Trying hard
Trying hard to keep everything going, all this has certainly made me realise that things have got to change. I have to work less and live more! I must stop panicking about every little thing and dare I say it "try and calm down". My daily visits to the gym seem to have been replaced by visits to the doctor, opticians, chiropractor etc. However I should be fine, my eye is healing and hopefully my back is too. I am praying that when I see the chiropractor next week I can go back in the gym but clearly I will have to take care and ease up on the weights.
I went to the AES exhibition last Saturday and spent a lot of time just chatting rather than rushing around everywhere looking for the best buys as I generally do. It was very pleasant and I got to catch up with lots of people who I have known for years but only see occasionally. I did buy a few bits and pieces, some nice spiderlings, beetle larvae and a beautiful pair of giant grasshoppers. I am hoping they will breed for next year but they were essentially a present for myself. They were expensive but I thought I deserved it. I bought them from the French brothers who are always at the various shows (the ones that I am still trying to learn French for, so that I can talk to them). I am getting quite good at reading and writing French thanks to Duo-lingo on my iPad but I just don't have the confidence to try speaking it and the guys speak too fast! One of the brothers thought I was asking him to give me the grasshoppers as a present because I had been ill. He looked so awkward as I tried to explain that I was buying them as a present to myself, I certainly wasn't asking for them free.
It was interesting talking to traders at their tables, I don't think anyone runs a business like mine alone, they either work with a partner or employ staff. Sadly I don't earn enough to employ anyone and even sadder my family have proved to me over the last three weeks that with the best will in the world they are no back up at all. I want to keep going with my bugs (not just because I have no pension and it is still 11 years until I get a state one) but because I really love them. I just need to focus and use my time more wisely. On that note, I was sensible this week and gave away all my baby Corn snakes. I am not a reptile dealer and nobody wanted to give them a home. They were taking up loads of time and money. I say "all", I have kept one, I couldn't quite be that sensible.
Everything in the bug room is looking pretty good and I am so glad that collecting leaf litter has become less of an issue now that the trees are once again losing their leaves. The millipedes are still doing well and I have lots of babies coming along. I am going to be brave and introduce my Sri Lankan Ornamental (Poecilotheria fasciata) pair to each other this weekend. I set the female up in a nice large Exo Terre vivarium yesterday. I have never bred Poecilotheria tarantulas before, they are big and beautiful but also fast and venomous, hence the hesitation. The last thing I need is to get bitten by one of them now! I am still working on getting my gravid scorpions to actually give birth. I spoke to several people at the exhibition but nobody really seems to know that much about scorpion reproduction. When I fed my large tarantulas this week I was not best pleased to find that out of six Burma Big Black tarantulas four had matured into adult males. Nobody wants males, it is such a shame. I think I can be pretty sure that the last two are female but the males will be long gone by the time they mature. That's nature and also the reason why I don't want to know how to sex tarantulas. How would I avoid selling all the females and being stuck with all the males?
As usual I am running out of time, I have to get down to Pets At Home. I really need small crickets and am hoping they have some in. I don't have time to drive down to my usual supplier in London. I thought I had got plenty of crickets from the exhibition but I do seem to have a large number of creatures that feed on crickets at the moment.
Postage: I have starting using heat packs in my orders this week and was going to put up the postal charges or charge separately for the heat packs like other suppliers but I have decided to keep things as they are for the moment. Postage is just so expensive now, I cannot believe how much I spend on stamps each month but I really want to keep the price down for as long as I can.
WorldPay: I have given up on this payment method and decided to stick with PayPal (better the devil you know). They have been a nightmare to deal with and I hadn't even started using their service yet!
Despatch Days: Over the last couple of weeks I have only posted on a Monday and Thursday. I am thinking of making this permanent unless I get a sudden surge of orders. It is much easier for me and I haven't had any complaints about it.
New-ish Tarantula Layout: The system is obviously better for customers but I am still getting to grips with it. Please let me know if you notice any mistakes, it really helps. I haven't forgotten about adding information to each species but it is complicated so I am still trying to work out how best to go about it.