Yesterday was, overall, a good day, one filled with gifts of various sorts (my tablet holder arrived early, so I was able to use it last night). Gifts of the apocalypse, too.
The running joke here is that every year on my birthday, something goes sideways. Someone gets sick, something goes wrong with one of the animals, we get slammed with a mammoth expense we weren't expecting . . . it's always something, and it happens every year. Yesterday was different; for the first time, there were no personal crises to mar the day. So I suppose I should have expected this.
Have you ever wondered how you would react when the apocalypse hits? You know, those first outliers, when the frogs fall from the sky and the birds start smashing themselves into the windows? Welp, we got a taste of that yesterday. I was sitting here working, minding my own business, and suddenly a flurry of small birds slammed into the windows on the east and south sides of the house. Not a bird or two that didn't recognize them for what they were. This was a BUNCH of them, and they were fleeing something in sheer mindless, sightless panic. I ran outside and was pleased to see that four or five on the east side got up under their own steam and flew away. Those who hit the south windows weren't so lucky. One or two flew off; one siskin was dead on the ground, and three juncos were badly stunned. I picked them up and went to work on them as I always do; two managed to fly away after a while, but the third died in my hand. And when I first found them, I turned around to look for more, and that's when I saw it: The fire had exploded from a faint tendril at the ridgeline into that quasi-mushroom tower you see there, all in the space of a few seconds.
This house is virtually soundproof; it takes a lot to hear or feel anything from outside. But it was pretty clear that there had been a new and very literal explosion in the fire, something powerful and horrifying enough to send the small birds into full-flight panic. They weren't flying anywhere; they were just fleeing, atavistically trying to get away from whatever had terrified them at a very primal level.
And so far, there's no new info on the fire itself, so all we can assume is that it has spread, and that it remains at zero-percent containment. Gifts of the apocalypse, indeed.
Meanwhile, I have to get us through the rest of the year safely. My next big thing is finding a way to cover Wings's aids, because this is one of those things that urgent now. One sale of 3 grand would do it; selling today's feature and last Wednesday's feature would also do it. Whatever, I have to raise it, and so I'm going to be back to flogging sales daily, hard.
My laptop is still slowly dying, as is my camera, both of which are integral parts of our work. I hope they make it through year's end, but they may not. The laptop is down to one working port, and if I lose that, I'm screwed. I was also reminded a few days ago that at some point, we need to buy hay for the horses for winter before 1) the price skyrockets even more than it already has, and 2) there's none left to buy at all. We used to have the best hay in the county; we could've sold it for top dollar, but we fed it to our own horses. The drought, though, which, as I said, has brought us less than no precipitation of any sort and is looking like it will bring us none for winter, either, has meant that nothing grows (which is why we need to drill the damn well). So somewhere, I need to come up with ~$1,550 to cover 100 bales of decent-quality hay for them. Yup. $15.50 a bale for just "decent"; not outstanding, not the stuff we used to be able to grow, just the kind that won't make them sick with mold and whatever other contaminants are in the cheap stuff. That's where this drought has put us now. We had the horse vet out yesterday with Miika's meds; farrier tomorrow, for even more expense And of course, I still need to figure out how to cover the ~$15K for drilling the well, so that maybe in future years, we won't be over this particular barrel. I have no idea how I'm going to do all this, but I do know that we need to make steady sales to survive.
We paid the last of the regular monthly bills last week, including the monthly payment on my medical loan. No car tow and repair, though: Now we've discovered a place where the mice are getting in, yes, courtesy of the plumbers' fuckery, and since mice here carry hantavirus and plague, we have to get that fixed. We'll no longer be able to put anything aside for next month, in all likelihood, because while Wings has done the physical block-off and clean-up, we have to get Nano out next week, if at all possible, to resolve the plumbing issues; it can't wait any longer. But that's going to be another grand that I need to raise from somehwere. I still say that if you're planning on making donations to Indigenous folks on this day, please choose those who are unhoused, whose housing or food security is precarious, who have children who need things, who need to get medical care or prescriptions filled or a vehicle repaired. But if you're in the market to buy, please consider us, because two episodes of nearly dying were more than enough, but this year is already damn near killing me, and I have to get us through into next year safely somehow.
Winter is coming, though, and neither the drought nor the pandemic is going anywhere. Nor is all the fallout from it (see above), nor the big-ticket items I have to replace due to simple age and wear (also see above). We will need to continue to make consistent sales through the end of the year (because normally, it's our holiday-season sales that see us through the whole first half of the following year, although I doubt we'll make anything like that this year). So please share the links, and when you're in the market for gorgeous, authentic, Spirit-infused Indigenous wearable art, Wings will have something perfect for you. The links are here:
The best gift I could have today would be to make some steady sales, now, and in the days and weeks to come. Thanks.
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2020; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
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