All go here this week

All go here this week. I have had lots of new spiders come in (well I went to collect them, alas not from the tropics but from a fellow tarantula breeder). I haven't yet put them all on my website but it is a job that I intend to do today. I also have a few Imperial scorpions, they are captive bred, large juveniles, sadly they have become really rare now. The adults are truly magnificent creatures but seldom seen these days.

The new tarantulas are mostly 'medium' sized so they are well established, with beautiful colouring. Business was brisk at the beginning of this week and I sold plenty of tarantula spiders so I have some vacated boxes made up for the new arrivals but not quite enough. Hopefully I will sell lots more spiders next week but I must admit that orders have been very thin on the ground over the last couple of days. Perhaps everyone has gone away on holiday? Who could blame them with the awful weather we seem to be having, it is rain, rain and more rain in our area (I was supposed to be going to Legoland today with my nephew's family, a trip that we have already put off once due to constant rain).

Did I say last week that another of my small desert scorpions had produced babies? Well as we speak they seem to be doing ok-ish. I don't have much experience with these small desert scorpions and it was very sad that the babies produced about three weeks ago all perished. I have been extremely careful not to disturb the mum and babies this time. I have had a few peeks and noticed that some of the tiny white babies are again strewn around the box but some of them are still on their mother's back. The ones not on her back are moving and clearly alive so perhaps they don't all stay on her back like the forest scorpions that I am much more used to? I really hope that at least some of them make it this time!

I have now separated most of my baby Shiny Burrowing scorpion babies. I noticed that they were making their own little burrows and not sitting together at all. With the forest scorpions they tend to cluster together under pieces of bark and I never see any squabbles between them but I was worried that the Shiny Burrowing may not like to be kept together and I didn't want to wait until they started fighting. I may be panicking for no reason but I didn't think it was worth the risk to leave them together.

I am still trying with all this electronic stuff but I positively hate it. It really does make me feel old, I just can't get to grips with it. I have given up on Instagram for a while and I am trying with Facebook but it is just so complicated. One day I can see messages and then they seem to disappear and then I can't figure out how to reply and then I'm not sure if I am posting to the entire world or just one person. The complications with my Facebook are real though, I have two accounts and somehow need to condense them down to one because having two accounts in the same name is bonkers and confusing everything. My husband set up a 'blank' Virginia Cheeseman account because he said I needed to have a private Facebook before I could apply for a business Virginia Cheeseman page. The problem is that I don't know which is which and I don't think my iPhone does either! It is a real mess and I am going to have to get some 'proper' help to sort it.

My hubby is away again with his work so yesterday I had to try and sort out my PayPal account alone. Every morning this week I have received an email from PayPal telling me that there is a problem with my IPN. I had the same thing last month and thought that my hubby had sorted it but evidently not. It would appear to be a glitch in the system but it seems I need to upgrade my PayPal account. That is certainly a 'blue job' and will have to wait until hubby returns. I can't risk mucking it up as almost all my payments are dealt with by PayPal. As far as I am concerned it is a magical thing that happens when my website connects with PayPal and then the money appears in my account. I don't even know what an IPN is and frankly I don't care. I just want to get on with the animals, I hate all this cyber world. That said I truly love my iPhone/iPad and don't know how I ever lived without Google and Netflix!

I am still trying to figure out how to fit everything into my bug room in a more efficient way. I was chatting to a couple yesterday who do a similar thing to me and I had a good look around their bug room. It was really interesting to see how they do things. Their room isn't that much bigger than mine but it is completely different, from the layout to the lighting, to the heating. I really wish that I had under floor  heating. We did look at it when we set the room up but the room is an add-on to the house and the floor is suspended. Everyone said that a huge amount of heat would be lost through the floor. I do wonder if my hubby can have another look at the insulation before the winter and see if we can improve things. I would love to do away with some of my heat mats and heat the room as a whole. Oh well, I can dream but at the end of the day my bug room works pretty well. I have some stunning creatures and am pretty successful at keeping and breeding the vast majority of them.

I have many beautiful Poecilotheria tarantulas at the moment and most are quite large now. I need to sell some, I will hopefully get time to put them on special offer next week, I really should put their photos on Facebook. I have several that are adult or almost adult but the sexes are not easy to tell apart as the males don't have the obvious mating hooks and being tree dwelling spiders both sexes are quite light and slim.

I have a very enthusiastic youngster coming to see my bug room this afternoon so I must have a clear up this morning. She is a member of our local youth club and was very helpful when I took various bugs and snakes along to show the kids. Could she be a helper for the future? It would be good as she only lives a couple of streets away.

Lost my train of thought there as I was called away to deal with 'a giant spider' in the bathroom. Even the spiders seem to think it is Autumn! Big male House spiders aren't usually encountered in the summer.

My nephew's kids were discussing what my job may be called this week. We were driving along when Max who is 12 came up with "the bug whisperer" - yes I like that! It is certainly better than entomological supplier which is what I generally state. The next time I am asked my occupation or I am filling out a form I think I will say I'm a bug whisperer and see what reaction I get.