This fortnight's newsletter is going to be brief and sad.  We just learned that my 6-year-old son, Ewan, has Duchenne's Muscular Dystrophy.  This is a disease that causes the muscles to deteriorate, starting with the legs, then moving to the arms, trunk, face, tongue, and finally, the heart.  There is no cure at this point in time, and the disease ultimately destroys the heart, causing death to the child typically between the ages of 15 and 25. 

 

As you can probably guess, we are devastated.  We are hoping to involve Ewan in some experimental treatments that could prolong the deterioration of his muscles until a cure can be found, but things have been incredibly tense around here even with this tiny glimmer of hope.  This has been my main preoccupation for the last week, so there has been very little activity on the website in the way of new items, etc. 

 

I considered closing the store for a while, and finally decided against it.  This is the slow time of year, so I am getting just a few easy orders each week.  I am not running any eBay auctions, and have pulled my Google ads for the time being, so I anticipate fewer orders than usual, which is fine for me at this time.  I need the distraction of running a small business, which is why I decided to stay open.  However, I am going to start consolidating a lot of items into larger lots to sell at or below cost, to sell off some of the slower sellers, make room for the best selling items, and promote better overall organization to enable me to spend more time with my family.  These lots will be found on our Closeouts page, so please check that out from time to time to see what's new.

 

I will send out a newsletter at its regularly scheduled time in two weeks, but at this time I cannot promise that it will be very entertaining.  It's hard to write lively e-mails when you have an emotional burden like this.  I am also not going to come up with unique sales for a while.  This month and next, I am simply going to include a random freebie in each package.  Nice and uncomplicated.  The Insider's Sale (remember to write to let me know of your subscriber status!) will involve an EXTRA freebie (that's two for the same order), and I may or may not change the Penny Sale every two weeks.  Eventually we'll get back into the swing of things, but for right now I just need to keep things simple and straightforward. 

 

I will get back to y'all in two weeks.  In the meantime, if you ever come across a Muscular Dystrophy donation box at your local store, please drop in a couple of quarters for me.

 

--Suzanne Dallapè

 

Recent pictures of Ewan:

 

P.S. Last fortnight, I reported having a lot of problems with spam on my business address.  I have since put very tight filters in place.  It weeds out some of the more obnoxious messages, but many still come through.  Any e-mail that has certain key phrases that pertain to assorted spam products will NOT get to me.  So anyone wishing to write to me, please keep in mind that any e-mail that sounds even remotely like spam will never make it here.  If you write and don't hear back from me, it's probably because you inadvertently used one of the magic phrases and wound up in filter purgatory.  I am still going to try to get a different address so I can remove the filters, but this might take a while.