Spirit Moon rising for the new year. Sick dog and chicken, in addition to me. Sales/shares very much needed going into 2018.

Photo copyright Aji, 2017; all rights reserved.

Last day of the calendar year, and one day off a full Spirit Moon (sometimes called Great Spirit Moon). I hope it brings us all a good year, and a better world. Spirit knows we need it.

So this morning began with She-Wolf having been sick — really sick, the kind of sick that could be nothing or could be something very, very bad. Not sick enough, probably, to be considered an emergency by the vet on New Year's Eve, and she seemed to be feeling just fine otherwise and in very good spirits, so we're monitoring closely. She seems to be a bit better tonight, so fingers crossed that by Tuesday she's clearly okay. 

Ember will probably not be so lucky.

She's the chicken who became egg-bound a couple of years ago, and we spent days working to save her, which we obviously did. She's been doing very, very well until two days ago, and she seemed to be having some discomfort, but then after I worked on her a little, seemed to snap out of it. Last night, though, she put herself to bed inside the coop instead of on top of it, which is where she and her sister Dahlia always go when they're not feeling well. Today, she wouldn't come out, and by tonight, she was clearly cold and uncomfortable. She's now in an old plastic shopping basket lined with a very old throw rug, over next to the big woodstove, which is going strong. And she seems to be feeling a bit better, just being warm, but I've seen the signs often enough over the years to be pretty sure that she doesn't have long. She's one of the five remaining chickens from the 2014 bunch, several of which came, apparently, from a breeder with some . . . hmm . . . lacking skills or something. At any rate, genetics appears to be at the heart of their issues. And having saved her once from the egg-binding problem, she's been more at risk anyway, but she's nearly five years old, and we extended her life for about two and a half years beyond what, by any measure, we expected when that happened to her in 2015. Still, it's breaking my heart. but at least she's with us, and she's warm.

For me, the day's been a mix, physically. Second day on the new med; still not a lot of sleep, but a little; O2 sat levels a tiny bit better overall but pulse rate still spiking too much; lots of reactive issues; and trip to the grocery store, even with my cane, resulted in Wings sending me out to the truck while he checked out, because there were no chairs and he could tell my exhaustion and balance issues were doing me in. This stuff is hard. Taking a few steps spikes my pulse rate and wears me out. It's not even a question of taking it easy; it's that the most basic stuff is suddenly impossible. I hide as much of it as I can from everybody else, because who wants to show that kind of fatigue and pain and discomfort to the world? But it's there even when I can disguise it, and I'm not doing very well at that, either.

So there's a lot of uncertainty at year's end (and a lot of worry on more fundamental levels than just paying bills and so forth). 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.  

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; we love you all. And, if wishes can make dreams come true, a happy, healthy new year to all of us.

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.