Seems ages since my last blog
Seems ages since my last blog. I was away in Luxembourg last week with my sister, visiting her daughter and family. It didn't really go as planned, unfortunately my niece's four kids all went down with a sickness bug so we couldn't get out and about much. It was lovely to spend so much time with the kids and I did get a chance to practice my French (I have been trying to learn French for the last 18 months, I do a little every day on my iPad/Duolingo app). It is a strange country, sandwiched in between several others. We went to Ikea in Belgium and then to a shoe shop in Germany. Some shops speak German and others French. My great-nieces speak fluent German but are not so hot on French. Annika (9 on the Wednesday of our visit) and I went shopping in the local supermarket and had a good laugh trying to communicate. The youngest is almost 2 and says quite a bit but some of it is in English, some German and some just baby babble! The funniest trip was to the vets with my great nephew's snake Steve (named after Steve Irwin). I was alarmed to find that Steve had a large swelling near his tail end so my niece rang the vets until she found one who would see a snake. My niece and the vet babbled away in French. The vet had no idea (snake keeping is clearly not popular in Luxembourg)but he x-rayed Steve which the kids found fascinating. Since returning home and consulting a snake expert friend, it seems steve is just plain old fat!
The family did a good job with the bug room, everything looked pretty good upon my return. I spent Monday catching up on paperwork and sending out orders and the rest of the week has mostly been taken up with cleaning and feeding everything. I managed to get bitten by a Gooty Ornamental spiderling yesterday. I never learn, I really should know by now that small spiders can still inject venom. It did sting but I'm still here, no harm done. The trouble was that it wouldn't let go of my finger, I ended up dunking it in a bowl of water in the sink. I still have a Feather Leg Baboon spider on the loose, it jumped out of its box at feeding time, just before I went away. I was hoping it would turn up but it hasn't as yet (I did own up to my daughter but I had to promise that I wouldn't tell her boyfriend or he would want to move out).
I have been trying with Facebook and thanks so much to all those people who have 'liked' my page. I still don't really know how it works or who can see it or who I am posting to and where but at least it's a beginning. I am once again thinking of starting up another payment system on my website. Most of the time PayPal is great but they keep moving the goalposts, changing things to suit them and not me. The latest thing is that PayPal Express bypasses certain important points like which countries I post bugs to. I have had an order for America and one from Canada recently. I only deal within Europe so only European countries are listed on my website and the others should be blocked. I refunded the orders and emailed to explain but it is hassle I could do without. I am once again looking at World Pay or World Pain as I affectionately call them after all the trouble I had trying to set up an account with them last year. It turned out that I actually had an account set up with them in the end but nobody told me! I then hurt my back and my eye and decided it was too much hassle to cope with. I did contact the company this week but they didn't keep my details so I would have to start all over again. I'm not sure I can go through all that again but I might, I don't know, it's been a long week!
My daughter started her new job in aquatics on Tuesday, she seems happy and hubby has finally finished his training in Manchester so he is working in London now and around more in the evenings and at weekends. I'm glad my daughter is no longer working in telephone sales, now I can go back to being rude to salespeople on the phone. I try to have sympathy that they have such a boring job but it drives me insane that I receive sales calls on my home phone, work landline and mobile each and every day. Oh how I hope they do bring in this law to stop it all. I have never, ever said "that's great, I'm so interested, I really want one".
Anyway, must get on, the dog needs walking, my mother in-law will need picking up from the hospital a bit later, I have a blood test booked (still the saga of my back, no idea what the test is looking for?) and I need to get some food shopping as we have people coming for dinner this evening. Never a dull moment and I do have to find time to feed all my scorpions as they are the only animals not yet sorted since I got back. My feeding list begins again tomorrow so I need to get those yellow stickers on today (each week has a different colour feeding sticker dot). I know it is a bit fanatical but I need to be organised with all these little creatures, if I didn't have my lists and stickers some might starve and I would feel terrible.
March begins on Sunday so it really is 'nearly' Spring!