A constant state of grief.

Photo copyright Aji, 2023; all rights reserved.

All those beautiful clouds this morning, and this is what's left: much too much blue for what we need. Every day, they say we'll get rain, and every day, it turns into a suffocatingly hot dry mess. It leaves us in a constant state of grief, watching the land dying around us. And that's not helped by other markers of grief invading my thoughts every time I turn around.

I'm glad yesterday's done for another year. There'll be more to come, but that one's in the rearview mirror for now. Of course, reminders are everywhere, especially with this society's murderous, genocidal refusal to deal with the pandemic in even the slightest way. In addition to skyrocketing reported COVID cases [never mind the thousands more that go untested and unreported daily], we now also have a record West Nile virus season on our hands, the largest single number of cases concentrated here, in the local hospital. That's the virus that took our nephew from his family three years ago. It's apparently also a booming year for both hantavirus and plague, and of course wildfire, and people won't even mask for that.

Yesterday was my first time venturing out in over three weeks. Probably the last time for another three (or at least two; I have a doctor's appointment in early September). It's literally taking your life into your hands to be out in public anymore. Besides, for me, having to run errands (run, ha, that's very funny) leaves me completely lame the next several days, and this time was no exception. I have dislocations in one knee, the opposite hip, both feet, and my right thumb, and yesterday aggravated them all.

But the work still has to get done. As I said on Monday, I managed to get two big things paid last week, and we paid the third big one then (but over $100 more than I was expecting, thanks to rates raised drastically since last year). I think  we'll be okay though the end of the month, but with my Patreon down by a few hundred a month coupled with the platform's carelessness in switching to a new payment processor without notifying anyone (and thereby causing a lot of banks to label the whole platform as fraudulent), it seems that I can probably expect a much lower payout yet on September first. We have to make up a LOT of ground financially over the next four months. A LOT.

As I've been saying, there's a lot of new work on the site: Last week, I posted Wings's six new works (2 rings; 4 pairs of earrings [one of which is sold]); all items share the same price point, $425 each. And, of course, there are the new gemstone bead trios, one completed just the other day and featured here. The other night, I got the new cuff posted here, and it's incredible (and it's today's feature, too); selling that alone would do a lot right now. He also has several new pairs of earrings in the design stages, probably a half-dozen or so. Sales have been terribly slow all year, and now we are quite literally at the point of not being able to make it if we can't keep pace weekly with steady sales (never mind the dental stuff; he's unilaterally decided to push that back yet again). Given the Patreon mess and my health issues, I don't have any way to solve any of that outside of making sales, so I'm begging folks, please: All the links are listed below, so please share:

• Sales here; 
• Testimonials here; 
• Amazon wishlist here (apparently the sponges are unavilable, but the other two things I need that I can't get here are the Bar Keeper's Friend coffeemaker cleaner and descaler; we're entirely out of both); 
• Patreon here;
• Ko-fi here.

There's lots of fabulous work on the site, and things are grim here, so please share all of the links. 

All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2023; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.