Messengers and messages. A lot of uncertainty at year's end. Sales/shares needed.

Photo copyright Aji, 2017; all rights reserved.

She was in the aspen this morning, a magpie a couple of branches away. She let me get remarkably close, considering how skittish her clan usually is. She gave me this.

In our way, flickers are messengers. We had no idea this morning how many messages there would be today. 

River will be leaving for Cuba early Tuesday morning, but he's leaving for Albuquerque tomorrow. We had to make arrangements to meet him to get his spending money to him for the trip (we had planned just to give it to him on Sunday when he came here to work, but apparently they wanted everyone in ABQ a day or so early, and he's going down earlier yet to stay with his brother). His mom is supposed to be coming home tonight, if all goes well, but it sounds as though they don't really know what happened with her the other morning, whether it was indeed a small stroke or something related to her cancer or something else entirely.

We had several other errands to run, and of course, with my current health issues, that means I have to go along. If I'm feeling really unsteady, I sit in the truck; if not, I make my way around slowly. I did remarkably well today, considering that when we're out, I have no O2 access. At the grocery store, we ran into a friend whose sister is gravely ill, and it turns out to connect up with my own course of treatment in some odd ways, so I have info to send to her now. And then we just learned, an hour or so ago, that another friend suffered an enormous loss on Christmas morning, so that's where our hearts are right now.

December seems an increasingly cruel month, but I don't think that's the message. The world is hugely unfair, but I suspect that's not the message either. I'm not sure what our flicker girl intended for us this morning, but I suspect it's a combination of gratitude for what we are granted each day and conviction that we are here to help others. 

One of our resolutions will be to step it up on both counts.

With what's been going on with me, every morning that I open my eyes to see the light is the greatest of gifts. Every day that I have with Wings, to love each other, is the greatest of gifts. And the fact that we finally do both in the warmth and safety of a home? I have no words.

But there's a lot of uncertainty at year's end. For now, we still need to make sales, and they will be harder than usual not merely because Christmas is essentially over, but because there is no real tourist traffic, much less spending. Today was the busiest we've seen in town all season, and it doesn't hold a candle to the crowds of just a few years ago. We will make it through this last week of the year now, but beyond that, we don't have what normally gets us through the rest of the winter (and the weather will change, even if it's only to get really, really cold), much less for the emergency medical expenses of the last six weeks (which included a new bill today for nearly five figures), forget what remains to be done on the house for now. 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. Merry Christmas to those who celebrate it, 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.