Cleaning up the mess..........

There has been such a mess to clean up both on the internet and in my home.  I am only sorry I tackled my home first because it would have been very therapeutic to get rid of so much after the mess with Little Buddy.  As you can imagine I have been a bit distraught.  I have been consumed with trying to find his image out there and stop it from spreading.  I have had my dear sister, her husband, my oldest son and all of his friends on the chase. We have been somewhat successful, but as you know once it is out there, it is out there.  

I can't thank you enough for all of your support.  You have left me so many wonderfully supportive messages.  I have gotten back to most of you, but if you are a no-reply blogger please know I read your heartfelt words and appreciate you taking the time to contact me.  Many of you have emailed me separately and joined in my search or have listened to me rant.  You are all the best, each and every one of you are so wonderful, positive, and caring, and felt almost as much outrage as I have.  

This is an unfortunate situation, and really is so pathetic the lowness some people will turn to.  What I do know right now is that the gofundme,com site where Little Buddy was first listed was taken down about 20-30 minutes after I reported it and has not gone back up.  They did a wonderful job at that organization stopping this bogus story and stopping the person trying to make money off of Little Buddy.  Twitter has not been quite as successful, but I think the original tweet spread like wildfire and was re-tweeted so many times it can't be fixed.  But the link back to gofundme is still disabled so that is good.  I will have to say I had to join Twitter to log a complaint and they were not the nicest about helping me.  I will only keep my account to check on things like this, not to tweet, it just is not my thing. 

So now I have to find a way to move past this and to be honest I am still struggling with that.  Blogging has lost a bit of its luster for me, I can't trust it and I am nothing if not a trusting person.  I am sure it will pass so I appreciate it if you would hang in there with me while I try to work through this.  I have read your blogs and am so happy for all that you have posted.  I have not commented as I really have not had the energy, but I am reading.  I don't expect you to comment here if I am not commenting with you, please know that I am totally fine with that.  

I plan on using many of your suggestions such as marking my photos.  It really is easy and even if it can all be photo-shopped out it is still more of a hassle to do that than just stealing an untouched photo.  I still plan to feature my little guy, but right now I am feeling a bit shy about it.  He is so precious and thankfully will not know what has happened, but it has scared me and I want to keep him safe.  

I am taking the rest of the week and weekend off.  I hope you understand.  I need to get my groove back and it seems to be missing in so many areas right now.  I am even having difficulty settling down to knit or crochet, so I am back to cleaning out things.  I have had 6 bags already sent to Goodwill, with 3 more ready to go.  I have two big bags of yarn ready to donate to the lovely people who accepted Mrs Josephine's yarn.  The person I need to take the yarn to won't be back for a few weeks so I am adding more and more all the time.  I have been a bit ruthless getting rid of it, none of the yarn was from the yarn I counted up, just the odds and ends I had in my closet.

So for now I leave you and wish you a wonderful weekend.  I have the greatest love and respect for all of you.  I especially want to thank you for hanging in there with me.  And of course I want to thank the brilliant reader who notified me in the first place, I can't imagine what would have happened had she not been so alert and proactive. 

See you soon.