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| Photo copyright Aji, 2019; all rights reserved. |
What it looks like here today: snow, low-lying clouds, more storms on the way.
Yes, I know it's a holiday for most of the country. I'm fixing a nice meal, one with plenty of traditional foods (our traditions, that is, despite colonial cooptation): turkey; cornbread and wild rice stuffing; mashed potatoes and gravy; herbed sweet potatoes; homemade cranberry sauce. If I get really ambitious, I might actually do a pie, albeit with canned pumpkin, and I might do frybread as well, to get us through the weekend. Around here, holiday weekends, especially in winter, are a time for leftovers, but also for red chile and frybread or tortillas, and yes, I do make all my own. As a couple, we've always worked to meld our traditions, food and, where appropriate, otherwise. So the stuffing becomes a mix of blue corn (his), wild rice (mine), green onion, cranberries and cherries today (mine), and piñon this year (his). We do this in the rest of our lives as best we can.
And as I said, I know it's a holiday for most folks, but the bills (to say nothing of their collectors) don't take holidays. The rest is all cut-and-paste, because while sales are literally all that matters at the moment, all the rest of the work still has to get done and I'm perpetually behind. [I subluxed my ribs and back overnight, so lots of severe pain and restricted range of motion today, but the work is still there; I'm just slow.] But really, it's SALES.
SALES SALES SALES. That's all it's about now. A lot of y'all don't realize this, but the Pueblo closes for much of the winter, starting usually a month to six weeks after the new year. Even before Christmas, the whole month of December locks vehicles out off the village, and that reduces tourist traffic a lot. Even though we're not physically there anymore, the drop in tourism affects us, too — and the numbers are down all over town and seemingly getting worse every single year.
What folks also don't realize is that this means that holiday sales are what keep us alive, through not just the end of the year but essentially the first six months of the year to come. This is it; this is what the whole year leads up to, and even in off years, Wings would still be filling commissions beginning around the first of October.
This year? NOTHING. None. Zip. Zero. And there are, effectively, fewer than four weeks left of the holiday sales season, because it takes time to make things, to say nothing of shipping them.
I don't know what we're going to do.
I'm back to using my rescue inhaler daily, along with the O2 at night, to deal with the breathing issues attending the sudden cold. My pain levels, especially after putting my body through so much these last few weeks to protect the house, are completely unmanageable now. And I'm looking at potentially canceling my doctor's appointment on the fifth, because . . . nothing is coming in, and we have a winter to get through. For those wondering about my own health issues, see here, although now there's a new wrinkle I'm not even going to bother to try to explain (suffice to say there's no affording treatment); with regard to the work being done, some of the details are here. Folks can help in several ways, and we really need it now:
Please share everything, because I'm suddenly back behind the eight-ball on a whole additional front, and yeah, I'm scared about covering everything and surviving, too. Thanks.
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Aji, 2019; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
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