Overly smug confidence.

Photo copyright Aji, 2021;
all rights reserved.

Lord, give me the overly smug confidence of a Wings household dog. She came in with us yesterday at the end of the day, hopped right up on the ottoman like she owns it (she does), and fell asleep by the fire. [Of course, she also later stole a rolled chicken taco full of green chile, and . . . wasn't feeling so hot this morning. We got to clean up the mess, lucky us.]

And, yeah, we got the chimneys cleaned just in time, and after having to skip last year because of the pandemic, they were filthy. But that was Friday, and by Saturday morning, the rain had cooled it off so much that we needed a fire . . . and again every morning and night since.  I don't think it hit seventy here yesterday until around 4 PM. It's still in the low fifties right now.  In what's normally our hottest month of the year.

Yesterday was a day, in terms of errands and chores and bureaucratic runarounds. There will be more of that today, although on the plus side I got a call this morning already: My doctor did have a cancellation so I can have a telemedicine appointment sooner than 3+ weeks from now to find out her read of my results. Speaking of overly smug confidence, I really thought I was home free on the MRIs for a hot minute there. I may still be, but we don't know that, because they show no sign of having addressed the actual risk I had the imaging done for in the first place, rather than reading it strictly for the one that wasn't a concern. Even so, I was noticing earlier how fast the prospect of "benign" shifted my thinking; I went from last week's "I could easily be dead in under two years, and very likely in under five" to "oh, let's start planning again for ten years from now when the pandemic's hopefully done" in about the blink of an eye, and even realizing they didn't address the real issue in the report hasn't been able to stifle it much.

BUT — in addition to paying all of the medical people for all of this nonsense, there were vet and farrier Thursday, chimney cleaners Friday, and vehicle insurance and quarterly taxes by next week, and of course all the usual monthly bills and expenses. And I have no idea how to cover it all, given that I just shelled out more than $1,700 cash four days ago on the imaging. I'm also down 3-4 Patreon patrons since May 1st, which puts a BIG dent in what covers our monthly bills. And as of July 1st, I am having to stop posting every single day on Patreon, because I don't have the time and my health can't take it, so I expect to lose more. And my Patreon is what pays our utilities and other monthly bills, so, yes, I'm worried. I'm also exhausted after the last week, and barely functional, so here we are.

But as I said, Wings will have several new pieces out soon, too, possibly as early as tomorrow or mid-week: at least one major necklace posted last week here, and a minimum of four new Warrior Woman (three actually; one's already sold) and three new Pueblo pins (those last three, with a very cool new twist, and the third one was done yesterday, but I haven't had enough hours in the day to get it posted yet). I posted the first two Pueblo pins last week; one has already sold, but you can see the other here. Seriously, go check out the necklace; it's incredible. There's also, unexpectedly, a brand-new sterling silver cuff that I'm hoping to get up later today; it's simple, but absolutely dazzlingly beautiful.

I'm skipping all the rest of it because I'm tired constantly, and frankly I don't have the focus right now for anything else. One thing: The mosquitoes are out in force now thanks to the rain, and as you know from the loss of Wings's nephew last year to West Nile, they can be deadly for folks like us. Wings has to spend an inordinate amount of time outdoors right now, and he needs to be able to take repellents with him that are not toxic, so I've added a bunch of them to the wishlist, and they are urgent, especially the 2nd and 4th items on the list. Links are here:

• Sales here; 
• Testimonials here; 
• Amazon wishlist here (priorities are all the mosquito-prevention items, especially the portables and the patio-surface ones, because Wings can take them around the land with his as he works);
• 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 up this staggering outlay somehow. There's lots of fabulous new work, so please share all of 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.