Watching the storm building in real time.

Photo copyright Aji, 2020; all rights reserved.

That's what it looks like watching the storm building in real time. That was yesterday afternoon. Today's it's gray, with storms in a monsoonal pattern many months early: intermittent rains heavy, hard, and sometimes mixed with hail (like now, a lot of it), driven horizontally on 40-mph winds and accompanied by the rhythms of thunder and lightning.

I have to subluxed hips and a subluxed pelvis today, and needless to say, wind and weather aren't doing them any good. There's also the rampant pollen; at least three of the aspens no longer have catkins on them, but full strands of pollen blowing everywhere, and our allergies are off the charts. Between all of that and my two very bad episodes this week, my pain levels are also off the charts, and so is the fatigue. And we will have to break quarantine on Friday to deal with prescription nonsense. Taos is reportedly a ghost town, which is as it should be; please, do NOT come to rural areas to visit, and especially stay the entire hell away from all rezes. But we saw this storm building in real time, too, and there's no excuse for the failures of leadership at the federal level and elsewhere in the country right now. People are dying as a direct result, and that's not acceptable. 

Beyond that, my primary source of stress right now is the bills. Sales are nonexistent. I just paid a monster electric bill, because apparently they lost a bill in the mail or some nonsense, and when we thought we were paying the February bill, we were paying January's past-due instead. Between February and March, courtesy of the need to run an electric heater for longer ours in his studio, I shelled out almost $500 in cash today just to get us into April. And with having made only three sales all year, I need to bring in about $4,500 to feel confident of getting through whatever's waiting for us with this pandemic. We've spent far more than we would ordinarily have done over the last six weeks getting ready to quarantine ourselves, because we saw what was coming even if the so-called "leadership" of this country still refuses to acknowledge reality. We also shot what is for us an extraordinary (I mean that word; by any measure, it was A LOT) amount of cash to various folks, mostly Indigenous and disabled, over the last few weeks, precisely because we could see what was coming, and most of them don't have the privilege we do of an isolated home with natural resources and hard experience to help keep us going.

Three sales are not going to keep us alive, and we still have taxes and other expenses to pay. Just to cover all of the outgo over recent weeks, I need to bring in $4,500 fast; I've got to make sure we can get through the rest of the year. So please share all of our links, because while we're all in isolation? Income is going to be next to nothing otherwise, and we can survive the isolation, but not the inability to feed the maw of all the bills. Also, I added some new items to the wishlist, so that breakfast is less boring, and because I'm going to have to return to sewing (supplies, mending, etc., and eventually maybe other stuff for local folks). Oh, and I also added candles back on, because we're going to have to cancel the plumber AGAIN, so there's no fixing the mildew problem until we can reschedule, which may be months out yet; the candles help deal with the smell. Why cancel? Because in his spare time, he was an instructor at the Ski Valley. You know, where a person who should never have been traveling by then in the first place went and exposed everyone. There are some other new items on there, too, things that have always been sort of on my mental wishlist but I cold never justify the indulgence (waffle iron, bread machine). Now they're much less indulgent, given that we're going to be here for a very long while, and bread would be nice occasionally (and so would waffles).

Speaking of sewing, a huge thank-you to whomever took the sewing machine off the wishlist the other night. I've started the process of keeping up my end of the bargain, and the elastic bands and filter layers for making medical masks are already ordered and on the way. Here I can think of at least four facilities that can use them: IHS; our own doctor's office, which is a certified community health care center (and, last I knew, nearly out), the local urgent care center, and the local hospital. Thereafter, I'll use it for our mending and alterations and sewing for tradish purposes.

Meanwhile, I paid the last three bills for the month day before yesterday, and this week, I have to get cracking on our taxes, so there's been a lot more outlay, with a lot more yet to come. As I keep saying, we need sales, very badly. The links are here:

• Sales here; 
• Testimonials here; 
• Amazon wishlist here;
• Patreon here;
• Ko-fi here.

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.