Never a dull moment!
Never a dull moment! I am starting this blog on my iPhone as I am pushed for time and am taking my mother in-law for a hearing appointment. I'm really getting into all this technology, I have never before written my blog on the move. I started in the car waiting for her to come out and now we are sitting in the hearing centre.
Halloween was great, my feely box game went down very well with my sister's ten grandchildren. There really weren't many live bugs to be felt (the adults banned them) but the mind is a great thing and the kids were soon screaming as they imagined all sorts of creatures when they put their hand in the box. The photo of me dressed as a spider was popular on Facebook and got more hits than most of my postings. I must try harder next year, I really needed face paints. I tried drawing fangs on but my eye pencil broke!
The bugs are thriving on the whole, I still haven't managed to find a suitable cabinet to house my growing collection of scorpions. I have the individual containers sorted so that's half the job done. I was disappointed to find that my beautiful Six Spotted Fishing spider had discarded her egg sac a couple of days ago and was looking rather unwell. Sadly this morning I found her dead, I'm not sure what happened, perhaps she dried out a little or a cricket attacked her? I will do my best to incubate her egg sac but in all honesty I don't hold out much hope.
I now have my new Apple Mac computer set up in my office but I haven't had a chance to use it yet, it has been a very busy week. My hubby has set it up for me but we all know it will take me ages to get to grips with it and I will probably never actually understand it. I am committed though, it works like my beloved iPhone and iPad so in the long run I know it will be worth all the upheaval. It will be fantastic when I can post photos and even videos. With my current computer photos just seem to disappear, never to be seen again, vanished into cyber space.
Last week I briefly mentioned my new business idea of running children's parties. I need to do something to keep me afloat. Sadly as I have mentioned many times in my blog over the last year or so I spend hours looking after my animals and just don't have enough orders. I get paid nothing for looking after the creatures (don't get me started on the humans that I look after - no pay there either). I need to cut down on my menagerie, I am constantly chasing my tail and things have got worse since my husband changed jobs last year. It isn't fair on anyone that when I am in the house, I am always working. I was chatting to a customer of mine last week and she kindly gave me all the information that I need to get started. I supply people up and down the country with animals to use for parties so it's about time I tried it myself. I used to visit schools with my "mini beast show" (many years ago) so it is hopefully just a case of getting everything organised and then I intend to start in the new year. I have my first 'practice' party set up for two weeks time and I am in the process of organising insurance and such like.
Please don't think I am giving up my online shop! I just need something to run alongside it and I also love kids (which must be a bonus). I have for some time been trying to be more sensible and concentrate on breeding and buying the bugs and arachnids that people want and not what I would necessarily like to keep myself. I love praying mantids, beetles and stick insects but they are so time consuming, delicate and short lived when you compare them to the spiders, scorpions, cockroaches etc. Tropical beetles are beautiful but the adult stage, much like our British Stag beetle is sometimes very short. The beetle may look absolutely perfect one day and then dead the next! I try to encourage people to buy the larvae and hatch their own adult beetles but most people just want to buy the adults.
All change, it is now Friday morning and I am going up to London today. I started writing this blog yesterday morning and then everything went wrong! I collected my great-nieces from school as usual but the younger one wanted to go to a bonfire party and although I didn't have to take her, I didn't want her to miss out so we came home, got changed and set off again. When the girls had gone home later I sat down to finished my blog but the power suddenly switched off and I was left sitting in the dark, wondering what had happened? The house lights were on but my office and bug room were in darkness. Just a case of re-setting the trip? Oh no, several hours of my poor hubby and me trying to isolate everything to see what had tripped it. We are still not absolutely sure so we set off for bed only for me to get up in the night and check everything as I was so worried that my bug room heating could go off again. It was ok but of course a huge chunk of my blog was lost and I have no time to carry on now! I really don't feel like going out for the day but everything is organised and I can't let people down.
Sorry more bug news next week and less news of me and my moans, well maybe!