What a difference a week makes

What a difference a week makes. This time last week I was moaning about a lack of orders and then this week I've been extremely busy. Unfortunately there have been ongoing problems with my payment system for a few customers. It seems PayPal have been refusing their payments. This problem can be overcome by choosing bank transfer or paying by cheque/cash but it has been causing considerable annoyance for a little while now. I am really sorry if this has affected you. My website guy is very busy at the moment, he too works alone on a self employed basis and can never catch up on all his work (I really know that feeling!) however he has thankfully rearranged his time and has been upgrading my website this week. He tells me it will entirely solve the problem and should be completed within the next few days. As usual I simply don't understand how the computer, website, internet or anything else technical works, it is all magic to me and I expect it to just get on and 'work'!

Everything in the bug room seems to be thriving and breeding. I keep moving stock around but there simply isn't enough room for it all. I need to cut down and stop buying so much. I went to the reptile show at Kempton park last Sunday. It was heaving with people and animals (as I said last year, it is the smelliest show I have ever attended). There were some beautiful captive bred animals. Many of the stalls were quite samey, Fat-tailed geckoes, Ball pythons and Corn snakes but there was one stall upstairs on the first floor that was amazing. The guy was German I think, he had baby Iguanas, Day geckoes, lovely snakes that looked like Corn snakes but had huge heads (I got nowhere when I tried doing a Google search on them) and the most fantastic looking frogs. Sadly I couldn't understand the guy and there didn't appear to be any labels on the table but I did find a friend to help identify the frog and it was a Budgett's frog. It was love at first sight for me but that rat bag daughter of mine did it again. She flatly refused to allow me to buy that most adorable creature. I now know she was right but at the time I really, really wanted to bring him home. I have since read up and found they grow to a huge size, are almost entirely aquatic and will readily take your finger off when adult. Ok, she was right as usual, wholly unsuitable as a pet for me, where on earth would I have put it? I did of course get some more bugs, spiders and scorpions mainly but not too many, I was pretty good.

Yesterday I bought in some new beetle larvae. I was very pleased to get this species as they are beautiful but not so pleased when I realised that they can be cannibalistic so need to be kept separately. I spent all afternoon making up individual little houses for them. Beetles are certainly the 'in thing' at the moment and I really love them but I am fed up with making weekly visits to the woods for leaf litter and rotten wood. It is incredibly heavy to carry back, especially when it keeps raining so everything is waterlogged. Someone asked this morning if they could use peat and vermiculite as a substrate because they can buy it from their local pet shop. Sadly there are no short cuts, it has to be rotted leaves and wood but when you see the adult beetles emerge it is so worth all the trouble. A newly emerged beetle is stunning, their colours are magnificent and it really feels like an achievement to have reared such a beautiful creature to adulthood (especially when the larvae often look like giant maggots).

Talking of needing to be strong for lugging wood around and cages full of heavy soil, my gym is under threat of closure! I say 'my' gym, it is actually a lovely little community gym, situated in a school. The school is in financial difficulties and evidently needs the space for new classrooms. I escape to the gym several times a week to relax and get away from the fact that I work from home. I love my weight training and will be seriously upset if it does close. I will be spending some time this weekend writing letters to local councillors, MPs and school governors (as if I haven't got enough to do).

I need to speed up, lots to say and I have to be out in an hour! I said last week that I was looking at alternative ways for customers to make payments on my website. My hubby has set up Pingit on my phone, it is a method of payment introduced by Barclays bank and allows easy payment from any Smart phone. I will talk to my web guy today and hopefully he will put the relevant information on the website. I have placed a large order for some animals from a supplier who is bringing bugs in from Africa (should be early September). I much prefer captive bred animals and I never import anything myself but it will be good for future breeding. With so much coming in I need to up my sales. I issued a discount code this week, the code deducted 10% from all orders using it. The idea was very successful and certainly appeared to result in more orders being placed. I intend to make far more use of my website features in the coming months. I don't find it easy but I'm determined to persevere and enter more information on each animal category, plus get to grips with the special offers section. I have a lot of small size spiders at the moment and they take a lot of time to feed so I am looking at setting up a discount code specifically for them. Keep an eye on my pink information box! Must get on now, feeling a bit panicky this morning as both my babies have gone off to Germany to race around the Nurburgring. I know my youngest baby is 21 but I don't like it, she isn't a daredevil, she just loves cars but my son is like his dad and loves speed and danger. They will be racing around in our son's Porsche. Why couldn't they be interested in animals like their sensible mum? (he certainly wouldn't have a Porsche if he did my job!)