The rain continues to pass us by.

Photo copyright Aji, 2019; all rights reserved.

This should still be monsoon season, and for points west and south, it still is. Up here? The rain continues to pass us by.

That's true in both senses of the phrase. Sales have been way down all year, victim to an economy again trashed deliberately, albeit for somewhat different purposes than when W did it in 2008.

On the plus side, we resolved two of our seemingly-insurmountable repair problems last night, the sanders and the protective plates for the doors. With regard to the former, someone suggested a rental place up in Questa (something like 26 miles north, instead of an two hours south through Gorge construction). They didn't have it, but they suggested the local lumberyard up there, and sure enough, they have one. Cheaper on the rental, too. We'll reserve it by phone tomorrow morning, then pick it up on Tuesday. As to the plates, we don't actually need custom sizes after all, and thus no need to have someone make them (which is good, since the guy Wings knows who was supposed to spec it never showed, and we know he didn't have the same idea in mind as we did anyway). It was simply a matter of rearranging my thought processes to accommodate what's available: kick plates for the bottom on the horizontal; push plates for the bottom on the vertical. Differently terminology, same result, and the combination of sizes we need to keep the weather off base of the doors (and doggy toenails, too). 

Now, I just need to find a way to pay for all of it; this week's labor more than wiped out such sales as we did make. I don't have the requisite alchemical powers to manufacture money out of nothing, but as always, I'll find a way because I have no choice.

The medical expenses aren't going to let up for me, either. Nothing's changed on the pain front; see here for details if you really want to know (it's not pleasant). What we're having to expend now to fix all this before winter comes (and when the guys are available to do it), because it will be many more times as expensive if we have to replace everything next year because it rotted over the winter months? That's what we had set aside for my future medical testing later this year and into next (because there's a LOT of it yet to be done, and it all costs a fortune). So I'm having to push sales to replace that, and that means it's all stress all the time, because I now have to raise a lot more money sooner than I expected, and still deal with whatever might be in the offing medically. Some of the details are here; the upshot is that I've got to raise about $3,500 just for this first go-around, which I hope will cover about three weeks' worth of labor on all this stuff. We've managed $755 in sales, which means another $2,745 to go, and I'm so tired.

We were supposed to go to Santa Fe today to take care of some paperwork, but there's simply no time. I need to get a bunch of things done today that will keep me mostly offline: packing and shipping; drafting a letter of complaint for Wings regarding ongoing malfeasance by a government division (I'm sure you can guess); getting the pieces selected and packed for donation to Nano's parish's annual fundraiser; miscellaneous other work. Squeezing in some writing time would be nice, but that's doubtful. And there's always the housework. On top of that, there's always the endless push for sales, because these bills won't pay themselves (and I paid out another $1,100 yesterday in what I hope is now the final final bill from my biospies).

So I need help to get all this done. Folks can help in several ways:

• Sales here; 
• Testimonials here; 
• Wishlist here;
• Patreon here;
• Ko-fi here. 

And as I said, sales are ideal, of course; one or two of Wings's bigger pieces would cover the whole shot for this round. Patreon subscriptions are good, too. Either way, it's a trade for value. But I'm already feeling panicked at what we thought wold be our schedule being so suddenly and thoroughly upended, and we'll take it however it comes at this point. Oh, Wings dropped new bead pieces yesterday, with more to come probably over the weekend; you can see, share, and shop yesterday's here.

Please share everything, because I'm suddenly back behind the eight-ball on a whole additional front, and yeah, I'm scared about covering everything and surviving, too. Thanks.

All content, including photos and text, are copyright Aji, 2019; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.