Deadly cold.

Photo copyright Aji, 2025; all rights reserved.

Absolutely bitter, brutal cold.

As of this moment, it's 10 degrees; the wind chill is already -4. The low tonight will be -11, actual temp [at least], and the wind chills will be -20 or more.

Deadly cold.

We had planned on exactly one errand, and the rest of the day spent at home gearing up for this weather, as well as all our other work. Of course, it never works out that way. A friend who does local mutual aid work came over this morning to pick up sleeping bags and tents and so forth, what remains of the cold-weather gear that hadn't already been distributed.  I kept back a couple of each item and restocked our own truck, too, which turned out to be a very good thing.

The one errand was a pharmacy run for a scrip that had run out last week. I stood in line for a while, so my feet were already a mess. When we left, we drove around the building to go out the back exit . . . and there were two guys and their dogs, huddled up against the elements with a woefully insufficient old sleeping bag opened out. We gave them sleeping bags, a regular tent and two mylar tents for body heat, mylar blankets, socks, handwarmers, and what tiny amount of cash I had on me [worked out to $8 each].  One of the guys had just gotten stitches on his hand yesterday, but had no way to clean/treat it, so Wings went right back into the store, got 'em a first aid kit and snacks and water and water and jerky treats for the dogs. Got home, learned the amount needed to fund drivers for transport of people/dogs to the shelter [$2K] and set about raising it, which is why everything's late.

Still, for a day with Nazis taking over everything on the official observance of Dr. King's birth? Not a bad way to spend it. I didn't see a single damn thing of the Nazi bullshit until tonight, and those glimpses were much more than enough. I do know that hot meals are urgently needed now, so tomorrow I'll be trying to raise funds for "pay-it-forward" meals at Trujillo's, like we did back around Thanksgiving. Details tomorrow.

Things are going to be fraught for a while, between the weather and the sudden loss of one of the major folks in the local aid movement this week, which means that the outreach campaign's organizer is having to do a lot of, well, re-organizing. Among current needs are a new address for having wishlist items shipped, and also the space to keep them while they're being sorted and passed out for distribution. Some of that is already under way, but it's going to take some days to get everything in place, so I'm not going to share the wishlist for a few days. As screwy as shipping is these days, I don't want to risk things getting returned to Amazon, or simply lost in transit, and I also don't want to pile more work on them of retrieving and holding stuff until this is sorted out. Once everything's set, then I'll go back to posting it daily.

Which gives me a few days to focus mostly on chasing sales, which we need to do daily. It takes at least one sale a week [sometimes more] just for us to break even on the year, and last year? We didn't even do half that. So now would still be a good time to buy. TONS of new and fabulous work on the site, and tons more on the way, too.

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 far worse than the last, we urgently need to begin 2025 on a better footing before taxes take every cent, so please share all of the links. 

All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2025; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.