We'll call that a win.

Photo copyright Aji, 2024; all rights reserved.

Today brought us the first deciduous green way up high. It's a relief, because a couple of years ago, none of that alpine stand leafed at all; none of them. We thought the drought had killed the whole stand, but it came back a little last year.  As you can see, there are plenty of dead trees there, but there's more green than not.

We'll call that a win.

We need to take 'em here we can find 'em these days.

This evening is the fifth anniversary of the day Raven left us, and that always both hurts my heart and makes me laugh . . . the latter because, just as the guys laid his body to rest and covered the grave, literally at that exact moment, a raven [a real one, a corvid, a bird] shot up out of nowhere from behind the grave, wheeled around, cackling and chattering and laughing its head off, and then sped west [the right direction, in my tradition], still laughing, as fast as it could fly. If ever there were a sign that our dogs' spirits live on in a good way, that was it.

But my heart still hurts. For every one of them.

My chest hurts, too, but that's a different thing. I'm having a lot of left shoulder and upper back pain, and if it doesn't diminish with restabilizing my chemo dose [i.e., upping it] in a couple of weeks, then I'm guessing it's going to mean testing. Expensive testing. A lot of it. Could be anything; could be nothing.  Could be something I really don't want to think about.

Anyway, back to wins where we can get them. We made a couple of sales over the weekend, and I was feeling so much better about things . . . and then it became obvious that Wings's replacement tumbler [which we had to buy last week, because his 30+-year-old one gave up the ghost completely] is NOT going to work. No one had a replacement for his in stock, so we got one of the cheap[ish] ones, but it's really not meant for this kind of work. What his old tumbler can do in under a day, this one takes a week or more of continuous running, which is just not workable.  It'll burn out the motor in nothing flat, at that rate, never mind all the rest of the problems with that approach.

So yesterday, I finally found one in stock like his. Just one. Nobody else has any, and no other models. And $563 cash later, it's now on its way, to arrive later this week.

But that's an expense I was NOT anticipating, and it just sucked up all our progress.

So nothing's changed. Through it all, somehow, I have to bring in sales. If you're in the market, now would be a really, REALLY good time. And I did get the four new pairs of earrings up a few night ago, here, here, here [already sold!], and here [these are my personal favorites]. There will be many more pairs to come; he's got 5-7 in process on his workbench already. And if you missed the Northern Lights last week? He has a brand-new wearable gemstone-bead version, so that you can have them with you always, so be on the lookout for that trio. Some of the beads glow under UV light, and I'm battling with the UV light batteries at the moment; hopefully, up later tonight. And as always, all the regular links are listed below, with sales, as always, being the most important:

• Sales here; 
• Testimonials here; 
• Amazon wishlist here (Apparently the FlexTape is the priority now, so I'm told; otherwise, Amazon cards are most important now, because they go to buy things we can't get locally, like the protein mixes for Wings and GF stuff for me and all the cleaning and other household products that people in cities can get but we can't; and also the filters for the air purifiers, because we have only one left and the amount of dust and dirt they take in in these winds is indescribable); 
• Patreon here;
• Ko-fi here.

After such a grim 2023, and with this year starting off MUCH worse (and given that we're already approaching the half-way mark), we really need to get 2024 onto 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.