After a terrible day, the chicken still lives. I'm hanging on by my fingernails. Sales badly needed now, and subscribers and shares, too.

Photo copyright Aji, 2018; all rights reserved.

Last night, near the end of a long and terrible day. Today . . . ? I don't know.

Bent-Beak (that's her nickname, derived from the fact that, when they were a few days old, one of her sisters apparently stepped on her head at the bottom of a chick pile, and her face and beak have always been slightly off-kilter) is still alive. She's moving around, but too traumatized to come out from beneath the coop. They tore off most of her comb, too. She's responsive to my voice, and her eyes are clear and alert; I don't think she's in as much pain physically as she is psychologically. I know I'm still traumatized from witnessing it.

Chasing them yesterday threw me into a relapse, and I woke up sometime after midnight with a raging migraine on top of it all. And as I said yesterday, on top of all of that, Wings came home with the truck dying, and I don't even know whether we can finish off the stairs next week, much less fix the truck. Replacing it's out of the question. I can't get the medical care I need, I don't know whether I'm going to live or die from one day to the next, and I am being hounded constantly by bill collectors and I just can't anymore. I don't think we're going to be able to get the stairs finished next week, and I'm at my wits' end about all of it.

The rest is cut-and-paste.

There are a lot of ways to help out. First, obviously, is sales; purchases of Wings's work (and/or work by the other artists whose art we carry) is always the first option, and it was the baseline for the construction in the first place. [And next week will be their last, most likely, because he don't have the cash to pay them beyond that for the labor — and right now, it's virtually all labor.] Second is subscribing to my Patreon page, which gets updated regularly with really cool imagery and a good amount of really good writing; if you now for September, you won't be billed until October 1st. Below there's also a link for "coffee," which allows folks to make small donations, and a couple of wishlists for keeping the animals in kibble and filling out needs around the house. In the middle is the link to Wings's PayPal account, and no, I won't turn away any donations, because we have to get this done and I have to have some peace of mind over it because I have none over my own survival these days). The only fundraising we'll be doing is right here; nowhere else. So here are all the links; please share them around, and if you are able to purchase, subscribe, donate, whatever, we'd be profoundly grateful:

• 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).

That all I've got. I'm going to be back under the gun for the next several weeks. Thanks to everyone in advance. 

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.