Knowing where home is.

Photo copyright Aji, 2020; all rights reserved.

Our solitary hummingbird, knowing where home is. Hummingbirds and hawks, Mr. Yellow-Head, the entire goldfinch clan and the siskins, too: Like us now, they all know where home is, and they're sticking around.

More rain overnight, which was wonderful; possibly more today, which would also be wonderful. That arctic blast we're getting from the north, less so. I'm literally hobbling today, so it's doubtful that I'll get much done. OTOH, I can't sit for too long now — both hops and my entire right leg are subluxed — so maybe I'll manage more than I think.  I can't sit around with this kind of pain, so . . . ::shrug::.

Besides, as I said yesterday, there's just too much around here that has to get done, and because of the isolation requirements of this pandemic, it's back to just Wings and me now, no possibility of hiring anyone to help. And while I used to help with literally everything around here, I can no longer do that physically thanks to what nearly killed me in 2017, and so I have to pick up the slack in other ways. I also have to bring in a lot more scratch, because we're still waiting to hear on how much we'll have to pay out for taxes (no, we haven't gotten any kind of stimulus check, why do you ask?), and I'm going to have to spring for a bread machine by week's end, I think; we're almost out of the only bread I can eat, and the company is closed for a couple more weeks.

Anyway, the upshot is that we need to make sales. I think the fields are getting disced next week for planting; that's going to cost. So are the horses' vaxes and spring check-ups, which is tentatively scheduled for May 4th. Farrier's coming out Thursday to do more work on Miika's laminitic left front (she has to be done in stages, and yes, there will be masking and social distancing via the end of a lead). At some point, the dogs have to go in for their vaxes and so forth. And we both have doctor's appointments, which will be telemedicine via my laptop, assuming it holds, the first week of May. That's a hell of a lot of expense, over and above all the usual monthly expenses, monsoonal patterns of another sort, and I need to cover it somehow, hence the next graf:

Over the course of last week, I featured, on his site, some of his most valuable (and highest-priced) works. If we could sell them all, we could sock 90% of it into savings and be assured of making it through the rest of the year and into the next, barring disaster. I don't actually have any real hope of doing that, but if you're one of the folks who's been looking at these works and thinking that someday you might want to invest the money in one or more? Now would be the time; it would help ensure our survival through this pandemic and likely to the first of next year, and help us to be able to help other folks in our community here who are going to need it badly. So please, this week especially, share all of our links, because while we're all in isolation? Income is already at virtually nothing, and we can survive the isolation, but not the inability to feed the maw of all the bills. The links are here:

• Sales here; 
• Testimonials here; 
• Amazon wishlist here;
• Patreon here;
• Ko-fi here.

Note: For now, please don't buy anything off the Amazon wishlist; to do so would be crossing a picket line, and some of their workers have struck this morning to fight for safer working conditions because their lives are being put at even greater risk during this pandemic. If you find one of the items elsewhere, wonderful (I found a lovely convection bread machine with a GF setting via Crate and Barrel online, but I can't justify the cost, at least not now; we haven't had anything like the kind of sales that would permit that), but for the duration of the strike, please don't buy anything off the list from there. That said, if you can find Wings's KT tapes anywhere else?  He uses those virtually every day, and we're almost out; that would save us having to go out and buy them locally, in person and at higher cost. 

Other than that, 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.