhat of a struggle to remember His sovereignty - my old habits and ways of thinking so ingrained in me.

But then I imagine what my life would be like if it were actually me in control.  Yikes!   
Good grief! I’m a mess. Anything I’d attempt to control would likely end up a disaster too.

It isn’t really something I can explain – there are people much more articulate than I, who are more capable of making the point.

That whole english grammar issue I have might have something to do with that.

And there are books written about it that I can’t begin to comprehend. But that doesn’t stop me from believing it.  Or needing to proclaim it.

God is sovereign. 

Think on that.

I didn’t come back earlier like I said I would. I didn’t even look at my blog most of the day.

And that’s just not like me.

Unless I’m catching up on chores. Or spending the day playing outside with the kids. Or having a fill-the-freezer cooking day.

I didn’t do any of those things today though.

Today I sat and mostly stared into space. Stopping to occasionally look up code for our family website and at the same time renew my headache. And once stopping to make myself a quesadilla that I promptly threw up.

Pregnancy again.

There are things I can’t eat right now, and haven’t been able to eat for months. Potatoes being one of them. So, when Ryan asked why I wasn’t having a yummy baked potato with our steak dinner like everybody else I reminded him that the belly couldn’t handle it.
His reply was you can’t have potatoes?

Where’s he been?

So now I guess I should probably add yummy quesadillas to my list of delicious foods I can only look at but can’t touch.

I ate some pretzels.

It wasn’t the same.

Today was just one of those days. Nothing went wrong. The house has been leaving us alone the last few days.

I just felt yicky.
I still do. And it’s why I’m not sleeping right now even though it’s 12:30.

And I’m soooo hungry.

It’s times like these that I wish we kept more pre-packaged foods in the house.
But we don’t.

Unless you count the M&Ms.

Um… I have to go now.

I couldn’t deal with our indoor campfire one more day.  Everything smells.  I’m beginning to wonder if the odor will be a permanent memory in my nose.

Or am I smelling it in the carpet?
Or in my couch?!?

My sinuses are getting worse.  My cough is awful.  I thought I had a cold or something but then it dawned on me that all this smoke inhalation is quite likely aggravating my already pregnancy-irritated sinuses. 

This can’t be good for the baby in the oven.

So, we broke down and turned on the heat for an hour last night, and then this morning when we first got up.

And I hate knowing how much this is costing us.

The landlord said she’d schedule a chimney sweep a couple days ago.  We haven’t heard anymore about that.  I’m sure she’s on it, but I’m feeling quite impatient about the whole thing.  One of the reasons we liked this house was the fireplace.  We hate using the heat in the winter.  It dries everything out and costs a ton of money.

I know I’m whining.  But it’s just one of those mornings.  I don’t feel well, I haven’t been sleeping well due to this head cold thing, and everything in my house stinks.

Blah.

I’ll shake this fussy attitude off and be back later with my normal pessimistic cheer.

Kait: Joe, do you want my left over broth?

Joe: Huh?

Kait: Do you want my broth?

Joe: Oh.  I’ll take your broth. But I don’t want that other thing.

Kait: What other thing?

Today I counted about 30 baby snails. And those are just the ones that are brave enough to come out of hiding. 

You can see their little antenna easily when they leave the rocks below to scoot across the aquarium glass.  I guess they’re kinda cute, but not in a furry puppy sort of way.  Maybe more in a caviar sort of way.  Except caviar isn’t cute.  So never mind.

We went to the Pet Store the other night to get filters for the tank and saw 4 week old baby snails.  At that age, at the size of a pea, they most certainly are what you could call cute. 

However, right now they are still quite tiny - a little smaller than a nerd. You know, the tiny sugary candies? 
Once a few Halloween’s ago I listened as a lady explained to her protesting 4 year old son that he couldn’t have Nerds because he would turn into a skeleton.  She told him he had to pick another type of candy out of the basket.  Something with less small pieces to get spilled.

She was being absolutely serious.

The electricity in our neighborhood went out for a little while this morning. And for maybe a half hour or so we were living the pioneer life.

Hang on a second…

Don’t we do this ourselves already. We have purposely chosen to turn off our house most days. A little power outage should hardly be noticeable around here, right?

So, I was a little surprised when Joe, after about 20 minutes without electricity asked me, how long does this normally last?
I couldn’t help but notice the distressed look on his face.

Need I remind my kids that until the last week when we were sick, we didn’t have our electricity on during the day at all?

So, why the sudden concern? School for today is finished already. We have an indoor campfire keeping the place warm enough. There is no cooking that needs to be done.

Wait. Could this sudden desire for electricity possibly have anything to do with the video game Dad rented for them last week.

Naw, it couldn’t be that.

But, yes. As it turns out, said game is now due back and we simply must squeeze every last bit of thumb exercise out of it before it’s returned to its rightful position on Blockbuster’s shelf.

I can understand this.
Well, at least I’m trying to understand this.

Ryan doesn’t rent video games often. So, when he does it is a big deal.
Big.
Huge.

I’m trying real hard to be compassionate about their dilemma.  I am.  Really.

But let me remind you how I feel about video games.
They rank right around the same position as Facebook in my don’t-like book.
And if you’ve read my blog for any length of time you should already know that my feelings towards Facebook are less than affectionate.

And, no, I don’t have a real life don’t-like book. That was just a figure of speech. Though, if I did you can be sure video games and Facebook would be in it. As would calamari, any weather cooler than 70 degrees, indoor campfires, and spiders.

Oh, and I’d have a removable and replaceable page with my dog’s picture on it.

I’m finishing up my first day of being 30.  30 weeks pregnant, that is.

No, I’m not really this blurry in real life.

I’m feeling pretty good.  Tired, but good.  Baby’s moving a lot.  I think this one’s a girl.  I don’t know why. I’m probably wrong.  And I’m okay with that.

I’m liking chicken with garlic sauce from the Chinese place down the road. And cheese.
But not together.

I feel the need to clean everything but lack the energy to be up for very long.  That’s typical for me when I hit my 3rd trimester.  This is definitely a pretty normal pregnancy so far.  Except I don’t feel as irritated. Or maybe I’m just too tired to feel irritated.

I’m cold.  A lot.  That may or may not have anything to do with the pregnancy.  It could have a lot to do with the fact that it’s 43 degrees outside!

Okay, so maybe that’s not all that cold.  But it is around here. It was near 50 when Matthew asked if I thought it might snow today.  Ha. Ha. Ha. was my response.

We live in Florida.

He asked if he could put on his snow pants, just in case.  I said yes.

Another result of this pregnancy is that I forget what I’m talking about and get sidetracked easily.  Or maybe that has nothing to do with my pregnancy.

Either way…

Where was I?

Our house smells like a campfire.  Joe(12) thinks this is very awesome.  I think I smell like I’ve been camping way too long.

I have that constant feeling that I need a shower.  And some roasted marshmallows.

So, Ryan emailed the landlord about it.  I thought he should just ask for a bag of marshmallows.  He thought it’d be a better idea to see about getting the chimney swept.  Something about a fire hazard or something…

He explained in the email that we’d used the fireplace a handful of times and the house smells like a campfire.  Ryan asked when the chimney was swept last because that was most likely the issue.

The landlord sent somebody out to make sure we had the flue open.

Because, you know, lots of people have dumb and it could be leaking onto us.
Well, we did go to Walmart a few times in the last month.  I didn’t disinfect my cart so I guess it’s possible.

I’m glad the guy decided that we do, indeed, probably need our chimney swept.  And I certainly don’t blame the landlord for sending somebody out to check before she put that call in.  You know, with dumb sweeping the nation like it is.

They’re also going to take care of our little attic dwellers.  The carpenter ants and the silver fish. 

I’ve lost count on how many times they’ve had to send somebody to our house to fix something we had nothing to do with. 

And we’ve only lived here for 3 1/2 months.

I’m actually beginning to think that this house does, in fact, have something personal against my family.

And it’s starting to hurt my feelings a little bit.

My husband likes to brew stuff.  
Trouble – somewhat successful. 
Different types of beer – all successes. 
Ginger ale – not so much of a success. 
And he’s brewing hard apple cider right now – which is actually pretty cheap as far as hard ciders go.  About $15 for 5 gallons.

This process takes something like 2 to 3 months.  So, after the baby is born it should be done.  That seems like a long time away.  But at the same time not that long at all.  It’s weird.

It bubbles like it’s alive, sometimes making the slightest gurgling noise, and it has an interesting odor.  It’s almost creepy in an Attack of the Killer Tomatoes sorta way.  I almost feel like we should name it.  But I’m concerned it might become like a pet and then how would we drink it?

It’s already made it’s home in our bedroom closet.

And now our closet and bathroom holds the slightest odor of yeast and bad apples.  It almost smells good at first.

Until you realize that it doesn’t.

I asked Google what he thought.  Apparently this is completely normal. 
Um, the brewing in the closet thing.
And the smell.

I really want to try to make grape wine.  It’s not like I can do a lot of drinking, obviously, so I don’t know why I want to make it.  Maybe just to say I bottled my own wine once?

Because being able to say that will make me, like, 50 times cooler or something.

I’m standing in the nuts and bolts isle of Home Depot. It smells like sawdust and metal. Around the corner I saw women shopping for light up snowmen and reindeer with cute purses slung over their shoulders.
Um, not the reindeers’ shoulders. The womens’ shoulders.

That little feminine corner looks so out of place here.  But I like it.

And I see greasy men everywhere.
Not haven’t-had-a-shower greasy.
Like literally greasy.
They’re not carrying purses.

My beloved is looking for a piece of something metal that appears to be non-existent.

And because he is who he is, we’ll probably be cruising this isle until what he is looking for poofs into existence, or my water breaks. Whichever comes first.

I could huff.  Stomp my feet.  Put on my very best really, really bored face.  Tap my foot like I’m irritated.
Instead I’m choosing the higher road. I’m being the good wife by using this time wisely.

You know, by blogging.

Apparently, if he could find a fine threaded bolt he could just use that.
Whatever that means.

I’m just here for the adventure.

Woohoo.