Valentimes.

Photo copyright Aji, 2020; all rights reserved.

Early Valentine's Day flowers, or as our peoples say it, Valentimes. He picked these up at the grocery store a couple of days ago and surprised me with them. Grocery store flowers are the best flowers, especially the kinds he gets for me — lily of the Incas, miniature carnations, these purple daises — small blooms of all the same kind instead of strange and elaborate combos. The latter seem to begin dying the first day, while these? These kinds of bouquets last two or three weeks, with only a little thinning needed.

Valentimes or not, he's brought me more flowers just since we've been married than the whole of the rest of my life combined. It's one of those romantic things that, at a deeper level, finally makes me feel seen.

They're a bright spot today, with this ghastly freezing cold and the even more ghastly migraine that woke me up this morning. It's aggravated by a second causes, sinus pressure, because despite the subzero temps, we have pollen all over the place already.  I really do wish we could go straight from winter to summer, but no.

At any rate, I am not functioning well today (or at all, really), so most of the rest is cut-and-paste while I try to deal with all the absolute necessities here. Meanwhile, my laptop continues to die apace; the keyboard is causing me three times as much work, at least. The Pueblo is now closed for two full months, which puts tourism income in the negatives. And January was, quite frankly, a hell month. In the meantime, I have to navigate the weather and pain and expense and find a way to bring in income.

Also unfortunately, I'm still reduced to trying to get work done with a torn ankle and subluxed forearm, hips, and knees, and now two barely functional hands, and a laptop that continues to deteriorate by the day (a camera, too, and both are essential for our work — not just mine, but his). The pain is . . . very bad these days. It's not a function of weather or cold, mostly, but of deterioration. In desperation, I've added one last supplement, a costly one, in hopes of getting it to ease off even a little; I won't know if it's going to work for at least a month yet. I'm also trying to plan for all the expenses of winter to come. The Pueblo closure started Saturday, and as I said above, is slated to last two full months this time, so it will be worse than usual. In that period of time, there will be taxes to pay, his scrip to keep refilling, his dental work to try somehow to get done, and forget about my own follow-up tests, to say nothing of plumbing/wall repairs or all the work still unfinished on the house; I'm scrapping everything, because we can't afford it. Yes, I'm due for follow-up scans and biopsies already, and they're not going to happen, because we don't have five figures' worth of scratch to waste on it. I've still got to make sales, try to drum up new Patreon subscribers, do whatever I can to bring in more money, all on top of everything else. Folks can help in several ways (sales are always preferred, but the wishlist helps, too right now, what we can use most are coffee, cleaning agents, and Amazon cards for the things I'm not going to put on a public list, like supplements and glucose tabs and underwear). Oh, and I posted four new works day before yesterday, here and here, so please share the links (also, BUY! they're perfect for Valentine's Day):

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

Please share everything. Thanks.

All content, including photos and text, are copyright Aji, 2020; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.