Still standing.

Photo copyright Aji, 2021; all rights reserved.

Thats the last new load of firewood from Saturday; one of the guys came back yesterday to make some extra money stacking it. Unfortunately, he didn't drive the stakes deep enough to brace it, so while you can't see it there, it's falling down in the back. Wings had to fix it.

Me, I'm the spruce behind it, still standing despite best efforts to the contrary. You can't tell from looking at it there, but the spruce is suffering in the drought, lots of brown and dry trying to take hold in the needles, but it's fighting it; the top is the heaviest I've ever seen it with cones.

What I'm battling is even less obvious (and less outwardly observable to anyone else), but just as deadly. Virtually no sleep for the last three nights, which is not so unusual, but night before last, a short episode again. Around 4:00 this morning, a much worse one. Not as bad as the one a couple of weeks ago, but bad all the same. I feel like for every step forward, my body takes three back. So today is a problem not only with pain and fatigue, but with breathing and balance and a whole host of other issues that are making me slow (and are, some of them, downright scary). I think I might have isolated the problem, a supplement I desperately need but from a source that I cannot have, and apparently three days' worth of it (without realizing that it contained an ingredient that will harm me badly) was enough to cause this latest one.

So I'm further behind than ever, and mostly useless today. That's not good. We need to make sales, and I need to reorganize his work, and I can't do either one when I can't even think straight.

Because things are bad locally. There is still no economy now. There's nothing. No vaccines for most of us, either. 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. 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. We have shelled out close to 2 grand over the last 2 weeks of January, including $600 last week to fill the propane tank, which I was not expecting; close to a grand over this weekend; and my Patreon remains $300 short again for the second month running. I've got to make it up somewhere. So:

• Sales here; 
• Testimonials here; 
• Amazon wishlist here (new cleaning products on it needed most);
• Patreon here;
• Ko-fi here.

And if you've been contemplating a purchase? This would be a very, very good time to do it; I've got to make it this staggering outlay somehow. There's even new work, here and here and now here, among other new pieces from last week and last night, too, so please watch for them and 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.