The Double Reverse Kismet

For all of our subscribers who are still waiting to recieve their copy of the Mar/Apr issue of The Essential Herbal, I need to express my frustration.
The magazine actually went into the mail stream a day early - on Feb. 9th. Our self-imposed deadline is the 10th of the month prior to issue date, so it has plenty of time to meander around the country. For over 8 years, that's worked pretty well, with one or two people writing because their copy went missing. No biggie, we can replace that.
This time was different. Here it is the 5th of March, and the middle of the country is still waiting. Both coasts and much of the upper and lower parts of the country have reported in that they've arrived, but not the middle.
That's bad.
Really bad.
In a couple of days we'll determine just how much of the country we need to re-send to. They are continuing to arrive, with Arkansas and upper Florida checking in yesterday.
But here's the thing....
We were so proud of ourselves for getting it out on time. During the month of January, we were in the hospital and then hospice every day while a member of our family died. We worked in small left-over increments of time to get everything done, and we did it.
He had designed the cover before this last bout of illness struck, and the finished magazines were delivered to us on the day he died. He didn't get to see it.
It is probably self-indulgent for me to write about this, but after the struggle of finishing it, prepping it, and getting it to the post office on time, it is no small disappointment to have a sack or two or three go missing.
The USPS is the only option out there.
Would we make more money if we went to an e-zine format? Oh, about 10 times more. No costs - pure profit. But that isn't what we do, and our subscribers have let us know it isn't what they want.
So we'll keep slogging along. Post office, you really let us down this time :-(.