Lights! And six salvaged ornaments. Mourning, and joy. And sales/shares needed.

Photo copyright Aji, 2017; all rights reserved.

The tree is lit! And all half-dozen of my salvaged ornaments are hung. So many lost, like so much of my life. 

Of our lives. Just before 4:30 this morning marked the ninth anniversary of the moment my father-in-law walked on. I loved Nizise so much; there was none of the baggage that I had with my own family, just the chance to spend time with him, hear his stories, honor and respect him. I miss him every single day. We both do. But at this moment, he's happy for us. There is mourning tonight, and there is joy, too.

There's a lot for us to celebrate this Christmas. Most of it has to do with the fact of our love, and our life together, and our home — and also the very simple fact that, after the events of recent weeks, I am alive. Every day is a new battle, and hard as it is, every day I win it just by that simple measure alone. And Wings and I being able to love each other? That's the best gift of all.

But it's a tough time. As I said last night, sales are way, WAY off this season. This is what usually gets us through the next four to six months, the holiday sales, and they're way down. Part of it is the mess that is our so-called government, with the fraud at the alleged top and the great swath of destruction he and his minions are carving through the country. Part of it is that that hedge-fund jackass built that stupid lift on the peak and blasted the mountain with explosives, and the spirits are now thoroughly pissed, and there is NO snow, so there is no tourism, either. I have no idea how we'll meet even minimal expenses, much less how we'll help our friend get down to her cancer treatment appointments. We couldn't do it this week, and her truck remains without a clutch. Forget what remains to be done on the house for now. We need to make some sales. A lot of them. But sales are not just what's going to keep me alive and Wings healthy; it's going to help other folks, 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. 

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, even in spite of my terrible depression. 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.