First of all, THANK YOU.

Those 2 words cannot express the depth of feeling I have for your generosity of faith, prayers, positive thoughts and incredible patience.

Having watched my husband go from the 300 lb teddy bear to a 120 lb bag of bones before he died, I thought it would be easy to handle when he died, but I was wrong.

At first, I thought I had it in the bag; I took care of all the arrangements, did the necessary tax things, got things organized, and even bought things so that I could try to do what my sweetie used to do for me, and even got back online.

Then it hit me, about 7 months after the fact. I was catatonic and I couldn't stop crying. It took so long to stop, I went and saw a psychologist to see what was wrong with me. He told me that I had to grieve to celebrate our time together, and the "clear time" right after Richard's death was not clear, it was numb. It took quite a few sessions with the therapist to get my head back on straight.

Then, things kept going wrong. The power to the house kept flickering, and that caused all kinds of problems, and ended up frying just about everything on my computer. By the time everything was fixed, I had a new computer but at twice the cost of a new one. Then I had to pay to recover the data on the fried hard drive, the one with all the files!

Then more things happenened with the house, and then my favourite dog developed a heart condition, and on the first day of spring, I found out he might have a growth in his lungs.

I am having health problems too, with arthritis in my writsts and knees, heart problems......... what else can go wrong???? I don't want to know!

Every time I get 2 steps ahead, I get knocked back a couple.

There are people who I do not know and have never heard of who have send me things like edgings for hankies, hearts and chocolates, scarfes and shawls to keep me warm now that I am alone, and so much more. These people have been there for me, while others, who said they would be, weren't; their loss. It just proves what I have said all along: TATTERS ARE THE BEST!

In December 2011, I had a tear inside my only good eye, which caused bleeding. This makes seeing things difficult, but fingers crossed, the floaters will disintegrate in time.

I am going to be spending a few hours every day catching up on orders. I value my customers more than they will ever know.