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| Photo copyright Aji, 2019; all rights reserved. |
It's a cold, hard world out there.
I don't have it in me today to add much, so it's mostly cut-and-paste. Eighty bucks yesterday. A bill for $400 today for the dental, and that's just the start; it's going to be THOUSANDS to get him where he needs to be. And it has to be done a diabetic cannot have his teeth in the shape that damned clinic keeps leaving them. Or, rather, putting them; they introduced the infection that put him on insulin in the first place, years ago. It's not real dentistry by any definition, but it does put real lives at risk, and I'm not going to have his be one of them.
And there's everything below. I'm so demoralized at this point I don't know what to do. I cannot conjure thousands of dollars out of thin air, but I'm being told I have to do exactly that. We don't want donations. We want to make sales. But in this country, with everything that's going wrong now? We can't even do that. I am absolutely desperate at this point, and I'm battling the kind of pain that would bring me to my knees except that I cannot kneel from the pain, and I'm way past my wits' end. Everything else is cut-and-paste (and Ona's post will be a repeat, because I do not have the mental resources to write the new one I've been planning). This is the kind of stress that kills people, and I've been living with it so many years it's a miracle that I didn't die two years ago. But I'm at a really low ebb, the kind that makes simple conversation impossible for me to conduct, so you won't be seeing me except for the regular posts until I can work some kind of financial miracle and at least get that stress off me. Which, at the rate things are going, might mean never.
There's still that $2K+ that I have to find a way to pay before the month is out (hell, a lot sooner than that), including today's doctor's and tomorrow's dental appointment for Wings. We don't have it. Any of it. Besides losing a $100/month Patreon patron, some others have not gone through, leaving me another $125+ short on the month. What did pay out has already mostly gone on bills, that remaining hundred-and-something is spoken for on other bills, and still it's not enough. January is a god-awful month, with the Pueblo closure looming and with an unusual number of one-off or every-six-months bills due, and Wings has two [routine] medical appointments this week that will have to be paid up front and out of pocket. I'm also way behind today and still in a hellish amount of disabling physical pain, so the rest is cut-and-paste. Yes, I'm scared. I need to bring in more income somehow. I can't do this at this rate. I try to start each year being hopeful, but reality sets in fast, and if this is going to set the pattern for the year, I have no way of making it all work, and one week in? That's discouraging as hell.
Aside from the bitter cold that usually does show up about now, the first of the year always brings a bunch of new bills (business-related, vehicle insurance, other costs). On top of that, the keyboard on my laptop is giving out fast; one of the nav keys broke entirely yesterday (yes, broke, not just a now-missing key, but the most-used keys have been failing for months now, which is why my typo rate is so much worse). An external keyboard might be a temporary solution, but my pain levels and locations mean that I can't sit at a desk for long; I have to use my laptop literally as a laptop, and there's no way to use an external for that. I don't know what I'm going to do at this point.
This year was also supposed to bring follow-up biopsies for me, starting next month, but we're not doing that now. I'm deferring all follow-up medical testing for now. There is just way too much else that needs paying, with ~ $2K in bills (some one-offs or 6-mont-offs) just this month alone. The only work on the house we're scheduling right now is what we hope will be the last of the plumbing fixes (and we won't be doing that just yet, because there's no money for it). And still I feel guilty with every dollar I spend that's not on bills, which is why things that may seem silly to you remain on the wishlist; we children of grinding poverty can rationalize almost anything for almost anyone else, anyone except ourselves. Meanwhile, the bills come due and the money doesn't. We're waiting for payment on our one holiday commission this year (it's in process; just hasn't arrived yet). One of my Patreon subscribers very kindly informed me a few weeks ago of changed circumstances so that I would not be surprised by their unsubscribing. But it's a $100/month decrease I have yet to be able to replace (but thank you so much to the patron who upped their subscription by $10/month! It's so appreciated). And I have no illusions about the fact that we will still need help to make it through this year. Folks can help in several ways (sales are always preferred), and we really need it now:
Please share everything. Thanks.
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Aji, 2020; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
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