Christmas is less than a month away
Christmas is less than a month away and I have so much to do before then. We erected the new shelving in my bug house on Tuesday. It was a difficult and long job as everything had to be moved off the original shelving and those of you who have visited me will know that the bug house isn't that big. It was too cold to put anything outside so it was a bit of a squeeze. I really don't like change, the new shelves are too high and too deep but I'm sure I will get used to them. At least the back wall won't cave in now. With the old shelving attached to the wall and the weight it was holding I was seriously worried. The shelving creaked loudly when I put anything on or took anything off.
Wednesday we helped our son and partner move house, you would have thought that with all the money he earns he could have paid a removal firm rather than rely on his old mum and dad (well not that old). Then yesterday I had a very large number of spiders come in from my friend in Europe. I worked hard to get them all housed up and fed but I haven't yet had time to enter them on the website, that's a job for today. The new site is working so well that I am able to justify buying in newer and more expensive species. They are not all tarantulas this time, there are a couple of true spider species too.
I am slowly but surely adding more information to my website. I have a long way to go but I think it is very important to state if an animal is captive bred or wild caught. I was really pleased to realise as I was adding the information, that very few of my creatures are wild caught, they are nearly all captive bred, even most of the large spiders. I hope to be more accurate with the sizing too, if I only have one spider I will try and add it's body length. Talking of sizing spiders! I am fed up with people quoting leg span sizes to me over the phone and then when the spider turns up it is tiny. I don't know what these people are measuring but I don't think they could reach that leg span if the spider was squashed with a hammer! I will stick with body length, I know it sounds much smaller but it is accurate and saves disappointment.
On the subject of disappointment, only one customer turned up to my open afternoon last Saturday (as anticipated but I had hoped some people would just arrive on the day). The open afternoons were really popular during the summer but attendance has been dwindling so I will either have to resume them in the Spring or have a rethink of how I work them. I cannot run them on my own and I cannot expect my daughter to stay in for nothing, there is a fair amount of setting up and organising so I will have to see if I can make it work.
With my husband's new job he actually has all of Christmas and New Year off (unheard of in all our years of marriage) so I have decided to do the same. My last day for posting before Christmas will be Tuesday 22nd December and I will resume on Monday 4th January. I will be putting these dates on my website calendar just as soon as I can remember or find my Google log in details!