ATTENTION: In Honor of CherylLaVon

When I started this swap, I asked that everyone donate to Cheryl's ACS fund and send a card to her family. Since a lot of people are strapped for cash right now, I changed the requirements to simply joining this swap in order to honor our dear friend. Now that the swap date is drawing near, I face a dilemma… I don’t want to not assign partners and have this swap wiped from the system (I want to be able to look at my archived swaps and see that it existed), but by assigning partners I will create a bit of a problem because nobody will know how to rate!

After asking Rachel for her advice, I’ve come up with this solution: those of you who didn’t plan to do anything beyond help get this swap up into the Top Swaps for Cheryl (and thank you so much for that!), please feel free to drop from the swap so that it can proceed as an e-swap. This way, nobody will feel unsure about how or when they are supposed to rate. I do hope that you will stay, though, since there are things that you can do that don’t cost a penny! I didn’t know that so many ideas would spring forth when I created this swap, or I would have included non-tangible things as an option in the swap requirements instead of obliterating them. That was my fault, and I do apologize.

I will wait until June 1st to assign partners so that those of you who do not wish to “swap” can drop. Once I have assigned partners, you will have until the send date to do one of the following things and send an email (and photograph, if necessary) to your partner describing what you did:

• donate to Cheryl's ACS memorial fund. Please forward a copy of your receipt to your partner to prove that you did this. If you can’t find your receipt, please contact me and I will forward the email that notified me of your donation to your partner.
• share your memories of Cheryl with your partner. If you’ve done that by contributing to the memorial fund page or posting in the forums, feel free to copy that text and send it! Pictures, poems, and songs do count… there are so many ways to honor Cheryl, and I’m not going to limit you.
• contribute to a care package for Cheryl's family. Contact me for more information (I’ll be making lucky parcels for each of her sons once I’ve collected a bunch of goodies for them) if you would like to do this. If you can’t take a picture for your partner, then I will, since I’m the one that’ll be putting everything together and pictures will be taken anyway!

There are other things going on that you can participate in, but since I can’t of how you might be able to prove any of those things, I haven’t listed them.

Again, I’m sorry for all of the confusion. Please let me know if you have any questions at all!

Remember, you will not get anything from this swap beyond the ability to mourn and honor a friend. Whether or not you choose to remain in the swap, I thank you for caring so much. You guys are wonderful!!!