The 'work versus life' balance has been mostly on the work s

The 'work versus life' balance has been mostly on the work side since the birth of my automated, online website last September. I have therefore been determined to redress the balance during the school summer holidays. I visited my aunty in Somerset this week on her 89th birthday and it was lovely to see her looking so well for her advanced years. I also visited London Zoo yesterday with my family and my nephew's children. It was a lovely day, I haven't been to the zoo in years. The only down side is that my takings for this month are lower than any other month since the website began and my desk is heaving with paperwork! The website has changed my business forever but it does have some limitations and I am still getting to grips with it. There are lots of things that I once did, but the site doesn't seem to have the flexibility to allow them now. I cannot reduce the price of an item for a certain customer, I have to reduce the item for everyone or not at all. I cannot hold livestock as this upsets the automatic stock counter and I only realised this week that there is no way of paying by cash now. I am still undecided about stopping the cheque/postal order facility. I don't want to because there are a few long standing customers who prefer this method but the vast majority of people who choose this option never send the cheque, they are just using it as a way of deferring payment and it is an absolute pain for me to manually restock the non purchased items onto the site. Sadly I do seem to have lost some of my regular pre-website customers. Some older people don't have a computer and therefore cannot access my site, I can't see a way around this. On the whole the website has been a huge success and vastly increased sales. I have many new and regular customers within the UK and in various other parts of Europe. I guess like everyone else I just need to move with the times but I find change most unsettling!

I was delighted a few days ago to see that my pair of Java Jumping spiders are caring for an egg sac. Both came in with missing front legs so I didn't hold out much hope for their survival. Keeping them has actually taught me a lot, previously these spiders have come in and then gone out quickly so I hadn't had time to observe them. With this pair, I have enjoyed caring for them, I have discovered that they need to eat far more than I had realised. They are very active little spiders, always on the go and happy to stalk green bottle and blue bottle flies all day long it seems. I don't like to leave live food in with my tarantula spiders because the food, generally crickets, jump around and annoy the spider. I tend to offer food each week but if it is not eaten immediately, I take the food out and try again the following week. The Jumping spiders are obviously quite different, that said I wouldn't leave more than a couple of flies in with them at a time. I think my past failing with these spiders was partly due to not feeding them often enough. I realised a long time ago that the Fishing and Huntsman spiders eat far more than your average tarantula. True spiders are becoming more popular pets and there is clearly a lot more to learn about them. I saw some beautiful Orb web spiders at the zoo yesterday. My tiny Orb web spiderlings that hatched recently aren't doing too well. I think fruit flies are too big for them but I don't have anything smaller, I have various aphids around the garden but they are all larger than the spiderlings too. I have tried putting in a squashed cricket to see if they will feed communally. Another problem that I have encountered with them is that they are determined to get out! They seem to squeeze upwards regardless of if it goes anywhere. I found a number had forced their way under the rubber band holding the net lid onto the jar and then when I transferred some to a plastic box some forced their way under the clip on lid and perished. I still have some left and another egg case yet to hatch so I will keep trying. I was given some microscopic 'live food' years ago, the tiny little creatures were very useful and would have been perfect for these spiderlings but I discovered that they were actually book lice and it didn't seem a very good idea to be keeping them. They were barely visible so I had no way of containing them.

I decided to clean out my mixed baby millipede box this week. I had high hopes of finding some rarer species in there but I was very upset to find that the box had been taken over by Surinam cockroaches. The last time I counted my babies there were 50+ but they were too small to identify. This time I found about half a dozen, will I ever manage to eradicate these damn cockroaches from my bug house?

My holiday is only three weeks away today so I really need to get organised. My mother in-law will move in and various friends will visit so the house pets will be fine but I will be relying on my son to care for the bugs. He no longer lives locally so he cannot call each day, I need to set up the cages for self care as much as possible. I made a real mistake last week, I just couldn't resist getting in some Jungle Nymph stick insects (well they are beautiful). I now wish I had resisted as I paid way too much for them and haven't sold any! I thought they would go like hot cakes and I'm sure they would at another time of the year but right now a lot of people are contemplating holidays and these rare animals need a regular supply of bramble and more care than many other pet bugs.

Lastly, I almost forgot as it seems a dim and distant memory now but I did have an open afternoon last Saturday. The least said the better, it was a disaster but the thought of people coming did make me clear up the bug house. I hadn't had an open afternoon for ages and I can now say with certainty that I won't be having anymore. Again it is a case of times changing. When I lived in London they were a great success and the bug house would often be over flowing with visitors, sometimes people would be queuing up outside. One of my regular customers said that I didn't sound too upset and he's right. It is actually very stressful not knowing who is going to turn up and what they might want to buy.

Well, this blog seems to have taken me ages. I had better get on with that paperwork pile, I really can't say I want to but I've had a nice week so I will give myself a kick and get started (after I've had a cup of tea).