This is where we are.

Photo copyright Aji, 2024; all rights reerved.

It looks like clouds around the Andes here today. Well, this morning, anyway. Now, most of the peaks are visible, but the skies are still almost entirely gray . . . and yet, no rain.

None of the other kind, either.

At the end of a terrible week, month, year so far, this is where we are. The bloodwork is done, and while we won't know the results until the end of next week, I expect that Wings's labs will show good things. Mine? Not so much. I'm in the unusual position of having to worry about what they'll show. Normally, my only concern is that the autoimmune patterns show through strongly enough forr DX and treatment, because I've always fallen into the 25% of patients who continually show sero-negative, despite having all the symptoms, and a world that prescribes and treats only by what insurance companies will approve won't treat people like me, no matter how bad the symptoms are. So the last few years of [finally!] sero-positive results have been useful to me, and I hope that continues.

My worries now are something else entirely. In the past, my baseline health markers [glucose, lipids, thyroid, etc.] have always been better than perfect: either right smack in the middle of normal, or, as with the lipids, perfect triglycerides with extraordinarily high good cholesterol and extremely low bad cholesterol. But I can't depend on that anymore. Lupus damages all of those things, and I could find that, despite feeling no differently on any of those fronts, something's gone horribly wrong. More, given the tumors in my thyroid and on my liver, and the repeated breast cancer scares and the new symptoms in my chest and upper back on the left, I could find out that something's gone horribly wrong on that front, too. It's why I have to get the imaging done next month [although Spirit knows how, since I don't have four figures' worth of scratch to throw at it; I don't have enough to cover next week's medical bills, never mind the taxes that need to be paid still].

So on top of all the rest of it, I have a week's worth of immediate stress ahead of me, and several weeks' worth thereafter unless and until I can get the scans done and they tell me there's nothing to worry about. And of course, I can't do any of it without bringing in more money.

Yeah, I keep saying that we've GOT to make sales now.  Desperately.  I need help; I can't do this alone. I posted three of his priciest works on social media yesterday, and if I could sell all three? I could at least get a couple of these things off my desk and off my shoulders, too. But absent that level of sales, we're screwed, and I have no way of fixing any of it.

Nothing I have done for the last year has worked. Our sales have tanked, while prices keep going up, and so do our bills, and everybody wants something from me [and there's always a new disaster somewhere that needs fixing immediately]. I don't have anything left. I've put up a bunch of new work lately, including a new pair of extraordinary Skystone earrings the other night, plus something around a dozen other new pairs in the gallery now. There's more to come, including possibly a new cuff soon [he's not satisfied with it currently] and several additional new pairs of simple bezel-set gemstone earrings, plus some small sterling silver hoops and two new slender silver cuffs, all four of which I hope to have posted on the site later today [yes, I keep saying that, but I've had no time and even less bandwidth, but it has to get done today], plus potentially a couple of pairs of siple silver tab earrings, too. But it's hard to work the pain and fatigue, never mind through the depression that accompanies them and this level of external stress. Links are here:

• Sales here; 
• Testimonials here; 
• Amazon wishlist here (Amazon cards are probably most useful at this point); 
• Patreon here;
• Ko-fi here.

After such a grim year, this one already even worse than the last, 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.