Apparently it's not to be.

Photo copyright Aji, 2024; all rights reserved.

Beneath the lilacs, everybody's happy: dog, chicken, dandelions, grass. Sunny's especially happy, because he has a marrow bone, and a nice soft grassy spot in the shade, all to himself.

Almost eighty already, and I held out hope that today would be nice and warm, but apparently it's not to be. In just the last five or the minutes, the winds have kicked up, and it feels a lot colder than it is.

The bigger problem is that the Forest Service made the incredibly stupid decision to ignite a 900-acre prescribed burn yesterday . . . with blustery winds near day's end, and high winds already in the forecast for Sunday through Tuesday, at least. The smoke pall last night was awful; a spreading fire would be much worse.

As to everything else, well, I'm glad the rest of this week is done. Thursday was terrible; I was extremely ill that night as a result of the inflammation, and once again, I didn't get to sleep until around six yesterday morning [and had to be up a couple of hours later]. And I still have two full weeks of this nonsense left [assuming that getting my chemo dose properly adjusted takes care of a lot of it, which I realize is a big and largely unwarranted assumption, but hope is nothing if not stubborn and stupid], always assuming I make it that long. That, too, is a big and unwarranted assumption at this point.

And as I said yesterday, the really unpleasant part of all this, aside from the pain, I mean, is that it could also be an indicator of something else, something much worse. But we're not going there. Not before we have to, anyway. There's more than enough to worry about as it is: I'm already getting virtually no sleep at all, and the pain is worse every day than it was the day before. And if I'm being honest, it's scary as hell, because when you've dealt with these illnesses as many decades as I have? You know all too well the other, far worse things it could all turn out to be. And things are not right. That much I know for a fact. The question becomes whether "not right" is solvable by suppressing my immune system better, or if it's going to require MUCH higher doses of the same kind of drug, to a rather different end.

All I can do is shove it down as far into the recesses of my consciousness as my brain's pain receptors will allow, and get on with all the work that has to get done. The most important thing, of course, is bringing in sales, and we were fortunate enough to bring in one today, but it's not enough. The estimate for Monday's hose replacement in the truck, ~$170, turned out to be dead on; Wednesday was yet another expense of $312 that I wasn't anticipating but had to be done, in a year in which such expenses have been absolutely endless. And we still have to pay those major medical stuff [and other] expenses later this month [and throughout, "we" means that I am the one who has to figure out how everything gets covered]; there's Wings's ongoing dental; we have some bureaucratic nonsense to take care of; and somehow, and I have GOT to bring in something for taxes. And the other demands on me are just as relentless [the ones that don't, directly, anyway, have to do explicitly with money]; there is no help for any of it, and I am at my wits' end over the latter ones especially. Combined with my illness progressing? I need help.

Meanwhile, my Patreon is still down by more than $700 a month over last year, and as our most consistent source of income, that is what pays our monthly bills like utilities and groceries and gas and so forth. What remains is not going to be enough even for that, never mind the taxes and everything else. Somehow, I have to bring in sales. If you're in the market, now would be a really, REALLY good time. And I did get the four new pairs of earrings up last night, here, here, here [already sold!], and here [these are my personal favorites]. There will be many more pairs to come; he's got 5-7 in process on his workbench already. And as always, all the regular links are listed below, with sales, as always, being the most important:

• Sales here; 
• Testimonials here; 
• Amazon wishlist here (Apparently the FlexTape is the priority now, so I'm told; otherwise, Amazon cards are most important now, because they go to buy things we can't get locally, like the protein mixes for Wings and GF stuff for me and all the cleaning and other household products that people in cities can get but we can't; and also the filters for the air purifiers, because we have only one left and the amount of dust and dirt they take in in these winds is indescribable); 
• Patreon here;
• Ko-fi here.

After such a grim 2023, and with this year starting off MUCH worse (and given that we're already approaching the half-way mark), we really need to get 2024 onto a better footing, so please share all of the links. 

All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2024; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.