Sleep - I know - Again with the sleeping!

Last night I didn't sleep at all.  I mean not at all!  Wide awake all night until the sun came up.  I tried reading, watching a boring movie, just laying there in the dark, and all of the other things I could think of to try to sleep.  I kept thinking about all that's going on in my life and thinking about how tired I was going to be in the morning.

Each morning I get up, shower, get the kids off, clean the house, check my bank account, check my library stuff, and run errands if there are any. Today, and most other day's I don't sleep, I feel great!  Weird.  I don't know why.  Maybe I just don't need as much, or any, sleep as other people.

The last two nights I stayed up painting all of the doors in the house.  Today I'm going to paint the door frames and the baseboards.  Fun times!  Good thing I don't have any sleep to keep me down.  LOL!

Favorites

A few of my favorite things are Frogs, Pepsi, and Kokopeli. (See history for more on Kokopeli.)  So, my 6 year old says she will call all of my frog things "KokoPepsi".  LOL!  That is so cute!


I recently switched to Coke.  Now I guess she can say "KokoCoke"!  FUNNY!

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Beautiful Yard!

I mowed today. The yard looks awesome! (See pictures below.) After I was done, I looked out over the deck to notice that I have a real dandelion problem. What to do? The yard looks great except for the little yellow weeds growing randomly. People are coming to look at the house tomorrow so I want it to look its best.

Then I found the answer in 4 little girls who were tearing the inside of my house apart while I made the outside lovely. I offered them an "incentive" to help me. I gave them buckets and told them that if they picked all of the little yellow flowers out of the yard I would take them for an ice cream. It worked!! They finished the entire yard in less than 15 minutes! Now you can't even tell that I have a small dandelion problem. Next, I need to go back out and spray them. The weeds, not the children.

I also have crab grass. After much research I have found that it will take years to get rid of it. The remedies I have heard of so far are to spray it with vinegar, pour boiling water on it, cut it low and then spray weed killer on it, put on a pre-emergent, put on a post-emergent. All of which I have tried. I had the most success with the cut it low and then spray it suggestion. It worked...at least I thought it did. It looked like it was dying and left a huge brown spot in the yard. Then a few days later it came back.

I think, if we are still in this house, I'll try the other option which is to bring in topsoil and re-seed each spring and fall. That will bury it, improve your soil, and thicken up the grass which will of course keep the weeds, including dandelions, out anyway. It will be expensive but in the end it sounds like it will make the yard look amazing.

I heard it's going to rain the next few days so I'll have to get my sprinklers working after that. Last year I had to make all of the sprinkler heads higher. That was fun! NOT! The kicker now is that I made them one notch too high and now we have to mow around them. I lost several of them last year and already one this year. Nothing like spending $10 here and $10 there on sprinkler heads.

I really need to get out there a weed my flower beds. There are two flower beds that need desperate attention. They'll take a lot of man hours to make them look beautiful. Did I mention I have 15 trees, 6 flower beds, and 22 rose bushes? Well, I do. And I love it. I would love it more if I could spend more time out there. Oh, and had the money to do the things I want to.

I'm just not sure how much more I should put into the house and yard since we will be moving. Oh I wish someone would buy my house and let me stay in it! I love my house, my neighbors, my neighborhood, and my ward. I can totally see myself living here forever! Sometimes life isn't what we want it to be.

For now, I'll have my beautiful yard, and beautifully painted inside, and love everything else while I still can.

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Here are some pictures of the house from this morning. 

They were all taken before I mowed. 

Post mowing pictures tomorrow if it is sunny.

Front yard with munchkins in the way.

Right side of the house where the rose bushes are.

If you were to walk down the side of the house

you would see many more rose bushes against

the house.  Great place for bunnies to hide.

Left side of the yard with running munchin.

If you were to walk down you would find

a large rock retaining wall with a

negleted flower bed.

 

View from deck in the back. 

Our yard goes up to the path.

On the back patio.  Which is quite large.

Lady

This is my dog Lady. We got her from the humane society about 9 years ago. We don't know how old she is, but she was fully grown when we got her. I guess 9 is pretty old for a dog.  She's a mix between a collie, lab, and Samoan. There is some question as to whether she is part lab or golden retriever. She is getting gray fur if you can believe it. She also has stopped running as fast as she usually did. And she likes blankets!  Lots of them!  She even hides under them sometimes.  It's cute.  

All I know is that she has been a great dog! She will go for runs with me. However, when she gets too excited and trips me I won't take her for a while. I have thrown my back out and been dragged down the sidewalk before. She plays with the kids. She like kittens! She's house trained, and was when we got her! Thank heavens.

For the most part she is an outside dog. During the winter or on really hot days we bring her in. She's due for a hair cut before she starts shedding. When she sheds the yard looks like it has fluffy white snow all over it. In the winter her coat gets really, really long and snarly. Every summer we have her shaved. She looks like a drown rat, but it is obvious she like it. Nothing like a good hair cut.

No matter how much we try we cannot get her trained to fetch or even come home for that matter. When she gets loose it's like a streak of lightening running around the neighborhood. The kids love her and she will stop just long enough for you to get close then she will take off again. If we chase her around it will take a long time to catch her. If we just leave her alone she'll be back within minutes. The dog next door comes over to her cage, when Lady's in it, and pees on one of the poles! Of course that drives Lady crazy. The little dog then smirks, like a dog does, puts her nose in the air and prances off happy as can be. So, when Lady gets out she goes and pee's on that dogs house. It's quite funny actually.

When it's thundering, lighting, or when the Army Base next door is bombing Lady goes crazy. She can hear a storm coming at least 15 minutes before it gets here. I have had to come down at night and put her in the living room on a blanket with the TV on to keep her from barking. Oh, and I have to stay there too. She doesn't like being alone. She usually isn't allowed to go out of her corner in the kitchen, but this is the exception to the rule.

The other day when it hailed Lady somehow managed to open the sliding glass door she sits by. Thus our kitchen was covered in hail. Lady was shivering and shaking so badly I couldn't even be mad. I still don't know how she got it opened.

We had a cat once. Someone in our house fed it tuna one day. Then all of the sudden it was our cat, not the neighborhood stray. We named him Tramp. Get it? Lady and the Tramp? ha-ha! Well, I hate cats to the point of actually being allergic to them. One day our neighbor came over and accused our cat (no longer the neighborhood cat according to the neighbors) of eating their hamster. It became a big thing until they found the hamster a few days later. How rude! So, Tramp "decided" to go live at the other end of the neighborhood and wouldn't be returning.

I'm not much of an animal person...at least I didn't think I was. I do love my dog. And the kids love her too. She has never bitten anyone or anything. She barks a lot and needs a lot of attention. All in all she is a great dog!

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Girls Night Out Turns Tragic!

Last Saturday my friend (pretend her name is Clair.  I always like the name Clair.), my daughter, and I went for a girls night out. We were going to get some dinner, do some shopping, and catch a late movie. Well, the night was not what we planned that's for sure.

The food was terrible! The service was terrible! The manager came over while we were explaining to our server that there was no meat on the ribs, the sauce on the pasta tasted bad (as in rancid), and the other pasta was so bad I didn't want to try it. Also, how can you mess up a Limeade? Well, she did. I had to send it back. It was all flavoring! The cherry was floating on top.  More like laying on top.

The server kept apologizing to the point of annoying us. The manager, if you can believe it, wanted to smell the food and said that it was probably us that didn't like it, not the food being bad. He was actually rude about it.

Anyway, I get that there are days when things don't always go well. We didn't get upset or anything. We handled ourselves pretty well. Especially considering we couldn't eat any of our food which we paid about $30.00 for.  I video tapped us stabbing the rib bones.  It is hillarious!  I'm still trying to figure out how to add it to this page so you can laugh about it too.

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We thought after that escapade, and the fact that we all left hungry, we would go to Baskin Robin's for a treat. Their ice cream was about $4.00 a scoop! Needless to say we gave up on eating and went shopping.

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Then! This car basically tried to run us over in the parking lot! We had words with the guy who thought he was the one that got jipped so he actually called the police! Can you believe it? Anyway, long story short....there is no short. We hope it is settled soon. I can't write all of the details, but it is a great story and will be told many, many times.  Let's just say the guy was probably having a very bad day and decided to take it out on us.

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On the way home we had to get gas.  We got bad hot chocolate that we couldn't drink.  Not that it was bad, just that it didn't taste very good.

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After some "retail therapy", as BFF1 called it, we went home.

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Got Milk?

So, I was pouring some milk the other day and it spilled.  And this is what I got.!  How random is that?  I just had to take a picture.  My kids thought I was crazy, but after they saw the picture they all thought it was cool.  Who knew?  I'm a milk artist!  Sweet!

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Over Rated!!!

I've decided that sleep is over rated.  I've slept fitfully for over 8 hours the last two nights and I feel terrible.  I can't concentrate and I'm grumpy.  Also, my creativity has taken a back seat.  I need to stay home for a while and recover from my sleep.  How ridiculous is that?

I have also noticed that I'm not getting as much done as I usually do.  At night when I can't sleep I do laundry and clean up.  Lately I've been painting. Boy!  I'm soooo far behind today.  I'm going to spend the entire day cleaning up and try to get some painting done.  Since it's Saturday tomorrow there will probably be people coming to look at the house.  I have to get some projects done.


My daughter came in the other night and found me sleeping and it scared her.  hahaha!  Now that was funny.


I guess I better get to work!  Fun times!!!
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Lame!!!

A few months ago someone asked me if I like blogging. What?!? Blogging? That is so lame. But I thought I would try it to see why so many people were doing it.  I put up a family blog with pictures of all of us and some of the funny things the kids do. No one read it and I felt like it was a waste of time.

Then I started running again and wanted to keep track of the experience. I started a blog about that. Looking back at it I'm glad I did. It is very interesting and I even enjoyed reading it.

Now, I have this blog. After reading other people's blogs and then looking back at mine I realize that it is lame! I don't know why I do it really. It's just crazy things that pass through my mind that are interesting to me, at the time, but are not interesting to anyone else. Well, except my blog stalker, Becca. Now that girl is a blogger!

I have a short story I wrote that I think I'll put on sometime. That would be interesting I think. I would hope that I could get some responses to it.

There's also one more blog I have. It's a blog with my resume on it. I have business cards with the address on it and pass them out so maybe I can get a job. (I really, really need a job!) So far I haven't had any response to it. Maybe I need to update it. Change the format around. Somehow make it more interesting. Oh well. I don't like people in "computer land" to know my real name. So, if you are interested in finding out the address you'll have to send me an e-mail. That way not just anyone can have it. Only special people like you. Send a message to r.whosit@gmail.com I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Have a Wonderful Day!
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I-Pod

I'm always getting after my son for playing on the computer all of the time.  And my daughter for watching TV.  But now I feel like a hypocrite.  I got an i-pod and find that the games on it are addicting.  I can take it anywhere! 

However, it is diverting and anything diverting is wonderful right now.  I don't play all of the time.  Only when I have down time, which is for a few minutes while waiting to pick up the kids from school or waiting for an appointment.  Some of the games are mind games that are supposed to make my mind improve.  Others help my mind shut off.

I does have movies, music, and books on it too.  They are just as helpful.  I can even watch conference, which I missed.  That makes up for the fact that I play games. Right?
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Hail Storm

The hail storm was awesome!  I love a good hail storm.  However, there were several problems with the one yesterday.  The first being that I was in the shower when it happened (yes late start) so I only heard it.  Second, my dog somehow in her frenzy from the sound opened the sliding door which happened to be in the direction the hail was blowing.  So, my dining room was full of hail and wet dog.  Third it ravaged my yard.  My flowers and trees are torn apart and the shed blew open.  I knew I should have taken a picture of my yard on Monday after we finished it.
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Coke

Becca came across this the other day and I just had to post it. Especially since I switched from Cherry Pepsi to Coke recently. I know, I know...Coke is like drinking battery acid. But it helps. Really! It does. Plus Becca likes it as much as I do and so we drink it together. We just don't look these two while we do it. HA! Peer pressure.

She also came across an ad for Coke from about 1960 that said mom's should start their babies on Coke sooner than later. It will make them popular, successful, and happy in life. HA! I need to get a copy of that one too. I still can't believe what it said. Boy how advertising has changed.
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Saturday is a special day

Yesterday we got 3 flowerbeds cleaned up, removed 4 very unwanted tree/bushes, cleaned out the shed (mostly to the dump), and cleaned up around the yard including getting rid of our former bunnies cage, RIP. It looks great out there. We have a trailer full of mulch to spread tomorrow. Also, I need to mow, trim, and edge. Hopefully it won't be too hot.

On the inside we got the top of the entry and stairs (18 ft high) painted, the front room, both stairways, the upstairs hallway, the dining room, and kitchen painted!!! Yippee! Tomorrow or as soon as possible I need to touch up and do the trim and doors.

Tuesday Becca and I are going "paint shopping". When a store mixes a color wrong or if someone doesn't pick up their paint they ordered they put the paint out for a huge discount. So, we are going to hit all of the stores to find paint for 5 bedrooms, the lower living room and hall, and both offices. We of course won't find it all but that is what we are looking for. Also, I don't have enough money to get that much paint. And, I don't have the energy or time to do that right now.

Today I'm happy with all we got done. Last night I was so tired I couldn't remember where I changed my clothes.  I had to call my phone to find my jacket.  hahaha!!!  I don't even remember hitting the pillow. I slept fitfully for an entire 4 hours! If I had gone to bed before 4:00 a.m. I could have slept much, much longer! Maybe all I need are some overwhelming projects to keep me tired. But, I wonder then which would wear me out faster. Sleeping 3-4 hours a night or over working myself for the 20 hours I'm awake.

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Selling the Home

We're selling our home. We've had it listed since October. We had two offers before the end of the year and both fell through. Since then we have had several people a week coming to look at the house. No other offers have come in though.

In the interest of selling the home more quickly I'm working on improving things around here. Of course I've already cleaned and decluttered everywhere I can.  You should see the garage!  It's full of boxes.  And every day I have to do a "walk through" of the house and make sure that everything is cleaned up and ready just in case someone wants to come and see it.  You try keeping a house perfect all of the time with 5 children in the house!  It's not easy.  Now the kids are starting to expect me to clean their rooms everyday.  I spend at least 2 hours everyday cleaning up after everyone.

Right now I'm doing things that I have always wanted to do but never did due to money,time, or other outside influences. Now I'm doing it for someone else instead of me. That's the sad part. Once I get things improved I won't want to leave.

A few days ago I was in Home Depot with Becca getting some stuff for her home. I passed the paint center and I remember someone saying once that if they made a mistake with a paint (like mixing the color wrong) you could get the paint for a discount. I got a 5 gal can of Behr paint worth $100.00 for $15.00! The color isn't the best but it is pretty good. I like it. Now, I have enough paint to paint all of the rooms in the house. I'm excited. I've wanted to paint since we moved in 3 years ago. In the last 2 days we've patched and painted the mud room, bathroom, and front entry.

Becca is helping me paint. What a great friend! Neither of us can sleep so we paint at night after the kids go to bed. We try to be quiet, but when we are together we just laugh and laugh. It's awesome! (We were going to paint tonight but we decided to wait and get some sleep. Becca is asleep I bet. She was going to take something to help her sleep. I can't do that. Bummer!)

There are a lot of things around the outside of the house that need to be cleaned up, moved, torn down, whatever. So today I had a family with teenage boys come to the house to help clean out the shed, take apart the bunny cage (since we don't have any bunnies), and take all of the big stuff to the driveway. Tomorrow morning I have some friends who are going to come over and take it all to the dump and bring back a load of mulch for the flower beds. I'm hoping I can get 2 loads of mulch. My yard is large and I have 7 flower beds, 15 trees and a lot of rose bushes.

While that's going on there are some youth from the ward coming to help with weeding, cleaning up the edges of the flower beds, removing some trees, cutting tree rings, cleaning up the rose bushed (I have 22), fixing the deck, paint/stain and seal the deck, hopefully pruning, and some other general clean up stuff. This will get me on track and I won't have to try to do catch up all of the time.

By the end of next week I hope to have the house painted and the outside maintenance in full scheduled swing. I'm sure the house will show much better. It will also give me some peace knowing that I'm not so far behind all of the time. I can't do it all myself even if I try and think I can. It will be so amazing when it is all done! I might have to take some pictures to show things off.

I don't know where we are going to go or when we will have to leave. Right now we're just waiting. Working on the house and taking care of the children is the only certain thing in my life. Everything else seems to have crumbled around me. I'm going to keep my chin up and make the best of it though. "I Love to Laugh" like the song says in Mary Pippins. "I love to laugh. Long and loud and clear. Each time I laugh. The more I'm a merrier me."

I Love to Laugh

Mall

I went to the mall tonight with some friends about 8:00. If you can believe it I felt like I would fall over sound asleep at any moment. Usually at this time of night I'm just starting my day. I was planning on coming home and doing some painting, but thought, "hummm maybe I can get some sleep". Wrong! I should be painting, cleaning, organizing, reading, or some other productive thing. Nope. Obviously I'm still awake writing about my adventures trying to do spring cleaning and painting the inside of the house. I hope you all appreciate my sacrificing sleep to keep you informed of my so unbelievably boring life.

Frogs

I love frogs!  Yesterday I was looking at some pictures of poisonous frogs.  I just had to put some of my favorites on here for you to enjoy.  Can you find which one is my favorite?

New Look

I decided it was time for a make-over.  What do you think?  Sometimes a girl just needs a change.  This is the least expensive, no one can tell you that you are wrong, no one really cares, it gets the creative juices flowing, and you can do it as many times as you want!  All good reasons for my new look.  Enjoy!

What's up with....

On-line dating is so strange. I mean do you know anything about the people you are considering talking to?

Do you send them a note/flirt? Or, since they looked at your profile and didn't send you one do you assume that they aren't interested in you? What if you run into them at the grocery store or something? How weird would that be?

And what's up with everyone putting pictures of their kids? I want to protect my kids from everything I guess. But what if you are out somewhere and you see the kids from a picture and it turns out they are friends with your kids? I don't know, I just find it strange.

And what is up with the "flirt" and "I'm interested" stuff? Is that how things are outside of the Internet? Do you send up a smoke signal or wink at someone and hope that someone will send one back?

How much do you tell someone? When is a good time to meet in person? What if they can't carry on a conversation and things get dull? If I keep asking questions and getting single word or short answers what am I to do then?

What if he doesn't like me and doesn't tell me? And why doesn't anyone say anything back when you send a message? An actual message with questions and comments about what they said in their profile. Is it just me no one wants to talk to?

I think it is courteous to let the other person know, "Hey you are too young, too bald, too weird, too this or too that and sorry but I'm just not interested." Then we both know where we are. I mean it is part of the non-face to face interaction that allows that right? What if you were to meet and then tell them in person? Wouldn't that be worse? Maybe being ignored is better.

And how weird is it to see other people you know on the site? My Dr. is on there and two good friends are on too. I find it rather weird to see them while searching. I wonder how they feel when they see me on there.

This is all too confusing, but what are the other options? Walk around a hardware store looking a men's left hands as they walk by, then checking them out, then trying to get their attention? I would rather just walk around the hardware store and look at all of the amazing stuff to buy! I would rather be in Home Dept rather than any clothing store.

Who knows? No one! Oh well...it's the sacrifice we make so we don't have to be alone...right?

Baby Pictures

I found some baby pictures of me the other day.  I was soooo cute!

Fire

We're in the "mountains" in AZ.  We're up high enough anyway that it snows about 1 to 2 times a year.  I knew it would be a little chilly and so we all brought jackets.  Today though, I am freezing!  My nose freezes when I breath.  It was OK last night under my blanket, but now wandering around the house cleaning up and having a movie day with the girls I am freezing.

In this little town it's very expensive to have a regular heater, so we have wood burning stoves.  I know how to build a fire and get one going in a stove.  However, my sister has a pellet burning stove and I can't get it to work for the life of me.  You have to add pellets in the back, add lighter pellets (unless they don't work in which case you put in lighter fluid), light the pellets, wait 1-2 minutes, put the fan on, adjust the pellet feed, watch and wait and possibly do it over again.

I love the smell of wood burning stoves.  It's one of the smells of my childhood that reminds me of home and my parents.  My father always got up about 1 hour before us and started the fire so it would be warm by the time we got up.  We would come into the living room and stand in front of the stove like you would a regular fire.  My father always got upset with us because we would stand on the harth.  Thus too close to the fire.  I always knew when my father was awake because I could smell the stove burning.  There was no fighting in the mornings.  Just the smell and sounds of a fire.

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My daughter just called me and asked if it was supposed to be doing "that." "That" meaning blowing thick dark smoke around the house.  It looked like I was walking into a fire...no flames, just smoke.  And the fir alarm started going off like crazy.  My little girls said, "Get Low!" and crawled to the door.  Then on the porch they said they still needed to stay low.  Well, here we are 15 minutes later and I figured out what I did wrong (put the pellets in the front, not the back) and the smoke has slowed considerably.  It smells like a fire now and not the kind I like.  My sister is going to be upset.  My children have been yelling at me about how I did it wrong.  Oh well, nothing I can do about it now.  I hope it at least gets warm.

Oh Bummer!

Did I say that we came on our trip in an awesome red 2010 minivan that only has(d) 5,000 miles?  It is amazing!  So comfortable and has 6 seats in the back instead of 5 and has a large trunk! 

Last week I was hit while my neighbor was coming out of her driveway.  She took off the back passenger side light.  They are having to replace the back panel and the tail light.  They said it would take about a week or two to fix.  I told them that I was going out of town and wanted to be sure that I didn't have to have the van back while I was gone and so I would have to pay for the extra days.  Well, the shop called me today and the van won't be ready until the end of next week!  We have decided to stay a few extra days. 

It's nice to be away from my life for a while.  I think the girls are having fun too.  They all agreed that we stay a little longer.  Needless to say I thanked the mechanic for the longer vacation.

Gymnastics

My 6 year old daughter decided one day she wanted to do a cartwheel.  Two days later she could do a perfect cartwheel in both directions.  While she was talking on the phone one day she started doing one handed cartwheels.  She's always been very flexable and can do the splits in any direction.  Lately she's been trying to do handstands, walk on her hands, back and front handsprings, and just about anything else she can get her body to do or that she sees someone else do.

I've been wanting to get her into gymnastics but can't afford it.  Today I was able to have a high school friend of mine who teaches gymnastics show me how to spot her to learn new tricks.  She was very surprized at how well my daughter could do.  She had one of her other students show her how to do a round off.  She watched twice and then did it almost perfectly.  She has natural talent and a great desire to do it.  As soon as I get back home I'm going to find a sponsor for her and get her into classes.  I am amazed at her talent and skills every day!

We are going to be able to stay in AZ longer so my daughter will be able to go to a real gymnastics class on Thursday night! She will love that and I will video tape it for possible sponsors.

Sound of Music

While here in AZ I thought I would take the girls to see the HS presentation of Sound of Music.  We love going to plays and have seen this play several times.  Well, after paying $26.00 tonight I don't know if I could ever sit through one again without asking how it is first.  Let's just say it wasn't the best.  I suppose it could have been worse.  But not much.  I won't go into details, and I won't go see the play again either.  Oh well, I had 3 hours to spare and $26.00 laying around so I thought I would "donate" it to the local high school. 

When we were leaving a car backed out too fast and hit the one behind.  That was almost worth the money.

I think the girls and I will watch the movie while we are here to make up for the bad tast in our mouths.  And, since we will be here we can have food!  Sweet!