We cannot catch a fucking break.

Photo copyright Aji, 2024; all rights reserved.

That's what's going on right now.

We felt so good last night, after a successful trip, culminating in finding out that, whatever else may be terribly wrong with me, at the very least it is not the cancer it so closely resembles.

Went to bed about 11:30, and everything was fine. Sometime between then and 4:50 this morning, the well failed. No water. None.

We were lucky to get hold of a local guy who's done work for us before; he inherited his dad's plumbing business, and he knows his stuff. Wings and his dad went to school together, so he's known the family approximately forever. At any rate, we were hoping it was just the well-pump capacitor, but they've replaced it, and . . . nothing. The next possibility that's not roughly world-ending for us right now is the pressure switch, which is the contraption at the right end of that long rod in the photo. At the moment, they've gone into town to get one, and will be back to replace it. If that works, we're good.

If it doesn't, we're fucked.

Because that will mean it's the well pump itself. And we just replaced that fewer than nine years ago. It should have lasted us the rest of our lives. But if it's bad, it's going to be long process, days on end with no water, and well into four figures to fix it.

And once again, all the progress I've managed with sales is set back.

We cannot catch a fucking break, and I am so exhausted I just want to cry. And I don't dare, because if I start, I won't be able to stop. This year has just been too fucking much, eight straight months of one hugely expensive disaster after another, none of them our doing, and none of them anything we can kick down the road for later.

So now I've got this on top of all the other work and bureaucratic and other tasks ahead of me this week and next, and I'm trying to fit everything around the pain [yes, that hasn't improved any, and likely won't] and fatigue and around the desperate need to bring in immediate high-volume sales now. We have come to the point where the IRS is openly hassling us, threatening us, demanding money we don't have on a timetable we can't meet. That leachfield/septic failure early in the year, coupled with the complete lack of sales for months on end, set the stage for this mess, and our expenses have only gone up since then. I have to hold out at least a grand for my imaging later this month [because if something truly is wrong, catching it now could be the difference between living or dying, and I'm not cavalier enough to ignore that], and at least another grand on the truck, when ever that stupid part comes in. But I was only able to send them a token payment in April [see $10K leachfield failure], and now I have to give them a much bigger chunk. And then there's this mess.

I'm going to need to bring in at least $4K-$5K a lot more than that in sales this week alone, and that feels like such an impossibility that I don't even know where to begin. I mean, other than cry, which I did a few days ago, but now it's time to get to work. One thing I do know is that, barring a miracle, the roof repair is out of the question. And that's horrible, but here we are.

I HAVE GOT TO BRING IN SALES NOW, NO MATTER WHAT.

There is a ton of new work on the site from just the last couple of weeks: 

• Three new cuffs, two set with incredible turquoise focals, one solid silver; go here, here, and here.
• Six pairs of new concha floral earrings in the Earrings Gallery here [larger are garnet, golden rutilated quartz, and malachite; smaller are amber, carnelian, and iolite];
• Art Deco Labradorite cuff here;  
• triangle wire youth bangle here; 
• Art Nouveau vine pattern-wire youth bangle here; 
• small Art Nouveau pattern-wire bangle pair here; 
• malachite butterfly/leaf-wing earrings here; 
• a big solid silver classic cuff here; 
• ten new pairs of the gemstone-bead earrings are also up in the Earrings Gallery;
• and another new cuff is also here. 

There's more on the way very soon. And I need to sell them all, because I still need to make sales at a rate of at least two per week for the rest of the year for us to catch up [and that's just breaking even; I'm already behind on that, which means I need to make FOUR sales this week just to catch up]. So: GO BUY! PLEASE! Links are here:

• Sales here; 
• Testimonials here; 
• Amazon wishlist here (Amazon cards are probably most useful at this point); 
• Patreon here;
• Ko-fi here.

After such a grim year, this one already far worse than the last, 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.