Incredible work.

Photo copyright Aji, 2022; all rights reserved.

That's Wings's newest, completed only late yesterday. I'll have a full gallery entry up and a pointer post here in a while. It's incredible work, and the feather detail is just extraordinary.

All the rest of the work here yesterday and today is incredible for other reasons, in both the accepted and the very literal senses of that word. We've got the dangerous winds back, and the fires are still raging. Now there's worry about the Cerro Pelado Fire over in Jemez, which apparently started getting away from them last night. Supposedly the fire chief for the city of Los Alamos has asked to put everyone on evac alert now.

Yes. Los Alamos. Where they do the nuclear stuff. And where they've already been shown over and over again to have really lax containment practices.

And that's not that far away from us. When you have twenty-foot winds, they can race across plains and foothills in nothing flat.

Our bigger worry, though, is a spark igniting everything locally because some jackass couldn't be bothered. A tossed cigarette butt, a dragging chain, a spark from a straight pipe — any one of those can burn whole worlds to the ground here now. Some we're living under this existential threat now, too, on top of the 1,200-year drought that has the land dying of thirst and the unchecked pandemic in one of three red zones in the state now.

And on top of all that, I have to keep us going while I can barely walk. I have to figure out how to pay multiple four-figure payments for '21 and quarterly '22 taxes, plus the presumably full protocol on the new therapy, which is $4,500 by itself (across 9 visits). Cash.  The taxes are cash, too; we don't have plastic.

And then, of course, there was my eye appointment last week, eight months overdue by now. I had prepared myself for a four-figure bill, which it was . . . but it was DOUBLE what I had anticipated. Two rounds of exams, one of them classed as "medical," plus contacts (with which my eyesight is MUCH better than with glasses) and glasses needed as back-up. Meanwhile, my Patreon is down by nearly $100 this month, and sales have been . . . few and far between, to put it mildly. And without plastic, we have to pay cash in full for everything, so all that is money that's completely gone in two big chunks. and I have GOT to bring in some sales to replace it.

But I'm increasingly disabled, and I can't work if I can't get the pain under control, or get back my ability to walk [mostly] unhindered. That's the point of the therapy; rewiring my brain to lower my pain response and let my body start finding ways to heal a little. So I need to find a way to do this. I'm desperate for sales at this point, but I need help. Links are here:

• Sales here; 
• Testimonials here; 
• Amazon wishlist here (priorities are first and foremost, the other ladder, the Thermacell lanterns [the flies are already out, so the mosquitoes won't be far behind], and the liquid soaps, which prevent our hands from cracking and bleeding given that we're forced to wash them fifty times a day;
• Patreon here;
• Ko-fi here.

We're still hoping to put aside enough for a new well when the ground thaws enough to drill in the spring, too, Nah, we've given up on the well. No one's available to drill before the latter half of summer, and the tax burden means we would never be able to afford it anyway. But it's perhaps even more of a good time to make a purchase, because Uncle Sam is a vindictive colonizer, and my current stress levels about paying it all are off the charts. And there's lots of fabulous work, so please share all of the links. 

All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2022; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.