Seeing the light!

This Wednesday was the first day that I actually felt I could see the 'light at the end of the tunnel'. The last few weeks have truly been exhausting. We had to move the bugs into their new room over Easter, for lots of reasons but the main one being my husband and I only had the time then. However the freezing weather and the fact that it was the first week of the month made it the worst time possible. The first week of every month is always the busiest for sales and April has been the busiest month of the year by far. Finally things are beginning to settle. I am starting to get the cages and boxes better laid out and therefore it is easier to find everything. The room is far smaller but it is so much easier to pop in and out, rather than needing to walk to the end of the garden continually. I would love to cut things down a bit but it just isn't possible at the moment. I got some lovely Israeli Gold scorpions this week. It is so long since I last had them that they weren't even on my system, I estimate that it is at least three years. Some look gravid so I will be hanging onto them with fingers crossed for babies. I also brought in some very pretty African Tiger beetles. They are really active and great fun to watch, a lot of mating has been going on so I am hopeful that these too might breed.

I had a panic a couple of days ago when I realised that my pair of Jumping spiders had escaped from their tank. I thought I hadn't seen them for a bit and when I lifted the tank down I realised why. I cleaned out the Exo Terre tank for them and left the vents in the lid open, they had obviously just walked out. I had a quick, frantic look around and then calmed down and thought about it. Most bugs will gravitate towards the light so I got on a stool and checked around the windows. Sure enough the male was on one blind and the female on another, they were either side of a fly paper that I had hung up. They are probably the cutest spiders that I have ever had. They both turned and looked at me. I tried to take a photo on my iPhone but by then I was perched on top of a trolley with wheels on it! The windows are just below the ceiling.

I have had a couple of customers call and collect their orders this week and I have another calling today. It does make life much easier when I have somewhere to invite people in, rather than standing in our porch or hallway. There will never be enough room for 'open afternoons' again but I certainly feel able to have a couple of visitors at a time. It is really nice to meet people (I am on my own most of the time) and it is much easier to hand something over rather than packing it all up for posting out. I will get something written down about visiting the bug room soon. My hubby is away for the weekend with work so I intend to really knuckle down and get things sorted out this weekend (so much for my New Year's resolution of not working on Sundays - a dim and distant memory). I cannot believe how many emails I have received this week. I am not complaining, it is really nice that people let me know their orders have arrived ok and that people are wishing me well as I try to carry on in all the recent upheaval. Sometimes I answer them quickly but at other times they do seem to pile up and overwhelm me. I always get through them in the end. I do wish more people would call me with enquiries. It is often so much easier and quicker to answer questions on the phone but most people simply email me! The thing with email is that it is 24 hour but I am generally around from 9am-4pm to answer calls (it still annoys me that my mobile phone has no engaged signal, so the when I am talking on my phone it just continues to ring for the caller).

I mentioned last week that I couldn't make up my mind about increasing my postal charges. I finally took the plunge, the UK postage has only increased by 50p but my European rate has risen by £1.50. I will still be sending out orders that cost me far more than this but others will cost less and hopefully balance out a bit better. I certainly don't want to lose custom in these difficult financial  times. This week has been the first week that I haven't automatically put a heat pack in every parcel (hurray). Having said that I did hear on the weather last night that we may once again have frost at night! When it comes around to Winter again I will probably have to charge for heat packs but I am not worrying about that at the moment. I'm just so glad that I did order in another lot of heat packs last month. I really didn't expect to need them but I have actually used half already. I cannot believe the awful weather this year, as I sit here now the sky is completely white and it is dingy and drizzling. Let's hope we have a long and extremely sunny summer, I think we deserve it!