Ajijaakwe: A mini-twister took out a chunk of our stable today. Patreon subscribers, sales, and shares all badly needed.

Click to enlarge. See that? That's what the barn/stables looked like just over a week ago. Hell, that's what they looked like this morning, except, of course, the light was different.

This is what they look like now:

What's different? Oh, yeah, half the roof is gone, and the overhang with it. We had a freak twister come through this morning — brilliantly sunny skies, only moderate wind; sudden, and too small for a tornado, but too big for a dust devil — and it tore the stables half-apart. Ironically, we saw the beginnings of it — it made a number of hard turns and one complete reversal and, in its nascent form, blasted right past the kitchen door as we were eating a late breakfast/early lunch. From there, though, it changed direction and gathered steam hard and fast, made a beeline for the stalls, and ripped half of the roof off. The house is soundproof, we didn't even hear a thing; I had noticed that the blue sail Wings put up to keep the birds from hitting the east windows had come half off, and when we went outside, we saw the destruction. A few shots:

We were incredibly lucky; the horses were not injured, although Miskwaki remains very badly spooked (not surprising, given his history of abuse before he found us). The dogs and chickens were not injured, nor were we (although Coyote was apparently so terrified that she hid somewhere for hours, only coming out again this evening). That ProPanel is sheet metal, and it's deadly; it will cut you in half, literally. It was dangerous, painstaking work wrangling it all and hauling it away, and worrisome when we had a couple more dust devils (thankfully MUCH smaller) crop up. And of course, we couldn't get anyone to help, even for pay; one guy was supposed to come out, and never showed, which meant that Wings did the lion's share of the work, and I did what I'm not supposed to be doing, and went out and helped him. this was our day:

The detritus that had landed on the remaining half of the roof:

Support beams (and matching gouges in the earth):

And all that's only a fraction of the damage.

::Sigh:: we will not be fixing it, in any thorough sense, anytime soon. There was not enough damage to total the rest of it, but too much damage to leave it as-is, and so for now, Wings will be making repairs to the half that remains. The whole thing (not the walls, but the roof) needs to be replaced, but there's enough warping and yawing of metal and wood that there's no point adding onto what's left to replace what's not; eventually, we'll have to rip the whole thing off and redo it. That, however, will require a lot more money (and time, and help, labor-wise) than we have now, so for the time being, it'll be fixing up what's left, making it safe, and leaving the empty posts up until we can get to the rest.

On top of that, there's a major problem with the septic system (flooding, apparently because the grade for the drain was insufficient), and so they'll be out tomorrow. I'm at my wits' end trying to maintain with everything that keeps landing on us, and I have no time to, you know, work. I can't even chase sales, much less anything else, and I need to be doing that constantly right now.

So as I said last night, we need sales, badly. I also need new subscribers to my Patreon page, badly. I've set my initial monthly goal at $1,000, which will let me pay off our medical bills in just three years, imagine that (yeah, that's sarcasm, but I don't have any other options but this one). Thank you, once again, to the folks who have believed in me sufficiently to subscribe already, and who collectively have gotten me past the 60% mark. There's a new post up tonight for some of the advanced levels. I still need a little shy of 40% to make that goal, and I am asking folks outright, please: Share the link, and subscribe if you can. Pledges made now through May 31st will not bill until June 1st. But since I have $4K worth of vultures breathing down my neck right now (okay, so it's really more like $24K, and they're getting nasty about it, and yes, this IS the "discounted rate"), I really need to be able to meet this goal and pay off as much as possible as fast as possible. So here are all the links, and the rest is cut-and-paste; please share them:

My new Patreon, The Interstices (Writing Between Worlds);
Wings's site, for sales;
Wings's direct PayPal link;
A way to buy me coffee (which actually goes to all of our medical bills, which continue to mount; another almost $400 for Wings this week);
Amazon wishlist, which mostly consists of supplies for half-feral puppies;
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).

As I said last night, I've posted several recent-ish but not brand-new things on my Patreon, in addition to the three brand new ones at the bottom; some are accessible to patrons only, while a bunch are readable for free by everyone. I've got a bunch of new stuff in the works, but the last week has left me literally no time for writing, editing, or anything else; I'm hoping to carve out this week almost exclusively for that, but we all know how that goes. I'll do my best to get a lot of the new content posted as fast as I can. Much gratitude to all of you, and please continue to share the links.

Ajijaakwe

Tuesday, May 1, 2018

A mini-twister took out a chunk of our stable today. Patreon subscribers, sales, and shares all badly needed.

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