*Cold*.

Photo copyright Aji, 2024; all rights reserved.

That was facing south this morning. Facing east was all dark gray clouds. I prefer the clouds; this nonsense is cold.

The winds are high today; the air slices straight to the bone. At least we're lucky enough to have a couple of extra days on the septic stuff, probably until Thursday or Friday. Well, I say "lucky," but it's because we've been trying to use a lot less water for now; fewer loads of dishes, fewer loads of laundry, etc. I'm still not looking forward to the process of fixing it, which is likely to be hideously expensive. Tonight and tomorrow are daunting on that front, too.

January's always hard anyway, regardless of weather. Aside from taxes, it's one of our two most costly months [the other being July], when we have a disproportionate number of one- and two-off expenses [insurance; several business-related renewals like site hosting, software platforms, domain services, etc.]. Coming on the heels of such a terrible sales year, it's not good. It's even worse since, once again, my Patreon is short ~$250, and made worse still by the new $600-800 a month for septic service all winter and half of spring ($200 of it paid out last Saturday, and the next round will probably be Tuesday, given Monday's holiday]. This week, I have to pay the monstrous truck insurance bill, plus multiple platform and software renewals related to the site, and it will be well over a thousand in cash at the door before I'm done. The online payments are likely to be done tonight, and I expect tomorrow's insurance, added onto all that, will put our outlay up to around $1,300+. I've been hanging onto it for dear life, knowing it's coming, but we made no sales last week, and so I have to make up for that with two this week.

Because the need to make at least one sale a week never lets up, no more than the physical pain that makes everything so much more impossible. We were blessed with one the first week of the year, but now I need to do the same for this one, as well as make up for the lack of one last week. He has a new necklace in the works, his fourth [recent] naja, done save for the bead strand, which now only needs to have the findings added. I'm expecting that it'll be done today so that I can feature it tomorrow. A fifth is in the works. And also as always, all the links are listed below, and sales are the most important:

• Sales here; 
• Testimonials here; 
• Amazon wishlist here (priorities now are the liquid soaps and especially the vacuum, because mine has died a complete and ignominious death, and if I don't vacuum every single day, the dog hair takes over completely [and the dustbuster is just not cutting it]); 
• Patreon here;
• Ko-fi here.

There's lots of fabulous work on the site about a dozen all told over the last three weeks or so, cuffs and earrings and pins, plus the necklaces to come. After such a grim 2023, we really need to get this year started off on a better footing, so please share all of the links. 

All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2024; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.