Hell on every level.

Photo copyright Aji, 2025; all rights reserved.

Tonight's sunset. Reminds me of jack o'lantern eyes, which winds up being more apt than you know on so many levels.

I imagine some of that cloud cover is indeed smoke, which is what it looks like; they're apparently doing a prescribed burn in Valle Vidal. And that brimstone-y look? Fitting for a day that's been absolute hell on every level. [And tomorrow's going to be more of the same, and that's abslutely the last day I'm doing this for a while, because if I don't get a break, I'm going to break.]

I don't know how I'm going to keep this up. Two hours' sleep, essentially; I got to bed sometime well after midnight, to sleep after one, I think . . . and something woke me up just after two. No idea what it was; could've been pain, could've been dogs. I tried to go back to sleep, and then the dogs came up demanding to be let out, and that killed it. No chance of sleep after that, no matter how hard I tried. I finally dropped off sometime around six, I think, but I had to be awake around seven, so . . . . And aside from the blinding fatigue, my pain levels are completely off the charts now. Ever had mono? It's like having mono and a really bad case of the flu simultaneously, plus feeling like you've been run over by a semi, ever joint system in your body broken, or at least feeling like it is.

This is my normal right now.

On top of that is everything else that's gone wrong today, including a repair that was originally scheduled for the end of October; they called and wanted to come today, and it turned into hours of waiting and problems upon problems [not the guys' fault; their bosses' fault], and another $500 cash that I have to shell out tomorrow for this that I was expecting to be maybe half that, and . . . . It's endless, and I cannot keep this up, especially without any sales coming in.

I also can't keep up the constant stress of the demands on me, money, time, constant nonsense, whatever. My disease progression is making it impossible to get even the most basic stuff done, and I can't afford that right now, even less than usual. The holiday creative season effectively begins on October first, and we will both be running 16 hours a day, 7 days a week, until the end of the year. He also has to finish the last half-dozen or so commissions that are in the works before he can turn his attention to cranking out holiday inventory in any real way. And we need to bring in sales now, both to cover his work building new inventory and simply to meet all the costs of this stupidly expensive year [on top of last year being the same]. If we could just continue to make regular weekly sales, we'd be fine . . . but we need to make those sales now, and so far, that's not happening. It's been two weeks since our last sale, and that's not going to cut it. There's a lot of gorgeous new work up, but I've got to sell it for it to make any difference. This kind of stress is also not helping my health. I need that to change now, and fast. And to that end, links are here [with the LaminaSaver back on the wishlist, because Miika goes through it at a rapid clip]:

• Sales here; 
• Testimonials here; 
• Amazon wishlist here [priority at the moment is more of the LaminaSaver for Miika];
• Patreon here;
• Ko-fi here.

And we do still need to make those regular weekly sales, so please share all of the links. We really do need this to be a better month than what we've had so far this year.

All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2025; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.