These are storms that deliver only dust. Oh, we got maybe fifty drops, no more. Not even enough to settle the old dust, much less cope with the new generated by that front's winds.
It feels like a metaphor for everything right now. I'm back into survival mode, and everything that comes with it. If I don't bring in steady sales this week and in the weeks to come, we don't make it, and this falls on me to keep all the wheels turning and functioning.
All the rest is from yesterday's post, born of desperation. I've already had to pay out $200 this morning, most of it a bill at the drop-dead date and the rest to the vet for the pups' boosters. I'm going to have to shell out another $100 or more this afternoon to ship some existing orders. And then . . . what? I have no idea.
This has been a terrible year by any measure, for nearly everybody. But it's been really bad for us. The drought is killing us, by killing the land. The image in yesterday's post is what I managed to salvage from the garden last week the day before the snow hit (plus a couple of larger squashes I put into the soup over the weekend; we're still waiting to see whether anything else will survive). That's not going to go very far when it comes to feeding us.
The bigger issue is that the pandemic has killed everything else, and nobody, at any stage of government, is invested or even interested in keeping our peoples, specifically, alive. We had some reserves, but they're all gone now. Why? The short answer is that too many people have needed our help, too many deaths, too much illness, too much unemployment, too many evictions, too many crises and catastrophes. And you can't in good conscience sit on it when people are at this kind of risk.
But now, that puts us in a huge bind. If literally nothing else hits, we have literally just enough to pay the three outstanding regular monthly bills due (one of which is the last of my medical stuff, a monthly medical loan payment, from my two brushes with death three years ago). There's nothing else. I paid that fourth bill today, along with the pups' boosters. And aside from all the usual things that crop up? At some point, I have to have my car towed in and fixed. And I have four figures' worth of quarterly tax payments due in October, and I cannot rest until I know that's covered, because that's the one that will show no mercy. The tax bill is literally making me ill, because right now? I can't cover any of it.
We need help. I'm not asking for donations; there are too many people worse off than us, people who don't know where their next meal is coming from, who very shortly may not have (or already don't have) a roof over their heads. But this pandemic has killed tourism for Indigenous artists like Wings, and has killed everyone's sales. Businesses are closing left and right here, and we're blessed to be able to work out of our home, but still, sales are, in relative terms, down to nothing.
You can help by sharing our links. You can especially help if you're in the market for high-end, Spirit-infused Indigenous wearable art, for yourself or as a gift, by considering Wings's work for purchase. It's back-to-school season, even if remotely in some places, with all the events that that entails; birthdays come and go year-round; Halloween and Thanksgiving and Christmas especially will all be here before we know it.
The links are here:
And making sure everything's covered? That part of it is all on me, no matter how sick I am, no matter how much pain I'm in, no matter how little sleep I get. And with this hanging over me, I'm getting precious little sleep now. We need to be able to continue to help folks, and we're going to keep on doing it. But to do that, and to keep our own heads above water, we need to bring in sales closer to normal rates. Please help us do that if you can. Thanks.
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