Look at this nonsense.

Photo copyright Aji, 2026; all rights reserved.

No, seriously. Look at this nonsense. See that gray down near the ground, looks like fog? That's smoke. I don't mean the kind of hazy pall that's been around all day, since the middle of last night; no, that's the actual tendrils and wisps of smoke. That's what's here now; this was taken maybe 2.5 hours ago, just before twilight.

I'm on no sleep, because the smoke was so bad I had to get up hours before dawn to shut the windows and our door. It's remained that way, and it's still that way out there, even while it's raining. Okay, sprinkling; it's hard to take this seriously as a real rain, but you get the point: water coming out of the sky, and yet this suffocating pall is everywhere. 

Which means that we both feel pretty crappy, myself in particular. In his case, it's mostly that it ignites an inflammatory response, which in turn makes his knees hurt more.  With me, it's a full-body experience, and not in any good way. Today was chemo day, but I also wound up doubling the dose of my other immunosuppressant just so I could breathe. 

And it's been a day. Good in some ways; clients were visiting, and they're going home with a ring, a pair of earrings, a repair to a different ring [not one of Wings's], and the gift of one of Jack's walking sticks [Comanche carving]. And it's much needed; losing our doctor has meant that she's refilling all of our scrips at once so we're stocked up until the new practitioner is in, and between that and one device, we're already up over $1K. Just on scrips. That we're going to have to shell out this week.

I also need to make up all our other expenses from the last week, which was costlier that I expected on the medical front, particularly. Of course, it's been a hellishly costly year, on top of several recent years that have been the same, and there's a lot more expense to come. We very much need it to rain in the metaphorical sense, at the monsoonal level. I need to bring in several more sales this week, because I've had to order some supplies for him already, but I also need to order silver for him, which is absurdly expensive now [gouging; it's gouging, and no, I have not been able to order it yet], and will only get more so as we head into fall. We've also got a couple of other big-ticket things to take care of early this month, and that only happens if we make some sales now. And we can still use help with shares, testimonials, wishlist stuff I can't get to yet, etc. To that end, links are here:

• Sales here; 
• Testimonials here; 
• Amazon wishlist here [I'll be adding some new items soon, things we could really use but that I can't justify spending money on right now, like some sheets and towels];
• Patreon here;
• Ko-fi here.

And we do still need to make those regular weekly sales, so please share all of the links. We really do need to get this year onto a better footing than the last two, a year that, so far, has been very grim.

All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2026; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.