I have certainly knuckled down and focussed on my work this week

I have certainly knuckled down and focussed on my work this week. The school holidays are well and truly over. All items on my daily and weekly 'tick list' have been completed, I am at last catching up and feel good, if not more than a little shattered.

It is a constant job to keep all my little friends, fed, watered and clean. Our kitchen is forever full of boxes, jam jars and cages either needing to be washed or dried. At the moment I have a kitchen top covered in plastic sweet jars. I was really pleased to get my hands on them, after the recent takeover of the traditional sweet shop that has saved them for me over several years. Since the takeover I hadn't received a single jar but the new owners were good to their word and saved a sack load for me this week. I desperately need the jars to post off my 'bulk buy' cockroach and stick insect offers. Cockroaches have been selling particularly well this month but stick insect sales have been pitiful. Come on buy some stick insects! I need to cut back on them before the Winter and looking out of my office window, Winter is fast approaching. I am pleased a friend is letting me sell my surplus stick insects on his stall at a bug show next month. It is perfect timing before the cold sets in. I hate collecting bramble in the cold and wet. There must be an awful lot more deer around these days as most of my local bramble has been completely eaten. Even in the summer months I have been driving down to the local Homebase car park, the bramble there is green and fresh as it is next to a river. I have had to give up on my bramble patch at the end of the garden. It is too dry so it never grows properly and it isn't fair to my neighbour as it spreads onto her vegetable patch, the other side of the fence. I have dug most of it out this week and my fingers are hurting as I type this as they are full of bramble prickles!

I have fed and watered all my little spiders this week but I haven't yet had time for the large ones. It is always interesting to see which have moulted, they look so different after a moult. I will check on my breeding spiders later this morning. It is good to finally have a few pairs and not just odd males that nobody wants. I mean odd in the fact that they are a rare species that nobody has a female to breed with. I have set up a 'spider breeding area' but it is high up on top of the shelving and not easy to reach. The spiders like it because it is out of the way so I don't need to constantly move the boxes to reach something else. I never have enough room in my bug house. I dream of having a double sized log cabin for the bugs and an office on the side but unless I win the lottery it isn't going to happen. I think I am stuck with cages and boxes on top of each other and constantly walking up and down the garden from my office indoors to the bug house at the end of the garden. I will never get fat in my job, so many people ask how do I stay so slim (at my age!), the secret is that I never stop moving and of course my idea of relaxation is to go to the gym most days.

I have had quite a few people wanting to come and visit recently, especially in the school holidays. I have once again changed the words in my 'notes to visitors' on my website. Whatever I write it never quite works out as I had planned! I simply cannot have visitors to the bug house, it isn't suitable. Everyone these days has to be aware that being sued is a real threat. Our garden is like an obstacle course, people often comment how interesting it is but we have a lot of decking and two people have slipped over on it. These people have been lovely (I felt terrible), the fact is that I'm used to the slippery decking and the holes in the bug house steps (hopefully to be repaired by hubby soon). We have several ponds in the garden, a danger to children etc. etc. I wish I had a rear entrance to the bug house but sadly I don't and the risk is too high. I do bring things into my house for people to see but this doesn't mean that people can bring their entire family to choose. These people generally want to come at weekends when my family are around, it just doesn't work. I have several customers who give me a call and pop in when they are in the area. This works fine and I'm quite happy to bring in a few spiders to look at. I do like to be organised but it seems in this case that ad hoc works better!

I really must get my new website organised. It is very scary, the money, the time, the organising of it all! I will ring my website guy today (or maybe at the beginning of next week) and get the ball rolling. I have lots of ideas but I don't know how practical they are. I would like to change my payment system, I am fed up with PayPal. The system that I have doesn't allow customers to pay by card if they have a PayPal account. I want people to be able to choose, it is supposed to be 'my' online shop. Yes - once again it is a case of me being a control freak, I want to be more in control of the website but I just don't have the technical knowhow! I would also like to have the facility to allow educational establishments to pay via purchase order. Since getting my online shop almost three years ago I'm sure I have lost some of my customers due to not having this payment method.

Anyway I am rabbiting on again and need to get out to the bug house. I read an interesting snippet in the paper this morning. It said that online sales were considerably down during the Olympics. I knew my sales were unusually low during July/August, thank goodness the games are over but wasn't it fun!