Long shadows on short-term green.

Photo copyright Aji, 2023; all rights reserved.

The fall sun is here now. Clouds, too, but not the kind that are likely to build into much of anything. Meanwhile, it's all long shadows on short-term green.

Very short-term, if the lows any indicator. Same with the foliage; I don't think we're going to get a lot of color, because it's already drying and dying too early.

There's been too much of that already this year in less metaphorical contexts.

This has been an absolutely horrible summer, seemingly on every front. Too many losses, too much illness, too much tragedy in our communities. Too much drought and fire and climate death. On a personal level, too much expense and too few sales [four or five over the whole summer, I think]. And my own health continues to deteriorate apace, apparently. 

In mid-June, I went on metformin. No, I am not diabetic, nor am I prediabetic.  I am hypoglycemic, and it actually does help with that. But I went on it because it functions both directly and indirectly as an anti-inflammatory, and Europe has been using it with great success in both long COVID trials and for autoimmune conditions. And it began working! . . . until that other protocol I had to go on for much of the summer literally neutralized it.  So I quit that in its latter half because I couldn't take the negative side effects any longer. But it's not out of my system yet, so the metformin's function is still partly blocked. And what that means . . . .

Is that a day like Friday, when I had to run a few errands (pharmacy, grocery-shopping, etc.)? Absolutely destroys me. The pain in my hips, knees, and feet is indescribable. Just walking around the house is extremely painful. I wouldn't be able to do, say, any grocery shopping today. And no, whatever your "solution" is? I've already tried it and it doesn't work. I need people to understand that illnesses like mine are not curable, only manageable [or not] to some trifling degree, and mine will not get better, only worse. I'm getting a preview of that now, and it's ugly. The other problem is my hands. I mean, it's every joint system in my body, but not being able to walk and not being able to use my hands is getting old fast. My joints dislocate without any stimulus (just sitting quietly; in my sleep; two days ago, I turned a magazine page and my dominant thumb literally fell out of place). This is not functional. I think when I say that the pain is keeping me from working at the proper level, people think that it's just that I don't want to, or that I'm not trying to deal with the pain. Nothing could be further from the truth. And folks who think that? Wouldn't last a day with the kind of pain I have every second of every day. I haven't really slept since Friday because the pain is so bad that it won't let me.

And with half a dozen sales so far this year? We are not going to make it.

I'm stretching myself too thin, trying to update numerous platforms daily, and none of it's working; our Web site hits are still at record lows (save for the hack attempts, natch), and sales, of course, are abysmal. And this, going into our supposed busy season of the year. We have to make up a LOT of ground financially over the next four months. A LOT. All the links are listed below, so please share:

• Sales here; 
• Testimonials here; 
• Amazon wishlist here (apparently the sponges are unavailable, but the other two things I need that I can't get here are the Bar Keeper's Friend coffeemaker cleaner and descaler; we're entirely out of both [or Amazon cards, and I can order them myself]); 
• Patreon here;
• Ko-fi here.

There's lots of fabulous work on the site, and things are not just grim here, they're desperate. So please share all of the links. 

All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2023; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.