Happy New Year Everyone!

Happy New Year Everyone! I had a lovely break over Christmas and New Year, it was well worth cutting down on livestock before the festivities. I had a very family orientated Christmas, lots of kids events " oh yes there was" and family parties. This week it is very much back to work. I have been frantically feeding, cleaning, moving tanks around and generally organising everything for all the new animals that I have coming in. Yesterday I collected some scorpions, spiders, beetles and unidentified cockroaches from a reptile dealer friend of mine. I know it is weird (my husband constantly tells me) but I do like cockroaches. These ones are very similar to the Porcelain cockroach. I did some searching on Google last night, wouldn't it be great if they were a new species and then they could be named after me? I would love to have a bug named after me, there are so many, as yet unidentified species in the world. It has to be more realistic than hoping to win the lottery!

I am writing my blog a day earlier than usual as tomorrow I have a large number of new spiders arriving. I don't think I will have any time to do anything but attend to them, i.e. unpack, house up, label, enter on the website. I cannot say I am looking forward to tomorrow, it is very hard work to get it all done on my own and sadly both hubby and daughter are working at their own jobs tomorrow. I do have some spiderlings coming in today, they are a species that I haven't had before Cyriocosmus ritae. I don't know their common name, I will have to consult my best friend Google. I hope I can find a common name, I hate it when I have to make one up. I often get moaned at but what else can I do? Nobody wants to buy a spider that is unnamed, I know that from years of experience. Talking of years, that leads me onto mentioning that it is 30 years since I started up my entomological business. I was sorting out my filing cabinet over the holidays (I couldn't spend the whole time relaxing) and I have price lists dating back to 1982. I realise this is long before many of you were even born. I will get myself sorted in the next few weeks and hopefully reproduce one of these early lists on my website. I really haven't got time at the moment but I must not let this milestone go past without a fuss. It would be great to hold a big party but I can't afford it! 2011 was a lousy year financially, fingers and toes crossed that 2012 is much better.

Joking apart, it really was nice to have a bit of time to myself over Christmas and I do think I need to get better organised. Unless I am away, I find myself working seven days a week, it is difficult to ignore jobs to be done when you work from home. I spend a great deal of time out in the bug house but I also spend a huge amount of time in my office. I need to do less at the weekends. I know I have said it before (yes, more than once) but it isn't easy, if I don't get the paperwork sorted at the weekend I won't be able to get orders off on a Monday. I am going to try but I may need to actually switch off the computer, I am terrible at popping in and out of my office and then fretting about problems that have occurred (or might occur). I am especially bad in the evenings, it is obviously not a good idea to check my emails before going to bed. If something needs sorting out, then I can't sleep. My New Year's resolution has got to be 'don't look at emails after 8pm'! (will I stick to it? Hopefully but how many people actually stick to their diets beyond January?)

We have had some terrible storms this week but thankfully no snow. It is great that the weather is so mild and of course the evenings are getting lighter. I counted up how many weeks it is until spring, probably not a great idea as it was 11 and as hubby pointed out that is almost three months, which doesn't sound so good. I long for spring, not only for the warm weather but for the plants to start growing again. I really don't know how much longer I can maintain my Black Beauty stick insect colony, they are munching through a mountain of privet and the ferns in my garden are dying rapidly. I will have to resort to house ferns soon for my Peruvian Fern stick insects. I am still collecting bramble every few days, I see bramble in my dreams! I have a number of old friends that I call once a year or so at Christmas and speaking to one of them the other day she asked if I still had to collect bramble. I had my bramble collecting gloves and secateurs in my hand as we spoke, this is a lady that I lived next door to 32 years ago (yes, of course I kept bugs long before I started selling them). Collecting bramble is the bane of my life, it will always be embarrassing. What on earth do you say when you are lurking in the undergrowth with an armful of small branches? Whatever you say, you are going to look like a nutcase. I tend to smile and people walk on by, often shaking their heads as they go.

I could sit here rambling on all day but I had better get a move on.