When life's got us all pinned to the ground.

Photo copyright Aji, 2021; all rights reserved.

Poor Sunny. The other two always gang up on him, mostly because Stormy's a little monster. He loves it, though. And Cricket is always very careful never to hurt him, even though Sunny's already both bigger and heavier.

The look of the photo, though . . . it looks like a metaphor for these times, when life's got us all pinned to the ground.

This autoimmune flare has definitely got me pinned, and I made it worse today by running around doing a bunch of physical stuff this morning, but there wasn't a choice. We were given a piece of furniture to a friend who lives some distance from here; her husband needs it after major surgery, and a wonderful local guy agreed to pick it up and deliver it free of charge. But Wings had to be out this morning, it took longer than he expected, and I had to get the tree dismantled and hauled out so I could haul out the chair, and wow, do I feel it now. But it's all good, it's done, folks have what they need, and I'll spend tomorrow inside out of the snow we're supposed to get.

But if only everything were so easily done. While Congress fucks around and goes home instead of dealing with the very clear and present danger of the Nazi problem in the country, folks who are financially precarious are still suffering. New year, and people are still being thrown out into the streets, which is why I keep running signal-boost Twitter threads daily. I don't always have the time to RT them all myself, but I make an effort. Folks in desperate need of housing, food, heat, medicine and medical care. It's an abomination, but here we are, because this society's structure depends upon marginalizing certain populations out of existence if possible, into pathologizing and criminalizing them if not.

On the plus side, JoanMar met the match two days ago, and the matching funds were deposited moments later, putting her halfway to goal. Another mutual friend is setting up a GoFundMe on her behalf, and that will make tracking easier, and hopefully make fundraising easier, too. But thanks to the generous donor with the matching funds, she hit the 50% of goal mark early Tuesday afternoon, and that is a beautiful thing in and of itself. On top of that, Wings can get the vaccine possibly as early next week (it goes by age, and he just made it, probably in part because he's diabetic; my number won't be up for a few weeks yet). That is a huge load off my mind, too.

As I said yesterday, January is always the hardest month of our year (July runs a close second, but it's not as bad as January). We have a ton of annual or biannual expenses that come due, some insurance but mostly business-related. That fact doesn't make them any less necessary, nor any less urgent, and this year winds up being the most expensive yet. We received some very, very good news this morning, and I'll be able to cover all of it before the month is out. Barring catastrophe, I'll be able to cover necessities for a good while. Eve before today, I have been mindful of the fact that we will not freeze or starve, and that puts us in a position far more fortunate than too many folks in families this winter, in the middle of a deadly global pandemic currently raging unchecked here. BUT: I still have to bring in consistent sales (only 4 the entire holiday season, an all-time low courtesy of the pandemic economy), and I still need to boost my Patreon (which is down $300 on this month's payout already), because there's a long, long year ahead of us, and a whole year's worth of direct attempts to harm people using the pandemic as a vehicle will not be corrected by the end of the year, let alone a few months.

There is no economy now. There's nothing. People are literally dying all around us from the government's failures, and I don't know how we keep them, or us, alive unless I can cover the bills. We have lost SO much to 2020, so very, very many people, and the gifts and the talents and the knowledge and the wisdom they carried too often lost with them. Because this state has followed the lead of the country and refused to do what was required, we are about to see a very big spike in new cases, probably as early as two weeks from now; the current spike in deaths remains sustained daily. People have needed so much more help than we could give them, but we did as much as we could, even when it put us in a bind, and we will need to do much more of that this year. So:

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

And if you've been contemplating a purchase? Marking the birth of 2021 would be a very, very good time to do it. There's even new work, here and here, so please share the links.

All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2021; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.