Those P:31 Girls

10 Who can find a virtuous and capable wife?
She is more precious than rubies.
11 Her husband can trust her, --not to cheat at Monopoly
and she will greatly enrich his life.
12 She brings him good, not harm,
all the days of her life. --Except that one day she accidentally shot a nail gun at his foot which was probably his fault anyway for standing so close...

13 She finds wool and flax
and busily spins it.
14 She is like a merchant’s ship, --wait, is he calling her fat??
bringing her food from afar. --oh...
15 She gets up before dawn to prepare breakfast for her household
and plan the day’s work for her servant girls. --Ahh, so that's the secret. God, if you want me to be a virtuous wife I'm going to need some servant girls, pronto. This is probably why we don't see any mention of the virtuous wife cleaning her house.

16 She goes to inspect a field and buys it;
with her earnings she plants a vineyard. --This girl is big on investments! When was the last time you bought something that could generate more income for you? Does a Mac and Adobe Suite count??
17 She is energetic and strong,
a hard worker. --"Energetic." Proof that the virtuous wife drinks coffee.
18 She makes sure her dealings are profitable;
her lamp burns late into the night. --Cutting coupons, no doubt.

19 Her hands are busy spinning thread,
her fingers twisting fiber. --crafty lady!
20 She extends a helping hand to the poor
and opens her arms to the needy.
21 She has no fear of winter for her household,
for everyone has warm clothes.

22 She makes her own bedspreads. --Note to self: make a bedspread.
She dresses in fine linen and purple gowns. --Proof that God wants me to go shopping and buy pretty things! (It doesn't SAY that she spun & dyed the thread before hand-stitching the gown herself... she could've bought it!)
23 Her husband is well known at the city gates,
where he sits with the other civic leaders. --Is an awesome husband required to be a virtuous wife? I suppose she was first a virtuous girl with many offers of marriage who made a discerning decision. She don't want no scrubs.
24 She makes belted linen garments
and sashes to sell to the merchants. --Obviously a professional in her field. Probably sells on Etsy, too.

25 She is clothed with strength and dignity, --Where has all the dignity gone?
and she laughs without fear of the future. --Laughter required. Worrying banned.
26 When she speaks, her words are wise,
and she gives instructions with kindness. --With kindness, not shouts, rolling eyes, and exasperated sighs.
27 She carefully watches everything in her household
and suffers nothing from laziness. --Which reminds me of a project I need to finish...

28 Her children stand and bless her. --Do nieces/nephews count? Because those Borkert kids think I'm pretty cool.
Her husband praises her: --Bryan, are you getting this??
29 “There are many virtuous and capable women in the world,
but you surpass them all!”

30 Charm is deceptive, and beauty does not last; --and plastic surgery looks fake;
but a woman who fears the Lord will be greatly praised.
31 Reward her for all she has done.
Let her deeds publicly declare her praise. --Reward her? Ok, Bryan, I like gift cards, shopping sprees, date nights, flowers, Bliss cupcakes...

Snice Day

I woke up this morning at 5am to the tinkling of ice pellets outside. Though I'm notoriously not a morning person, I was coherent enough to reach for my phone and investigate school closings. No school. No work. I fell back asleep dreaming of what I'd do with my Snow/Ice Day...

Unfortunately I dreamed that I went into work anyways and got a few things done. That did not happen.

What did happen: I enjoyed a lazy morning. Ate a bagel, made coffee, lounged. At 9:30 it started really snowing and I went for a jog on the treadmill while watching reruns of America's Next Top Model. I ran longer than usual.

After jogging I got the bright idea to finally clean our oven. It's been a while since I've used a self-cleaning oven, and it quickly became apparent that this decision ranked up there with my neighbors' putting snowboobs on their snowman. Bad idea. Despite running all the vents and fans, the house was quickly filled with a smelly eye-burning fog. Bryan suggested that instead of canceling the cleaning, we could just shut ourselves inside the fume-free office and wait it out. Oh, and to complete the plan of course we would have to turn off the heat and open windows to vent the rest of the house. It made sense.

So that's why we have a 2" drift on our windowsill and some accumulating flurries in front of the screen door.

We've been well-entertained in the office though. Bryan is content with his MMO game and SportsCenter, and I have everything I need: a computer, a novel, and a phone with a charger. Add some Mt Dew and Sunchips and it's really not so bad. However, with 30 min left in the 4 hour cleaning cycle, even the office is starting to get cold now. But it will all be worth it when I'm not blasted with smoke the next time I take a pizza out of the oven. Surely...

With our quarantine almost over, I'm looking forward to rewarding my 2.5 miles this morning with some chili mac tonight. And thanks to the past few hours I'm almost halfway through Emma; so altogether it's looking to be a very snice day.

Peppermint Latte with an Extra Shot of God

I once heard someone say that God is in everything that makes you happy.

It makes sense that we should find our Creator in all that bring us joy. The Bible says that there is "strength and joy in His dwelling place" (a). So the rush of joy we get from playing with puppies or riding a roller coaster is just a small taste of being in God's presence.

I also like what Nehemiah said to the masses: "Go and enjoy choice food and sweet drinks, and send some to those who have nothing prepared. This day is sacred to our Lord. Do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is your strength." (b) Isn't that great? The people are told to go have a big party with delicious food and special drinks--and THAT is called the joy of the Lord!

It's easy to forget that our Creator is in ALL our joys; not just the ones that happen in church. For me these joys include (but are not limited to):

Sitting on our patio in perfect weather.
Long walks with Bryan. (or anything else with Bryan!)
Doodling pretty little flourishes.
Coffee.
Shopping. (Yes, God is in shopping! Maybe that will be my next blog.)
Making people laugh. (It's not my forte, so I love it when it happens!)
Pastries.
Family get-togethers.

God is in all these things! I wish non-believers could understand this concept of God being the Creator and Inhabitant of joys. It hurts to hear them talk about heaven and hell based on the centuries-old stereotypes. Many non-believers think the Christian heaven is just an eternal, boring church service and that the Christian hell has all the debauchery and edginess they know and love on earth. I pray that they will realize the truth beyond those lies. Our Creator and his dwelling place are the ultimate good time: complete ecstatic joy!

(a) 1 Chron 16:27
(b) Nehemiah 8:10

Summer Drought

I feel a little guilty about Bryan doing more housework than me. It wasn't always this way though, so for now we'll just consider that he's paying me back for our years in NC. When the payback is done I may have to pick up another chore or two.

I need a designer friend that I can meet with to describe my bad days at work. They would understand and commiserate much better than my mechanically-engineered husband.

Neck ties are for guppies and lawyers, unless you're getting married or buried.

It's funny to see the people that some people end up marrying.

Twitter is tired. Perhaps even expired. I don't understand why people still like it.

Wow, I can feel this Excedrin Migraine starting to kick in. This is the first time I've used it. It's like someone just poured iced coffee directly in my skull.

Bryan and I agreed that our first son's middle name should be Awesome.

I took one of those personality tests this week. It said I was "Situated at the intersection of the strong creative thinker and the practical executor...". Well done, personality test. Well done.

We adopted a blender this week. It has fluted glass, an ocher base, and tall beige buttons. I'm sure it was a great wedding gift to somebody in 1975.

Sleeting Outside and in My Head

I am resigned to the fact that I will have five girls. Mostly because I want the experience of raising both a son AND a daughter, and I doubt I'll be that lucky. Although I'm pessimistic about my chances to score both female and male offspring, I do think it's really cool in this age of knowledge, technology, and custom-anything that we still cannot choose the gender of our children. You get what the Lord gives you!

Bryan doesn't understand watching the same girly movies again and again. Sometimes I wish my college roommates still lived with me so we could giggle over the Mormon Pride & Prejudice late at night. At least my future five daughters will watch chick flicks with me.

I like that Gwyneth Paltrow has a long neck and makes it look good. I have a long neck too, but I blame mine on the neck-brace I had to wear after being in a car wreck in 6th grade. I'm pretty sure it stretched it out.

I am so glad I went to public schools instead of a private or home school. I'm convinced I'd be completely dysfunctional outside my church and home were it not for the secular exposure provided by public schools. For this reason I kinda feel sorry for home school kids. Then I remember the crazy scholarships they get for being so smart and my pity is gone. Why is dysfunctional spelled with a y? I suppose its spelling should be a little off.

I'm watching the old Emma now (which explains some previous statements). "I love John! ... I hate John!" The last bit of this movie absolutely transfixes me. "Marry me, my wonderful, darling friend!" Excuse me while I go give Bryan a kiss...

I assume nobody really cares to read this blog post. I figure you must be very bored to have read this far, and you must be glad for the reminder of why you don't share your own pointless thoughts with others. But I like writing. Not that I'm very good at prose, but I really can't stay away from it for too long. One of my favorite things at work is to compose emails.

I've been thinking about pulling out my old journals and blogging the quotes of my fourteen-year-old self. I'm convinced they would be very entertaining and almost equally embarrassing. But perhaps the distance of 12 years is enough to make me laugh instead of cringe. We'll see.

Surely I'm not the only one who thinks it's weird when couples say they're "trying to get pregnant". That phrase makes me uncomfortable. As it should.

And this is one reason (among others) why I have a strict personal policy against facebook friending people I work with. My blog posts link to my facebook Notes. This nonsense is not the kind of thing you want your coworkers reading. Hopefully none of them Googled me and found my blogspot and are reading this right now. If so... grrr. Not cool.

Homeless No More?

What a great weekend! My sister came into town, I got to play with her babies, I had a sleepover with my brother, my mom made opossum pie, and I bought a house! Not one of those plastic houses you buy with pink money to put on Park Place, I bought a REAL house! Well, maybe. I guess I don't really know for sure until they hand me the keys at our closing date.

We've spent the last eight months pouring over house listings online, so after moving to Arkansas and landing a job it only took two weeks for us to find and put an offer on the perfect house. And only a few short hours after that, we got the call that they accepted our offer! We expected a counter-offer with compromises, but luckily for us the owners have already moved out of state and are just anxious to sell the home!

Bryan and I were very subdued in the agent's office while writing up the offer. The agent asked why we weren't more excited. I shrugged my shoulders, "We know it's not ours yet." I figured we wouldn't get excited until closing day, but now that we know they accepted our offer the excitement is building. I know things can still fall through if the inspection fails or some unforeseen problem arises, but it's getting harder to hold back the giddy expectation of home ownership!

I'll keep you updated, and I promise to post a picture if we make it to closing day!

I'm Baaack

Three weeks ago today I was in the middle of a cross-country transition… somewhere between the good life I had with Bryan in North Carolina, and the blank pages of a chapter in our lives titled "Return to Arkansas". This chapter is beginning like many good novels do: with desperation. We are currently jobless, homeless, churchless, and all our meals come from the microwave oven. We are one stolen loaf of bread away from being characters in Les Miserables. Fun times, eh?

But despite the stress of job interviews every other day, mortgage loan complications, and allergic reactions to my parent's rent-free flop house, we really ARE quite happy to be back in Northwest Arkansas! Every day that I get to see beautiful green hills outside or get to cheer on my little brother's baseball team I'm reminded of how truly grateful I am to begin this chapter surrounded by all the places and people we love best!

Three Years in Three Days

I'm not an extremely fit person, but I try to jog a mile or two every few days. (It makes me feel a little less guilty about all the delicious homemade cookies and breads that I eat.) Since the rainy weather was not conducive to an outside jog today, I drove to my little Gym to tread the mill for a bit. (Does anybody know how a treadmill got its name?) When I arrived at the Gym I was slightly annoyed to discover it was closed because of the SWINE FLU and would reopen after it was "sanitized" sometime this week. Yeah. Swine flu. There has not been one case of swine flu in our entire state, and after the Gym is sanitized and they let people start using it again, will it really be any safer than it was before the big clean?? So stupid.

Moving on…

I cannot let this week pass without announcing to the world that on Wednesday Bryan and I will FINALLY get to spend an anniversary together!! In fact it will take all my effort not to mention this in every facebook status for the next three days. We don't have any big plans for the special day because saving for a down payment on a house has us on a tight budget. We're thinking a nice restaurant and a sunset walk on the beach. Any other low-cost celebration ideas??

Sara K, the CRUSHER!!!

Ok, crushes are for more than just teenage girls, orange soda, and pro wrestling, right? I crush on people and things all the time! So here I have compiled a short list of what I've been crushing on lately. They include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Bite-sized Heath bars. Bryan picked out a big bag of these to sneak into the movie theater last week (I picked out strawberry Twizzlers) and I was shocked at how truly satisfying chocolate-covered toffee really is. Who knew?
• My new Facebook profile pic. I spent about thirty minutes doing some fine Photoshop work on an average picture of me to make it outstanding. I love the final result. Totally crushing on it.
• My husband. Nature is cruel at this time of the month.
• A hand-made heart pendant I recently bought from Etsy.com. I've been on the lookout for the perfect red heart necklace for a long time now—not too junior high, not too formal, not too red, not too expensive—and I'm so happy that I finally found the perfect pendant! Love it!• Kris Allen. SOOO proud of my Arkansas boy on American Idol!! I don't think he'll win, but I love that he's representing our publicity-challenged state so well!
• Yard sales. (I think I pretty much covered this one in my last post!)
• My grandmother's antique wedding ring. I've been in love with this little piece of jewelry all my life, and even wanted to use it for my own wedding ring. That didn't work out though, and for a long time it stayed tucked away in a safe place because I thought it would be tacky to wear a wedding set on each hand—but this week I changed my mind! Now it's out of hiding, on my right hand, and not tacky at all!
• Seagulls. I guess I've just been spending a lot more time outside and noticing them lately. They're such fun birds! I love how they always sound like they're laughing; it never ceases to make me smile!
• Pandora radio online. How does anybody ever get work done without Pandora?? Their steady stream of songs that are just to my liking helped me get through two weeks (and counting) of tracing photos in Illustrator. Couldn't have done it without ya, Pandora!
• My sister's new blog! It's all about how cute my little niece and nephew are, and Stefanie has an entertaining style of documenting their cuteness! There's a link to it on right of this page called "Borkerts the Sister".

Seven Dollar Saturday

This morning I was wide awake at 6:30am. NOT a good way to start the only day of the week that you get to sleep in.

UNlessss... there are 46 yard sales in your area! So I made some coffee, kissed my sleeping husband, and went out armed with the $7 left over from yesterday's X-Men matinee. (Why do so many theaters still only accept cash???)

I didn't go to all 46 yard sales—it's PCS season which means lots of Marines are changing duty stations and wanting to sell their stuff before the move—I only went to six. Is that a lot? Well I didn't buy anything at the first two, but in the following four I offered, haggled, and conceded all $7 on the following ten items: a shirt from Maurices, a shirt from Express, khakis from Abercrombie, USMC travel mug, Starbucks mug, trendy necklace, cute picture frame, cushy keyboard wrist pad, a new dog toy for Avee, and a pool stick (with case & chalk). Can we say SCORE??!! Yeah, I totally pwned those yard sales this morning. Kinda makes it worth having a 6:30 internal alarm.

This is completely unrelated to everything you just read, but I have to mention something that Bryan just said to me as he was watching the Kentucky derby pre-show: "I have a feeling that if we lived anywhere near Kentucky you'd want to go to the derby just so you could get dressed up and wear a big hat." :) My husband knows me so well!

Happy 26th Birthday, Bryan!!

Yes, today is my love's golden birthday! He is 26 on the 26th! And we are celebrating with his favorite activity: staying home and doing nothing! lol, yeah he's pretty easy to please!

Here are two new illustrations that I uploaded to iStock this week. Hopefully they will sell like hot cakes and I'll get lots and lots of money from them! :) Hopefully. :) The first one is a seamless tile, which means you can stack the image on top of itself or beside itself and you won't be able to see where one ends and the other begins—great for wallpaper on desktops or background on web sites. The second one is a set of stylized sports balls. Thanks goes out to my brother-in-law for instructing me on the size and dimensions of a rugby ball!

EDIT: I removed the images of my finished illustrations because iStock's watermark could barely be seen on them. If you want to see the illustrations, visit my iStock portfolio page—there's a link to it on the right column of my blog!

And here is a sneak preview of what I am working on for my next submission to iStock! I'll post a link to the finished image when I get it completed, hopefully sometime this week.

Ell-Oh-Ell

Well, maybe it's just me, but this incident cracked me up and I thought it was worth sharing! Avee and Suki were playing on Bryan's jacket when this happened...



And here is the rescue:

Warthog

Hi, remember me? I know it's been a few months, but I'm that girl. You know, that girl who thought she'd never get a house, who saved her Mac from his suicide attempt, and who moaned for months—nay, years!—at her Marine husband's absence overseas. Yeah, that's me. You've missed me, haven't you? Well you can thank this twenty-something's return to blogging for inspiring me to grace you with my presence again. Really, it's been too long. Let me see if I remember how to do this...

Here's something I found very disturbing. We have some friends here from Maine, and when the wife saw Bryan's razorback baseball cap she asked,"What is Arkansas' mascot? Is it a warthog?" Yeah. A warthog. Oh, how our friend from Texas laughed when she said that. We love our razorbacks, but man is it embarrassing when your mascot is mistaken for a warthog. I kind of wish Arkansas had stuck with their original mascot long ago of the cardinals. At least they're not in the pig family.

A couple blogs down I was upset about not having a house yet. Well I finally got a house not long after that post, but now I want another one! I want a house in Arkansas! I am soooo looking forward to house-hunting in Arkansas this summer. I've already got about 10 homes bookmarked online that I hope will still be on the market in six months. Oh, but there's one little catch. I kinda need to have a job in Arkansas before we will get approved for a mortgage. Minor detail, right? So shoot me a message if you can guarantee me a full-time job six months from now!

Bryan came home and our faces morphed together

Bryan came home Monday night!! And we got our first reunited kiss pictured in the paper:


"The Lord rewards every man for his faithfulness. The Lord delivered you into my hands today…" I Sam 26:23 :o)

Bored Sara = Long Pointless Post

"Hey, it worked! I was afraid I'd have to go through that all over again. I always expect the worst!"

"You shouldn't always expect the worst, that's no way to live! Always expect the best! Always expect the best and see how happy your life becomes!"

The cashier nodded and promised the man in front of me that she'd change her ways as she handed him his receipt. I just caught the tail of this conversation, but it was the way he said that last part that assured me he was either an evangelical preacher or a Dr. Phil idolizer. Either way, both species of men are prone to disillusionment. What kind of history does this man have to make him assume that always expecting the best makes your life happier? It sounds more likely to lead to perpetual disappointment and regret.

In other news:

I still don't have my house. Maybe tomorrow. Or maybe never. See that? I'm far from being an "expect the best" kind of person.

Someone asked me today if my husband was underage. More on that later if it develops into anything interesting.

Bryan's homecoming was pushed back four days. Time to reset all my countdowns again.

Unrelated to the homecoming date changing, the Marines did more very frustrating and stupid things today. I suffer from the same "arrogant independence" that Lady Catherine accused Elizabeth Bennet of having (thanks, Mom), and that doesn't clash well with control-freaks like Darcy's aunt or the Marines. Hmm... the Marines as Lady Catherine de Bourgh... I think I like that analogy. Both have a "dignified impertinence", both assume they know what's best for the man in love with the independent woman, and both try to keep them apart. Now if only Bryan owned land half the size of Darbyshire the analogy would be complete.

"For I know very well what the temptations of the Devil are, and that one of his greatest is to put it into a man's head that he can write and print a book, and gain both money and fame by it."
Don Quixote, Part II, Prologue

For Those Who Wonder About Me

Hm. I forgot about all the noisy jets around here.

I have a house! But I'm only allowed to look, not touch. For some reason Housing deems it necessary to make me wait another week till I can move into this already vacated house that is assigned to me. Of all the houses and all the streets in this neighborhood, we ended up getting a house next door to the one we lived in last year. Crazy, but I'm happy with it. Until I can move in next week, I'm crashing on my friend's floor. She lives conveniently close to a coffee shop.

And until Bryan comes home in about two weeks, I'll be sitting here in Smalltown, USA dying of boredom. I need a job, but unfortunately we're stationed in an area where graphic designers go crazy for want of work. I'd like to stay sane, but my hopes are not high.

Coffee Shop Blogging

Today is my day off Flora duty, so I am here enjoying a 12oz cup of joe and an almond croissant. According to my punch card, this is my eighth coffee here so my next one is free. I have about a week and a half to redeem my free coffee before I begin my journey back to the North Carolina coast. I am so SO excited about moving back! This morning I called the housing office on base and found out that we've moved up on the wait list from #34 two weeks ago to #22 today. Once I'm there it won't be exciting at all because I'll still have a few weeks to wait before Bryan arrives. Those last few weeks will be comprised of the longest days of my life. I wouldn't wish a prolonged separation on any married couple, but the homecoming is so exquisitely exciting that I wish everyone could know the joys of it.

Last weekend my college friends and I had a little reunion in Denver, Colorado. You girls are great! Driving several hours through flat and boring Kansas was slightly redeemed by the ginormous white windmills, fields of sunflowers, and signs for the world's largest prairie dog. Our trip was highlighted by an interrogation of Hannah's new boyfriend, pedicures by a woman who took two dozen pictures of us with my camera, three goofy girls sharing a small fitting room in Macy's, Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2, and... well, you really don't need to know about the best parts. ;)

What's my pseudonym?

It's been over a decade since I attended a young author's conference, but the influence of that elementary school diversion has finally paid off. Today I began my great American novel. It's very pretentious, full of sentences long enough to fill a page, and even a few brand new words which I made up just to serve my purposes. All attributes of a celebrated classic. But don't expect to get any sneak previews of my literary masterpiece. It will take at least ten years to write and revise a novel as thick as the Bible and twice as confusing as Shakespeare. When it is finally finished I will lock it away in a safety deposit box only to be published upon my death. It's a fail-proof plan for success.

Lately I've been beside myself with anticipation of going back to North Carolina this month, finally getting on the housing wait list, and looking into available jobs on base--all signs of Bryan's eminent return from Iraq! The closer it gets the longer the days seem to strrreeetch. I can't wait!!

Independence Day

One sunny afternoon I pulled in to Wal-Mart and found a parking space. As occasionally happens, my timing was just awkward enough that I came around the back of my car just in time to intercept another pedestrian heading for the doors. I didn't look closely at him, but my initial glance told me that he was older with a strong gait. He must've glanced my way too, because he noticed the "Marines" sticker on my car and said, "Are you in the Marines?" I smiled a little and considered saying yes, but instead opted for the truth and told him no, it's my husband who is the Marine. "Ah. Well tell him I said thank you for serving our country." To which I replied, "That's very considerate of you and yes, he deserves your thanks, but what am I? Chopped liver? Does a military wife not deserve your thanks, too? I put my wedding, my career, and my life on hold because I chose to love and support that man who's serving our country. I keep his morale high so that he doesn't become part of the statistic that Marines have the highest suicide rate of any military branch. I put up with all the crappy aspects of the military like ever-changing homecoming dates, rules that don't make sense, and moving cross-country every few years. I didn't sign a five-year contract that requires me to put up with all this; I'm voluntarily letting the Marines run my life because I know my husband needs me. My husband is the hero, but if he was here and not in Iraq he'd tell you to thank me, too, for making so many sacrifices and sticking by his side through everything we've endured together for the sake of service to our country."

Ok, so I didn't really say that whole last part, but I wanted to. When you're thanking a military hero, don't forget to also thank their spouse for persevering in a position that many could not handle. But please, do not thank me. I'm not asking for recognition from my family and friends who already know my plight...that would be a little weird. :) Next year I will no longer be a military wife, and I just hope that I won't forget the experience in years to come. And if I ever thank a military wife for her husband's service, I hope that I won't forget to thank her, too.

Blogging, Writes, and KC Life

There are other ways of reading my blog besides coming to this website. You can subscribe to the RSS feed at the bottom of the page, or I can add you to a list of people who will get my new posts emailed to them. I know several of you received emails when I updated my Xanga blog, so I thought you might like that option here, too. Just send me your email address and I'll add you to that list.

I just thought of another great name for my blog: Writes of a Military Wife. Too late to change the name though. And after next year I won't have that military angle to my blog anyways. That's right, we only have about a year left with the Marines!

I wish Bryan could share all my Kansas City experiences. He said I should send him photos of everything I do and everywhere I go so he can picture my life here. (too easy pun) So today Flora and I went out with camera in tow and documented the following places that I frequent: two coffee shops within two miles of the house, a drive-through with the best frozen custard ever, the closest post office which happens to be in a strip mall, my new bank that I chose based on its attractive exterior, the convenient Quick Trip that highlights many a weekend with coffee and donuts, and the slightly overpriced hometown grocery store. It's not too exciting, but that's pretty much the extent of everything I do in KC. Eventually I'll have to get a picture of the Apple Store for him because I'm definitely dragging his PC booty into one of those. Maybe I'll call ahead so they can have an intervention prepared.