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| Photo copyright Aji, 2020; all rights reserved. |
When you remember you're home now.
They've only been coming since 2015 or '16, but this pair comes every year now, between April and June or so. It's the same pair, because they're clearly comfortable now being fairly close to us. This was last night, just past the juniper trees to the northeast of the arbor. Not far from the house, in other words.
Kind of how I felt about four o'clock this morning, waking up from a god-awful nightmare. I think the cavalier way whiteness is treating this pandemic, over and above how it treats us generally, is getting to my subconscious more than I thought. I mean, I know not to expect anything good, but at some point, it starts wearing more than a little thin on the spirit.
And the hits just keep coming.
We paid off 2019's taxes two nights ago. The $3,300 I've set as a goal? Will cover that balance for 2019 and the first two quarters of 2020. If I can just sell one or two of Wings's big pieces, we've got it handled until October's payment comes due. None of that allows, of course, for all the costs coming shortly.
And they're already here. We basically shot our whole monthly donation budget on the first day of the month, and then some, but it was for an Indigenous recipient dealing with a real emergency. Also, one of the washer/dryer hoses began leaking suddenly two nights ago, and while it sounds simple, it's not; it's one of those things that will require a plumber to fix. We do laundry nearly every day, just because of the nature of the daily work here, but also now because any exposure to the outside world requires it. So Wings texted him this morning, and we'll see when he can get out here, but the upshot is that we need to have take care of all of the existing problems from the old plumbers' negligence while he's here to avoid repeated exposures down the road, so it's going to be a big bill. Well into three figures, at least. We need sales badly now, so please share the links, and if you've been thinking about buying something for a while? Now would be the time. Because there's more. Of course.
Several days ago (over a week now?), my laptop blew an A/C port, which means 1) I can no longer cool it while running it, and 2) if I need to plug any kind of USB thing into it, I have to take it to battery power. In the process, it borked both my sleep mode AND my e-mail, so if you've sent me a message and haven't heard from me, that's why; I can get incoming, but can't send outgoing. I tried to fix that the other day, got it to work briefly, but now? Who knows? It seems to be hosed all over again. Tonight will be spent trying to get it to work again. It's all complicated by the fact that, without that extra port, I have to stop using the laptop after short periods of time to let it cool, which is really disruptive to any kind of real work. And today, it suddenly blew up the post I was working on half-way through it, and despite autosave and a supposed one-button restore function, I had to restore two hours' worth of work manually. [No, I did not touch anything. The screen suddenly jumped, it refreshed itself to to very first version with no text, and would not let me restore a thing. I'm at the end of my rope on it, and I cannot be without a computer. It's our whole livelihood, wrapped up in this little metal envelope-type thing.]
On top of all of that, my camera is on its last legs, there's no such thing as a bread machine anywhere (the one I really want, and cheaper, too, is this one, but out of stock until mid-June everywhere, apparently) and barely any paper towels to be had. We can't get the scrip for Miika unless and until the vet can come out and see her in person, and that may not even be on the 4th. The mower repair Thursday was just shy of $500, cash on the barrelhead. We still have to pay Ivan to till and disc and plant the fields. And we still don't know what our taxes are going to be (and no, we have NOT gotten any stimulus check, natch). Add onto all of that my current wild autoimmune flare (thanks for nothing, cottonwoods; you really didn't need to do this a month early), and the excruciating pain that is its inevitable result, already here in my joints in full force, and, yeah, I feel like flipping off the world, too.
Anyway, the upshot is that we need to make sales. I think the fields are getting disced next week for planting; that's going to cost. So are the horses' vaxes and spring check-ups, which is tentatively scheduled for May 4th. Farrier's coming out again next month to do the work on Miika that she wouldn't let him do the other day, because the weather had her laminitis flaring and she was in too much pain to put full weight on that hoof to let him do her hind feet (she has to be done in stages, and yes, there will be masking and social distancing via the end of a lead). At some point, the dogs have to go in for their vaxes and so forth. And we both have doctor's appointments, which will be telemedicine via my laptop, assuming it holds, the first week of May. That's a hell of a lot of expense, over and above all the usual monthly expenses, monsoonal patterns of another sort, and I need to cover it somehow, hence the next graf:
Two weeks ago I featured, on Wings's site, some of his most valuable (and highest-priced) works (concha belts, necklace, earrings, etc.). If we could sell them all, we could sock 90% of it into savings and be assured of making it through the rest of the year and into the next, barring disaster. I don't actually have any real hope of doing that, but if you're one of the folks who's been looking at these works and thinking that someday you might want to invest the money in one or more? Now would be the time; it would help ensure our survival through this pandemic and likely to the first of next year, and help us to be able to help other folks in our community here who are going to need it badly. So please, this week especially, share all of our links, because while we're all in isolation? Income is already at virtually nothing, and we can survive the isolation, but not the inability to feed the maw of all the bills. The links are here:
Note: For now, please don't buy anything off the Amazon wishlist; to do so would be crossing a picket line, and some of their workers have struck this morning to fight for safer working conditions because their lives are being put at even greater risk during this pandemic. If you find one of the items elsewhere, wonderful (there's even a wishlist function where you can note that it's been purchased somewhere else).
Other than that, 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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