Starshine and beauty and warrioring up, with help. Sales/shares very much needed.

Photo copyright Aji, 2017; all rights reserved.

Yes, it's listing a little, but that's from Monday. Our little five-dollar star had no lights, just plastic designed to look like frosted glass and bronze. So Wings took a strand of the fairy lights leftover from the wedding, popped a battery in them, and wound it around each spoke of the star so that it would shine. I love this man.

This is early today, because I'm completely wiped out. Yesterday began in the "bad" category, but after posting last night, moved into the "terribly/terrifying" category, and it took every bit of warrioring up I had in me to get through it. But I did it.

I didn't do it alone, of course; without Wings, I'd never have made it through all of this stuff this far. I don't really have words to describe it, and unless you've been through it, you can't imagine. You may think you do; you don't. I know this because I've taken care of elders through emergent cardiac events and other related severe health issues, and I thought I got it, and I now know that I had no. freaking. idea. It's not knowledge that empathy can give you; only experience. 

And so today is not a good day; a lot of raw exhaustion, and a lot of physical pain and other discomfort. [This day is sad for other reasons, too, and if I can find the photo I want, I'll post it separately; Carter walked on four years ago today, and we miss him like it was yesterday.] And yet, it's a very good day, because I'm still here: I woke up and saw the sun out the window this morning, and I watched the birds swooping in for breakfast, and we are warm in our home (our home!), and even without snow, the world is beautiful. So beautiful. I remember riding in the ambulance down to Albuquerque, and watching the town fade into the distance behind us from a wholly different vantage point (backwards, and farther below, because that vehicle sits up high), and I remember thinking that everything —  everything — was so beautiful that it felt like my heart would burst just from the sheer power of it.

But we still need 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. 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, 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.