Christmas flowers.

Photo copyright Aji, 2023; all rights reserved.

Christmas flowers. Wings brought these home for me a few days ago, when my pain levels were causing me such agony. Today, the red lily in the bunch began to open. He knows that lilies are my favorite, and he always tries to find me the bunch that has at least one in it. This one is beautiful, and it's perfect that it should open now.

For the second day in a row, my left knee is inexplicably better. On Wednesday, it felt as though my body was literally breaking apart around me; today, there's still extreme pain all over, but nothing like that. And there's been only one change since Wednesday night, which tells us something, at least.

Tree is up. Some of the lights are on, but the third strand was dead. Wings found the indoor/outdoor ones today, and they're airing out outside right now. I'll put the rest on this evening, probably, and then we can get the rest of the decorations up. Christmas for us is typically Christmas Eve to Epiphany [or beyond], because our work means that we have no time to experience it, never mind enjoy it, in the weeks leading up to the actual day.

Of course, even that doesn't give us a respite from current circumstances.  And given how terrible a year this has been sales-wise, through it all I still have to make sales, of course. We've had a half-dozen now since T-Day, but we'll need to sell a lot more between now and year's end, obviously. My Patreon for the month is still down ~$250 at the moment [that's how much it was short on the December 1st payout for subscriptions for the month of November, and so far, all of those still haven't been paid]. My guess is that those won't materialize later in the month; that will be the penalty [or one of them anyway] for taking a vocal stand about the genocide being perpetrated against Palestine and its people now. Of course, we haven't brought in anywhere nearly enough sales all year across the board, even before recent developments that require a moral stand of us. It's grim.

And aside from all of that, I also need to bring in at least $6K in sales between now and year's end to cover tax prepayments, and we haven't hit the $1K mark on that yet. Normally, I would've been paying them quarterly, but not this year; we haven't had enough sales to do that, and I'm behind on everything else, too, all while my illness worsens seemingly by the day. Until those prepayments are off my desk, I can't relax, can't do anything other than push to get them covered. I really need help. As always, all the links are listed below, and sales are the most important:

• Sales here; 
• Testimonials here; 
• Amazon wishlist here (priorities now are Wings's Flex-Tape, and especially the vacuum, because mine has died a complete and ignominious death, and if I don't vacuum every single day, the dog hair takes over completely); 
• Patreon here;
• Ko-fi here.

There's lots of fabulous work on the site, and there will be much more in the days to come [EIGHT NEW PIECES a few nights ago [one sold], plus two new ones a couple of nights before that]. The way this year has gone, things will still be grim for a good while and the holidays are already 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.