A lot going on tomorrow. Some folks need our help even more right now, though. Sales/shares/registries (especially sales) needed.

Photo copyright Aji, 2017; all rights reserved.

Even the bridges are frozen and slick. Seems like a good metaphor for life right now; there's just no end to the ways in which you can lose your footing.

::Sigh:: first thing tomorrow morning, I have to have my bloodwork done. Then I'll have to renew the O2 concentrator rental, since the other one's not here. Forget the portable for now. All this was plenty more than enough, believe me.

But . . . sometimes other folks need us more.

Y'all know about the 15-year-old Native kid who works for us on weekends. He's the one who's going to Cuba with that advanced-placement college course group right after New Year's. No, we didn't pay for that; we just connected him up with a sponsor who made sure he could go. Yesterday, he brought his passport to show us. He's so proud, and we're proud of him.

His mom was nearly two hours late picking him up.

It wasn't a big deal; it's not like we were going anywhere. So he just worked for the time that he was here, and we paid him for the extra, of course. We found out this morning, though, why she was late.

The clutch in their old truck was dying; it finally went out last night, apparently. They've gotten a quote for $700 for replacement from a mechanic they know (sight unseen, though; who knows what it'll ultimately be). And we'll have to help them with it, because they need transportation. But the bigger issue at the moment is how long it'll take to get the work done. His mom has cancer — late-stage, both breasts, spread to lymph nodes and bones both. She's undergoing treatment, but the only place she can get it is at UNM in Albuquerque (no insurance, etc.; no access to anything locally, which is frankly a terrible market for those who aren't wealthy). She has to drive down there every week, which is hard on her anyway, but it's her only hope. She's fighting, in the starkest, most literal terms, for her life right now. River's fifteen; he needs his mom. And we have to do whatever we can to help her make it.

I'm not sure yet what that means for this week. It may mean nothing; we may be able to help her get the truck fixed in time. But my own experience with clutches on old vehicles suggests that it'll take a few days just to get a used replacement. She doesn't have that kind of time, and she can't miss her appointment. So the upshot is that if we need to divert the funds we'd planned to use this week for some of my stuff her, that's what's going to happen. Don't worry; we'll make sure I have O2, because right now I can't survive without it. We'll get the bloodwork done. But anything else might have to be delayed, because this woman, who is our friend and who is River's mom, needs to make it, and if she misses a treatment? I can't even think about the ramifications of that. So this is the way it's going to be.  

For now, we need to make some sales. A lot of them. It's not just keeping me alive and Wings healthy; it's helping her, too. Given the circumstances, I'm leaving up the donation link, too, and the registries have some new items on then, mostly lower-priced, to replace stuff damaged by the RV or given away when we first moved into it seven years ago. So please share our links:

• Wings's direct PayPal link;
• Wings's site, for sales;
• Wayfair gift cards, to replenish all the furnishings that the RV has destroyed in one way or another.
• Partial registry #1, from Bed, Bath and Beyond. There are new kitchen-y things on it now, stuff that I didn't realize we'd need to replace (either because the RV ruined it or because we gave it away when we had to downsize).
• Partial registry #2, from Wayfair. Still waiting for them to resolve this fulfillment/shipping problem they have with their site. Even so, I've added some things (kitchen/dining room stuff mostly), most of which are comparatively reasonably priced. Now, it's going to be mostly odds and ends that make this place more liveable, because of the sheer volume of stuff destroyed by too many years in the RV (e.g., by the oven and stovetop, by the wiring, by the water, by the mold, etc.), or that we simply gave away seven years ago because we had no room and no place to put them and despaired of ever being able to use them again. A CHANGE ABOUT WAYFAIR:  NO MORE CROWDFUNDING. Their Web site coding is bad, and it will not permit crowdfunded items to ship. Items purchased outright arrive in two business days, but you can't even get the others out of the warehouse. I've spent the last month fighting with them about shipping the dozen or so things that folks fulfilled, and today's message was finally terse enough that they did the manual override, four whole weeks later, that I knew they could do but simply weren't bothering. But I'll be removing all the crowdfunding options. I'm supposed to keep my blood pressure down these days.

As I've also been saying, I am still catching up, and will be now for a while. But this is the holiday season, and the sales/commissions from these few weeks are what keep us alive throughout the whole long winter and spring months (to say nothing of what's in the offing medically), so please continue to share the links. And please refer folks to Wings's site (and if you have an endorsement, too, so much the better). I'll be trying, slowly but, I hope, steadily, to get caught up over the course of this week. We have some massive expenses coming down the pike, and a lot of testing yet to be done before I'm out of the woods. So please keep sharing all our links. For now, I'm just so damn grateful to be alive, to have a healthy heart, to be back home with the love of my life and our dogs, the whole world is beautiful. Thanks again, to everybody, and we love you all.

All content, including photos and text, are copyright Aji, 2017; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.