Consider the following:

One of the boys jump over the fence.

One of the boys jumps over the fence.

Which one is correct?

Let’s dissect them and see:

The subject in the two sentences is the same. It’s “One”. “Of the boys” is modifying the subject.

So the actual sentence using just the simple subject would be:

One jump over the fence.

One jumps over the fence.

Take out the prepositional phrase and you get:

One jump.

One jumps.

You subject is singular so you use “jumps”. The second one is obviously correct when it’s broken down to this level.

If the sentence changed to:

The boys jump over the fence.

Your subject would be plural and it would be appropriate to use “jump.”

Consider a longer sentence where things aren’t quite as obvious:

Coming home from the race, every one of the track team members want to get an ice cream cone.

For the record, Microsoft Word didn’t flag that sentence as being written incorrectly. There is no green squiggly line underneath it, but it is most certainly wrong.

Take the sentence down the subject and verb: “One want” or if it’s easier “Every one want.”

Wrong!

It should be “One wants.”

If the problem is complicated enough to fool Microsoft Word (which we all know we shouldn’t and can’t rely on, but so many still do), it’s no wonder mistakes get past writers who aren’t proofreading or who aren’t as strong in the language.

Speaking very generally, a multiple subject gets a singular verb. (Boys jump.) A singular subject has what appears to be a plural verb. (Boy jumps.)

This isn’t always true, of course, since like so many things in the English language, the rules are always changing.

Bottom line: Check every sentence you write to ensure that your subject and verb are in agreement. If you can’t tell easily, take that sentence down to the simple subject and verb and compare. Soon you’ll be comfortable with even the most convoluted sentences!

I need a real office space where I feel empowered and professional in order to run my business effectively.  For years I’ve struggled to find the place in my home where was going to create this perfect office set-up.

Freelancing with Family

Over the years I’ve tried any number of set-ups to make this writing career work with my growing family. I started in a shared office with my husband. When my first son was born we moved the two computers into another bedroom. Then my second son was born and we got kicked out of that room, too. We then had two home businesses running out of our bedroom. Naturally we were on different schedules and his music drove me absolutely nuts when I did pretend to sleep with two toddlers in the house.

When we moved, we swore up and down that we would need two distinct working spaces along with the three bedrooms. Naturally, when we arrived in the new house there was a master bedroom, a bedroom for each boy and a small office for my husband who was, at the time, working exclusively at home. Mom, ever the flexible one, got to set up a folding table in the bedroom and pretend it was an office – again.

Settling In

I’ve now been in my house for three years and I’ve had offices in four spots. I worked next to the bed in the master bedroom. I worked in the corner of the master bedroom when we bought new furniture. I worked in the corner of the dining room for a time and briefly, as I was laying hardwood in this room, I worked in the middle of the foyer. But now, the end is very close indeed. I’m going to have the perfect office just as soon as I finish building it.

After staring at a dining room that went almost completely unused, I sold the nicest piece of furniture in my house and cleared out the forsaken dining space. I moved my folding table in and called it my library.

I’m now in the perfect mom spot. I’m literally in the center of the house – I can hear my kids playing above me. I can keep an ear on anything in the oven, and I can stop by and check in on my computer any time I walk through the room.

Making the Perfect Freelancing Office

At this point, it’s just a matter of creating the perfect library setting in my 144 square feet of dining room space. I started with the wood flooring. For about a year I had an old folding table on a new hardwood floor.

Then I moved in an antique secretary I grabbed on Craigslist to dress up the corner. I added some valences to the tall windows along the wall and picked up an excellent chair from Pier One for Christmas thanks to my husband.

My grandmother’s antique marble coffee table makes an excellent end table and the round pedestal table and antique chairs I scored off Craigslist have been refinished and are a great spot for the boys to work on book reports and color (or play Legos) while Mom does a bit of work. In a pinch they can also be used for family meals.

After two years of planning and adding bits and pieces to the dream office, I’m finally on the last big project. I’m creating a wall of built-ins including my desk. The bookshelves have been in place since December. They span a twelve foot wall with space at one end to give headroom over the desk, or rather where the desk will go. My tired, old folding table is sitting there now, holding the spot where I’ll be installing the base cabinets and then the countertop that will serve as the top of the desk.

I am, as I write this, admiring the perfect set-up that is almost complete. I have about three hundred books at my finger tips. I have soft throw pillows and blankets waiting on my chair behind me for the chances I’ll have to read one of those books. My walls are a rich merlot and my floor is oak.

It might have taken me six years, but the home library set-up I’ve dreamed of is finally within reach. It’s a heady experience. The toughest part will probably be letting go of this old table – we’ve been through a lot together after all, and these are our final months together.

It will be a bittersweet moment when the project is complete.

Are you in your ideal working environment?

WAHM Baggage

Okay, here’s the scoop. If you don’t already know, work-at-home moms, or WAHM as we are often labeled, aren’t taken very seriously as business people. We’re considered flakes who raise kids full-time and play around making money during naps or whatever. There, I said it.

If you don’t believe me, check out some of the meatier webmaster forums that are almost entirely populated by men or “professional” women. When other members go looking for cheap content or services, members tend to recommend that others “ go find a WAHM looking to make a few bucks” on other forums. There are even e-books created and sold as a “special offer” that outline how to exploit WAHMs.

The general impression from the more “serious” website owners is that moms – especially those who write – are just sitting around watching their stories and eating bon-bons most of the time, but when they decide it’s time to make a few bucks to buy some new scrap booking supplies, they wait patiently for the webmasters to hand them a few quick articles to write for any amount the client is willing to offer.

It makes you shake your head, of course, and presumably you realize that this isn’t true for most of the serious writing moms out there regardless of where they choose to work. But even sadder than the general perception is the fact that there are some out there who encourage the stereotype be being exactly the type of WAHM the rest of us hate to be classified as.

It creates a nasty contradiction within the moms-who-work community.

The Mom Community

Anyone who is a mom knows that there are tiers and levels in the mothering community. Any woman who has given birth is given a free pass into the motherhood club. From there things get a little trickier. You have to earn your stripes if you’re going to be in the ‘exclusively breastfed’ club or if you want to be part of the ‘stay-at-home mom’ niche. You get another notch on your belt if you’re a ‘homeschooling’ mom or if you’re a serious ‘PTA’ or ‘Soccer’ mom. The categorization of the moms is endless, and it’s almost exclusively done by other moms.

Fortunately, while we may pick at each other over formula feeding and soccer leagues, moms tend to unite and support each other when things get a bit hairier. We can forget labels as quickly as we create them. As far as I’m concerned the WAHM title is just one of those that should probably be swept away or reclassified as non-combative.

Embrace WAHM-isms

Do I like being called a WAHM? Eh. I honestly don’t really care. I can fall into virtually any category of motherhood depending on the time of the year and the mood I’m in. But I know that it bothers others and I’ll hazard a guess that it’s the stereotype that is getting under their skin.

I don’t like being labeled anything I find offensive. I would hate to be called dumb or lazy. I would hate to be called a bad mother. I would hate for someone to slap me in a category where I don’t feel I belong, and that applies to all of our sensibilities. Otherwise why would so many professional-level writers feel the need to explain our business model and why we are different than the cheap writers? Why do we get offended when we see newspaper articles claiming that writing articles online is an easy way to earn money for those looking for new career options?

But in the grand scheme of things, this is just another layer of a very complex cake. There are some WAHMs out there grateful to pick up a few bucks while baby naps. These are essentially the same as the hobby writers or the college kids who want a little beer or Christmas money. Big deal. Leave them be.

Then there are the WAHMs who run full-scale businesses that enable them to provide fully for their families. I’ve been fortunate to know a nutritionist with her doctoral degree who choses to work from home as well as a full-time professional employee of Microsoft who also works from home. I know working moms who write part-time (like me) and those who write full-time (like others here.) I know moms who are full-time CPAs and award-winning professional photographers who travel to clients and need only a home office.

Professional or not, Tupperware or corporate accounts, we are all moms and we all happen to be that dreaded term: WAHM. Like so many others, this is a stereotype that holds no water.

Or does it?

I’m thinking back about seven years trying to get a grasp of who I was when I first started an online business. I’m curious how much the online writing career has shaped me over that time. It’s actually quite interesting – but then, since this is anything but a true scientific experiment – we can’t really determine how much life changes a mother and how much a freelance career does. I’d like to hazard a guess, however. I think it changes us quite dramatically.

Work-at-Home Moms Never Stop

I have lots of friends who work. They work in offices and they teach in schools. They stop working when the workday ends. Sure they may answer the occasional email or stay late for an open house, but the evenings are “their time.” I guess that could be true for a work-at-home parent who works during the day, but with clients all over the globe, it’s not unusual for me to be on the phone at 10 pm talking to clients even if I was writing at 6 that morning. I wake up in the morning with IMs waiting for me. For “normal” moms – career or not, it’s considered odd to be up working at 10:30 at night. For most of my clients, it’s bizarre to not be available at that time – it’s when all the good brainstorming happens.

Work-at-Home Moms Work Harder

I have the double benefit of having two careers. Quite honestly, I work hard at both, but once upon a time I had an office job. (It could have been a career, but I disliked it intensely.) If I still had that job and I wrote, I can say without a shadow of a doubt that I’d be making more than I am now teaching, and that I’d be working a heck of a lot less during the daytime than I do now. (The money wasn’t worth the torture, before you ask). Just think about the time you worked in an office. How long was your lunch break? How often did you stop to catch up with a colleague or “brainstorm” with a manager? How long were those never ending meetings in the conference room?

Now think about the working moms you know – and this can be extended to virtually any freelance or self-employed person. We know the value of a dollar and our minutes translate directly into cash in most cases. Sure, I’d love to sit and chat on someone else’s dime, but that’s not happening in my current universe. It doesn’t matter if you’re selling Tupperware or legal advice, moms working at home have a set amount of time to work, and they respect it immensely. I can’t say the same for people in any of the various out-of-home careers I’ve had over the years.

WAHM Are More Opinionated

This may be totally personal, but I seem to have grown more opinionated over the years. (Incidentally, you can substitute ‘cocky’ or ‘arrogant’ in for opinionated if you’d like.) I might not be making millions, but I have all of the ingredients of success – a business that’s been in the black since Day 1 with substantial profits going on seven years. I have freedom and I can adjust my income simply by adjusting my hours or effort. It’s heady stuff.

I’m reasonably sure that level of confidence translates into other areas of life. I’m not afraid to ask questions, and I stand up for myself and my friends when necessary. That wasn’t me eight years ago. I was more restrained and shrank from an argument. Now I can hold my own professionally and earn more respect for it. I’m enjoying the confidence this has given me. I hope the other working moms out there feel the same way.

“All hell breaks loose.” It’s not very hell-like if everyone is doing it. I’ve seen “all hell break loose” countless times in everything from children’s fiction to adult romance to spy and mystery novels. Enough already! If I have to read it one more time, all hell’s gonna break loose! For the record, when “all hell breaks loose” it means things are about to get really bad, really fast.

“Batten down the hatches.” The only time I ever want to read this again is if you’re writing a story about a ship lost at sea, because that’s the only place this particular expression belongs. To “batten down the hatches” means you’re fastening things on a ship that may fly around during a storm. Normally, however, you see the expression used to indicate something bad is going to happen and one person is warning another to prepare for a jealous wife or an angry boss or something equally cliché.

“Between a rock and a hard place.” You have a tough decision to make and you’re being pressed from both sides. If you’re being squeezed between a rock and a hard place, you have two unfavorable decisions to choose between and usually you’re under pressure to pick the lesser of two evils. (Which means you’re supposed to pick the one that hurts the least.)

“Think outside of the box.” Once upon a time we were all boring, non-creative people who colored in the lines and didn’t have an original thought in our pretty heads. Then we were told to get creative and start “thinking outside of the box.” Apparently this was where all of the good ideas had gone while we weren’t thinking of them. Now that we’re all “thinking outside of the box”, which means getting away from the normal though pattern or way of doing business, we’re bringing back creativity every day. Unfortunately, all of this “out of the box thinking” has me wishing a few of us could just crawl back into the box again and get away from tired idioms for a while at least.

This is by no means an exhaustive list – just a few idioms that we’ve seen too often of late. What idioms make you want to crawl back into your box?

Working 9 – 5 has Perks

I’ve never worked “9 to 5.” I’ve work 7 to 4 and right now I work 7:30 to 3:30 (nominally) as a teacher, but that’s a different story. Hours aren’t set in my second, writing career and that’s the best part! All you have to do to take a day off is to stop working. Just stop. Right now. There! You just took a few seconds off!

Of course, those two seconds are no longer billable and you’re going to have to make up that time somewhere else. That’s the main crux of working for yourself and not working for someone else. There is no stopping point or vacation paid on someone else’s dime.

The Freelance Vacation

That’s not to say we shouldn’t be taking vacation days or sitting back stuffed and ready to watch University of Texas trounce A&M (for the last time, allegedly) on Thanksgiving Day. We just have to plan for it – and if you’re working from home with kids, you absolutely have to plan for time off since you’re already working odd hours – it’s the nature of the game.

To take time off, you just have to schedule it. Then you have to accommodate it by making enough money that the time off won’t matter to the bottom line. For example, if you’re used to working five days a week and you want to work only three days this week so that you can enjoy Thursday and Friday without even turning on the computer (little late for that, right?), you have to either cram the work from those two days into the days you’re already working or you have to spread it out over the next week to keep up the finances.

The perfect scenario is that you work more than you have to all of the time and that you have a huge stockpile of cash allotted for holidays and such. Perhaps you’re living well below your means and you can just skip the work you’d normally do on those days without suffering a financial consequence. But that’s not very realistic for most of us with the expenses of this season and the fluctuations of the workload. It’s a big deal for me to only work five days per week. I spent five years working seven days per week and condensing even more is really tricky on two hours per night.

Taking Time Off

I won’t be taking off Thanksgiving or the day after this year. My husband will be utilizing some paid vacation for those days, but I’ll be working through. Why? Because it’s more important to be to have cash in the door to pay for a fun Christmas than to watch football after eating turkey. I’ll just catch the score at the end of the night like I do every year and then I’ll take a few days off in a month for Christmas – it’s much more fun to play Santa anyhow.

Happy Holidays, Everyone!

It takes a lot of dedication and discipline to freelance from home. As I sit here, a book I started and the newest episode of Glee are calling my name. But I won’t stop writing to give in to the temptation. I can’t. I have work to do and only a certain amount of time to do it in. Fortunately, I’ve been practicing self-sacrifice, or as we mothers like to call it, “setting priorities”, for years. And that is why working with kids can be such a productivity booster.

There Is No “Later”

My boys figured it out very fast. When I tell them we’ll do something “later”, they know it means we’re probably not going to do it if they can’t pin me down to a specific time and date. Sadly I try and fool myself sometimes with the same trick. I plan to do something “later”, but it rarely works – it would be like losing an argument with myself. I know there is no “later”, because if there was, I’d have been using that time for years to do the things that need to get done around here. I work during my work time, because there simply is no other time.

90 to Nothing

Try telling a young child to go back to sleep Saturday morning when he pops awake at 5:30 am. (Thanks, Daylight Savings Time.) Just try and close your eyes for a few seconds in the afternoon with two young boys playing ninja in the house. Every moment at home with children you’re engaged in some way – you’re either listening carefully while you try to pretend you have free time around the house or you’re actively involved playing, breaking up arguments, soothing hurts or reading stories.

The concept of downtime takes on a whole new meaning after kids. I’ve yet to meet a mother who lounges about on a Saturday morning wondering what she will do to keep from being bored until she goes back to work. Instead every morning is the start of a daily marathon and you must pace yourself. Guess what? So is work! When you finally have those hours to sit down and work, you can’t screw around surfing the web or playing Facebook Friends.

Fortunately, we don’t require a warm-up period. We can pop out of bed at 5:30 to the sound of crashes from upstairs, and we can start cranking out billable hours in a matter of moments when those little sleepy eyelids finally close. We know that there’s only a certain amount of time available between eyelids closing and eyelids opening and not much time at that. Productivity experts ain’t got nothing on us!

Don’t Look at Me in That Tone of Voice

I hope I can say this for all mom-writers out there, but I’m afraid some might not have realized the true combined power of motherhood and writerhood just yet. Mothers have immense power over their children when they choose to use that power it wisely.

You can also turn assertive mothering into assertiveness in your business. You wouldn’t stoop to argue with your child over candy for dinner – it’s just a firm, “No – that’s not something we do in our house.” So don’t argue about things you don’t do in your business. I can’t tell you how many emails I’ve snapped off with a “Because I said so!” tone of voice(text?) before I could even think about being “softer” on clients.

Surprisingly it’s paid off – as it turns out clients in my market like to know that a freelancing professional is assertive enough to know and state her mind. They don’t want simpering, apologies and gentleness. They want someone who is firm, assertive and tough when she needs to be and nurturing as necessary.

Sound familiar?

There are all sorts of writing – and all sorts of good writing.

Once upon a time I felt like the world was ending if I got caught in a grammatical mistake. I worked hard to separate myself from writers at a level I considered less capable, although as a teacher I tried not to look down on abilities (since I see a range of talent every day in emerging minds), but rather on how niches of the marketplace are set up and the lack of business aplomb some would-be master writers lacked.

Over the years, it’s become more and more obvious that there are tiers of writing. I don’t have to be at the very tippity top and I don’t need to criticize those closer to the bottom. I’ve found a comfortable place for now.

Cheap writers are cheap for their own reasons and they have nothing to do with me or the market as a whole. Likewise the very expensive copywriters or print writers for major publications – not my thing, so I don’t think much about it anymore. Those writers have a set of clients of their own, and often my clients use their services, too – I can’t be everything to everybody after all. I refuse to have my feelings hurt because a client wants killer sales letters or super cheap keyword stuff that I choose not to write.

Is there competition out there? Of course. Just be sure you’re focusing on the right competition and leave the rest alone to write well in a different kind or level of the industry.

The writing market is not stable, nor will it be.

Once upon a time I earned a business degree and one of my favorite lessons I still watch in action was about the business cycle. Every industry has ongoing cycles and there must be constant change and growth to keep the industry and individual companies or providers employed. In the growth part of the industry, money seems to be readily available.

Then, once the market is saturated, there’s a sort of shake out and the stronger players emerge to stick around, but only by changing and adapting to the needs of the market. The weaker companies/writers/employees shake off and go and find new jobs or opportunities.

As a writer, I started online more than six years ago, and I still consider myself a relative newbie to the game. A lot has changed in six years, and part of riding the waves is watching the industry and adapting to it with new offerings, new clients and new marketing angles to stay above the fray. I would argue we’re in a form of shake-out now. The game changed and the stronger players will come out ahead, but only by streamlining and evolving. You might be a casualty of the streamlining in the industry, but it’s just the way the game is played – either drop out of the market or evolve to stake a new place within it.

Always earn more than you need – and save, too.

I made a huge mistake one year. I planned a budget based on future income and I paid for it dearly in the end. What should have been a great year staying home with my babies and writing became a nightmare of bills coming due and some serious cash flow problems. I should have stayed put in my steady job stockpiling cash before making a big leap. I should have eliminated expenses. I should have budgeted in a totally different way, because you’ll never earn enough, especially when you seem to need it the most.

Not surprisingly, about the time we climbed out of that hole and back on top of the personal finance hill, my husband’s business went under and we were right back in cash flow problems and financial stress. I make it a policy now to always market, pitch and gather work that exceeds what I need each month, because there’s always something that comes along to throw me off.

Bottom line: make a budget based on what you’ve earned on average, not on what you think you can earn. Oh, and make a regular savings plan although I’ll be honest – every time I start trying to really save, I get wiped out by some sort of household emergency or a client’s sudden disappearance. But then, hey! It’s all part of the freelance adventure!

“So I was sitting in my cubicle today, and I realized, ever since I started working, every single day of my life has been worse than the day before it. So that means that every single day that you see me, that’s on the worst day of my life.”

There are plenty of reasons to work. The biggest is, of course, money. But let’s pretend for a moment that all jobs paid you enough to live on easily. What job would you pick? What career would you seek out? I can tell you right now it wasn’t power accounting for me. Been there, did the job just fine, but was miserable doing it.

I decided to make the rest of my life a journey of sorts to find the things I enjoy doing and then to make money doing them – as much money as possible, of course. And for the most part I have. I took a huge pay cut to teach at-risk kids and never looked back – ten years later I still love it, and there are ample rewards, if not financial ones.

“If they take my stapler then I’ll set the building on fire.”

And then almost seven years ago I decided to use the other part of my brain for business and I started to write. Some might write for the sake of writing, and I tried that more than a few times over the years, but I found the small business format much more successful and a great deal of fun.

Would I teach and write for free? A juvenile phrasing, but very effective, in all honestly I probably wouldn’t do it for nothing. I have some serious bills to get paid over here and I thrive under my own little capitalistic system. Money is motivation when the sheer pleasure of writing website copy is not. But there’s more to it than that.

“This isn’t so bad, huh? Makin’ bucks, gettin’ exercise, workin’ outside.”

I’ve written frequently about finding balance with the writing, teaching and mothering, especially as a mother who also works outside of the home. Over the summers I just write and hang with my little men, so I know both sides of the working mother lifestyle – the home and the workplace. I still get questioned about having the two jobs, but not as frequently as I used to. Most people have realized that I enjoy having both careers and I’m reasonably successful at both. But it does take some work and some positive self-talk at times to barrel through the tough days.

For example, on Monday I watched my kids take an exam the district put together to get them ready for the new standardized test in my area. The exam they were taking should have marked the end of a grading period, but there was no curriculum on the thing – teach the test, indeed. Annoyance with the stupid test aside, I was fortunate to have almost half a day that I could work at my desk and just keep an eye on the kids testing. I used to time to play with numbers.

“And here’s something else, Bob: I have eight different bosses right now.”

All freelancers have to play with numbers. It’s a maintenance task that I love to do (I do have a business and accounting background, after all), but often I put off because there are only so many hours in the day. I also have my self-employment taxes taken out my teaching paycheck, so I don’t have to file quarterly for the writing. I wouldn’t encourage anyone to put off accounting tasks otherwise.

But we’re coming up quickly on a very special occasion over here – my husband is allegedly going to be getting a nice raise when he’s hired on permanently to a computer company in this area. He’s been contracting for the company for about nine months now.

So I played with the numbers. I only have eight months left of childcare payments. Big savings there starting this summer. I’m almost finished paying off one of those zero-interest loans on a much needed sofa. More savings there. Then I factored in the raise we’re hoping for and realized that in about a year I will only “need” to make about a third of what I do now to maintain the lifestyle we’re accustomed to.

“It’s not just about me and my dream of doing nothing. It’s about all of us.”

That’s a very big deal, and one we’re working hard to reach – we cancelled cable since we can watch shows online. We condensed cell phone plans to cut bills, and in another eight months I’m going to be freed from a lot of the financial obligations I’ve had to meet with my various careers for the past few years. I texted my husband, “We’re almost there!”

It was a clarity moment for me. I’ve been working hard for years because I enjoy writing, but also because I need the income while my husband builds a new career. Now that phase of my life is drawing to a close, and guess what! I don’t have to write very much in just a few short months. But I will. Hell, I’ll probably write more because I’ll be free of the money worries and stress that have driven the career for so long. I’m once again enjoying a job that I would (but certainly don’t have to) do for free.

I hope the same is true for many of you, especially my fellow moms working at home to supplement the family income.

And just what is the difference? If you don’t know, you’re certainly not alone. Even Spell Check doesn’t know the difference. It’s a trivial thing, and most people don’t care. But I do.

Let’s review:

“Yeah” – Yeah, it’s, like, teenager talk. “Yeah” is pronounced yah-uh. This is not a celebration word. This isn’t something you’d say when a friend has a new grandbaby born on her birthday (as the email I received told me). It’s slang. It means “yes” or “whatever.” Sometimes we even use it with “so” to make it even more casual (or obnoxious), “Yeah, so, I was bored.” Big freakin’ deal.

“Yea” – Hey, everyone, let’s vote. Do you vote yea or nay? “Yea” sounds like may, hay or even yay (which we’ll get to in a minute), but it means an old-fashioned “yes.” It is the oldest of the collection and was the root of all versions of yes words today. “Yeah”, which means yes, definitely derived from “yea”, which also means a more formal yes, but then so did an exclamation of excitement that is almost never used correctly.

“Yay” – Yay! We’re finally using “yay” correctly! Ironically as I type this, Microsoft Word is trying to correct me. It doesn’t think that “yay” is a word. Apparently I should use “yap” instead, but I won’t. I think we all know Word isn’t right all the time. If you’re excited, “yay” is the word to correctly use according to what we consider “proper” English. “Yea” gives you a vote and “yeah” is just agreeing – only “Yay!” can really convey true enthusiasm.

My challenge to you: Pay attention to just how often these words are mixed up, flipped around and blatantly misused. At the same time, you might try to avoid misusing them yourself.

Yay! Yeah and yea are finally sorted out!