The truck, the horse, and the firebug. It's all going to hell. Sales and subscribers and shares very badly needed now.

Photo copyright Aji, 2018;
all rights reserved.

Well, this month is going to to go right down to the wire as one damn thing after another. I seriously hope things turn over tomorrow, because in addition to being July 1st, it's also Wings's birthday, and I'd like his year to get off to a far better start than these last few months have been. This day, though, has been a disaster. 

First, the truck: That expensive part? Turns out to be the wrong one. The one we really needed, apparently, runs in excess of $1,200, so that's a ::cough: nonstarter, no pun intended. Philip instead replaced all the points and will do his best to keep it running while he trawls salvage yards for a used version, but that's not a sure thing, so there may come a point when we have to lay out that kind of cash. We don't have it now, though, so it's moot anyway.

Shade has something seriously wrong. The problem is figuring out what. It could turn out to be something eminently treatable, but we're not at a point where we can tell. She's undergoing a seemingly endless round of mild colics, and while Wings was running a bunch of errands this morning, I came out of the shower, saw her down again, and immediately set both wrist/hand and ankle on fire getting her haltered and walking her around. The vet, who is dealing with a rash of terrible colics thanks to climate change and the heat and the smoke, has been staying in touch as best she can, and she thinks that the colicky tendencies are related to whatever's wrong with her liver (that's the diagnostic difficulty, which can be both expensive and invasive, so we're trying other things first). Wings has just gone in to the drugstore to get a rectal thermometer, because we now have to start checking her temperature to make sure she's not febrile (she likely is). At any rate, we've both nearly given ourselves heatstroke today trying to deal with stabilizing her, so it hasn't been a good day all the way around.

And, of course, the medical bills aren't going away by themselves (they're just multiplying), and there's no tourism, no powwow, not even a demonstration today (not that we could've gone anyway, given the morning's events, although we wanted to), and most definitely no sales. The arsonist is still running free, though, and that concerns me, because the house is not finished yet. It's finished enough for us to live in it, obviously, but not enough for anyone to be willing to insure it (a little electrical work, the stairs, the remainder of the kitchen that's not finished off yet), and we need to be able to get it insured. The wildfires scare me, but this firebug is scaring me even more. So we have to make sales, I have to get new subscribers (even if I can't write the way I want to on Patreon right now because of the pain and damage to the nerves in my wrist and hand), we have to generate income some damn way. Here are the links and a request to share them, because without more sales and Patreon subscribers I honestly don't know how we get through this:

• My new Patreon, The Interstices (Writing Between Worlds);
• Wings's site, for sales, with new items posted;
• Wings's direct PayPal link;
• A way to buy me coffee (which actually goes to all of our medical bills, which continue to mount);
• Amazon wishlist, which mostly consists of animal and household stuff;
• Partial registry #1, from Bed, Bath and Beyond. There are new kitchen-y things on it now, stuff that I didn't realize we'd need to replace (either because the RV ruined it or because we gave it away when we had to downsize).

A special thank-you to the folks from recent days who have now made it possible to get the truck fixed. Today is the last day to get in on June's Patreon subscriptions, to be billed July 1st; I'd really like to raise another $500 in subscriptions before July is out, just to have a little more to throw to the medical wolves that are constantly at my throat. Now, we've got a lot more that needs to be done, too, and I'm damned if I know how.

All content, including photos and text, are copyright Aji, 2018; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.