Gardens are springing into life

Gardens are springing into life, everything is beginning to grow again and in the bug room all my little animals seem to be flourishing and reproducing. I am trying to organise my week better, I really need to now that my husband has changed jobs. He used to work most weekends but now he works weekdays only so it isn't fair on the family that I just carry on working all weekend. Friday has always been my 'floating' day when I go out and about running errands as there is no posting to do but it is now the day when I need to ensure that all the animals have been fed and cared for or else I have no choice but to carry on tomorrow. Consequently I don't have a lot of time this morning for the blog (it doesn't help that I can only type with one finger!). I would like to have started this blog last night but I had to attend to a friend's 'minor' crisis in the form of head lice. Well I thought it was minor but she didn't and as 'the bug lady' it was deemed that I was the most suitable person to deal with it. Head lice are a real nuisance these days, I don't remember them being around when I was at school but they certainly were when my kids went to school and they seem to be rife everywhere now. I have a little electronic comb that zaps them, it is much better than all these chemicals but it takes ages.

I have decided that I need to 'try' to cut down on the amount of time that I spend on my bugs. I have so many other things in my life (mother in-law is back in hospital again next week and I will then be caring for her at our house when she comes out). The plan is to cut back on the animals that take lots of care and yet make little money as they are not in demand. This sounds easy but sadly this probably covers the bugs that I am most fond of! Stick insects are really out of favour so I am at least cutting down on them, beetles are lots of work and much as I love scorpions they just don't sell. I am selling my gorgeous little baby Shiny Burrowing scorpions at a very low price and cannot believe that they haven't flown out the door. I  have decided to concentrate more on spiders and tarantulas in particular. I have just ordered a large number of captive bred tarantulas that will be arriving with me the week after next. I am often offered job lots of spiderlings but these are too much work for way too little profit. What I need is lots of different species and just half a dozen of each. I have to be more picky these days because I no longer have any neighbours that can take in parcels for me and my husband doesn't have any days off in the week. I cannot afford to be stuck indoors all day waiting for the post. Although I work 'from' home, in reality I am in and out all day and every day. Our postal deliveries are totally haphazard, the postman calls at all times of the day and the sorting office is miles away with absolutely no parking! I can't just say "oh yes I will have some, post them off to me", it has to be arranged with military precision and some people just aren't that reliable. I tend to order my bugs from several sources that I know I can rely on and then travel to bug shows when I can. My main aim is to breed everything that I have, as you all know by now I hate animals to be taken from the wild and I never import anything.

One thing that I have implemented over the last couple of weeks is that I pack everything for the orders in one go. I have always packed orders individually as I go through the invoices in rotation. I have done this to make sure that I don't get the orders muddled but the new system seems to be working fine and saving a considerable amount of time. I double check everything on the packing note, write quantities on the individual tubs and it means that I don't end up moving the boxes around all over the place several times. There is so little space in my bug room (especially when I am sorting out orders) and the boxes can be very heavy, the bugs may not weigh much but the boxes full of peat and rotten wood certainly are heavy and I still need to be careful of my back.

I am trying hard with Facebook and adding more information to the website. It is a slow process for me as it doesn't come easily. I am much happier playing with my animals than trying to get to grips with technology. I have always had a complete mental block when it comes to maths and all these things seem just like maths equations to me! I would do anything to get out of it but I am trying to concentrate and 'just do it'. I know I have some messages on Facebook and I need to reply to them when I can work out how. I am never sure if I am posting to one person or the whole world. I am much happier talking on the phone but most of my customers really aren't! I think they feel about the phone as I feel about the computer so please be patient and keep encouraging me by liking and commenting, I need your input!

Talking of input, please let me know if you find any mistakes on my website, spelling mistakes, wrongs dates on the spider info or anything else, it really helps and I always appreciate it. I would also be really grateful if you could let me know of any problems that you may have when placing an order via my site. I cannot see the order process but I do sometimes have people report problems with the PayPal system. I am still looking at another payment system to add to my website but I have no idea if it is really necessary so I need to monitor things for a while. It would be a lot of hassle to get a new system put in place so I need to work out if there really is a problem. It is very awkward for me to actually ask a customer outright because when I have delved into it I have found that an order often fails due to insufficient funds or a mistake made by the customer. I want to generate more orders, not upset potential customers!

Lastly, much as I love my snakes I need to cut down on them. I really need a good home for one or perhaps two of my male Corn snakes who are 18 months old and still living with their mum. I cannot risk leaving them together during the mating season for obvious reasons and hubby has point blank refused to allow me another giant vivarium in the dining room (how mean is that). I will be putting this plea on Facebook with photos shortly.