Today has been *a lot*.

Photo copyright Aji, 2025; all rights reserved.

October first. Hard to believe the year's already almost over, but here we are. My honey brought me flowers; they're the perfect color for this month, and they smell so lovely.

Today has been a lot, and it's been nonstop. This morning, I saw Stormy and Cricket take off suddenly, running low to the ground, full tilt, chasing something at top speed. I took off after them [which isn't saying much, more hobbling than running for me], because if it was the pup who ran away from a rollover down the highway the other night, I didn't want them either chasing it onto the highway or bullying it here.

It wasn't. It was Coyote, and a big one, and I've never seen one run so low or so fast [and I've seen a lot of them over the years]. Apparently, he tried to grab Emerald, one of our Australorp chickens, and they caught him at it. Fortunately for Emmy, she, like the the other girls, is molting right now, so he grabbed a mouthful of tailfeathers . . . and that was all he got. He did manage to pull some out by the calamus; given the clumps scattered around in four different areas, giant amounts, I thought for sure he'd gotten Jade, Emmy's sister, who was missing. I looked everywhere, but no more feathers, no blood trail, no chicken, nada. I had work to do, so I got back to it; I took a break around 1 PM and we both searched everywhere. As I was heading off toward the south, I saw a shadow slip alongside the studio so I went that way, and sure enough, there was Jade, blinking in the bright sunlight. She had apparently been hiding underneath all the troughs and other gear behind the studio . . . for four and a half hours.

So all is well on that front, but at the same time, we've got to be more watchful, which means less time to do all the thousand and one things we both have to get done. I've been on the go all day, searching for the chickens, laundry, linens, working on specific household projects, all my usual work. The steroid shot seems to have helped,  not just my shoulder but generally working through the rest of my body and helping my other joints, too. But I did not, as I was hoping to do, escape the steroid headache. It took until this afternoon to break through, but it's here in full force now. Steroids work well for me, but they're absolutely miserable.

In the meantime, I've GOT to bring in sales, and I've got to do it regularly, at least, if not actually daily. That holiday creative season effectively begins today, and we're both already running 16 hours a day, 7 days a week. And it'll be that way until the end of the year. He also has to finish the last half-dozen or so commissions that are in the works [all of which are in various stages of completion] 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; hell, last week, set us back about $1K in cash, between the repair and he guys and scrips and medical stuff]. 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. 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.