Happy days, I’m off to the SEAS bug show

Happy days, I’m off to the SEAS bug show this weekend. It is my favourite show, a great venue, a super friendly team who work hard each year to make it the success that it always is and at the perfect time for me to re-stock! I have my shopping list ready and will be wandering around the show with my now famous purple clip board (famous because last year someone thought I was an inspector doing checks and reported this to the organisers, who quickly pointed out that it was just me with my extensive shopping list).

I will be concentrating on new tarantula species but I will also be looking at scorpions, I hope to get some Whip scorpions and I have already pre-ordered 20 Giant Train millipedes. However many millipede species I have, the Train millipedes are always the most sought after. I am trying to cut back on the number of millipedes that I keep as I’m fed up with collecting leaf litter and wood for them. I am also fed up with lugging their heavy boxes full of soil around. That said, I am delighted to have bred the truly humungous, Super Giant Madagascar Millipedes (Colossobolus giganteus). The babies are quite small at the moment but they are growing nicely and will be for sale on my website soon. Goodness knows how many years it will be until they are fully grown (I would put a smiley face here but I cannot use them anymore in the blog “imagine a miserable face here”, my husband spent ages trying to sort it out last week but emojis of any sort are just not compatible with the website and scramble the blog when I come to upload it).

Just last week I was saying that Monday and Thursday are pretty much set as my regular posting days. However last weekend showed me that this is in no way practical so I am trialing the following: Monday posting only to outside the UK and using this day for paperwork/computer work, Tuesday and Thursday will be my two posting days, Wednesday is Ginny’s Jungle day (organising my local business) and Friday will be cleaning/feeding all the animals. I really need to have this structure in place as at present I work seven days a week, unless I am physically out of the house. It isn’t fair on my husband to carry on like this, neither of us get any time to relax at the weekend. He has a busy, week day job, it is very different from when he worked shifts for all those years.

Last weekend was chaos, I didn’t stop, the world has speeded up but I need to slow my little bit of the world down a tad. Emails are constant and often when I reply the person will come back with another question, if I don’t reply quickly I get more emails from the same person asking why I haven’t replied and then people send a follow up text or two. This is fine in the week but I have to stop at the weekends. These weekend messages are often relating to orders that I have planned to send on Monday so I have no choice but to sort things out before Monday morning and here lies the main problem! So, I will trial posting on Tuesday rather than Monday and that way I can sort out all the emails and alterations to orders on Monday rather than the weekend. The reason that last weekend was quite so manic is because of my ‘make me an offer on tarantulas’ promotion. It was really popular and quite good fun but it did take time to check prices and input the information onto the website. Lastly on the subject, honestly, I’m not complaining, it is entirely my own fault. I have always worked through the weekends but it was ok when my husband worked most weekends and we were a lot younger! I’m extremely grateful to be busy and have plenty of orders, I just need to organise my time better. My husband is always saying that I don’t prioritise and he’s right. I try to look after every bug and every person, I was born a control freak!

Next weekend I have a horrible big birthday with an ‘0’ on the end. I’m not happy about being that old and I’ve been saying for ages that I’m falling to bits. I have had a problem with a blocked nose for some time, my doctor gave me various sprays, antihistamine tablets and referred me to a local ENT doctor twice. They were both positive that it was an allergy to my bugs. When I went back to my doctor before Christmas she finally agreed to send me to an ENT doctor at the hospital, she also referred me to an allergy clinic for tests. I cancelled the allergy tests but went to the ENT appointment only to be told that I have a collapsed septum and need an operation to repair it. Clearly nothing to do with the bugs at all and I don’t want to hear anybody else mention Daniella Westbrook or suggest that I might have a ‘little problem’. Honestly, I have never even tried a cigarette! The surgeon said that I may have hit my nose but it could just be that I have always had a weakness there and with age it has fallen down. Proof indeed that I am falling to bits! (just in case you don’t watch Botched – I love the program, ENT is an ear, nose & throat specialist and the septum is the piece of cartilage in the nose that separates the nostrils).

Anyway, I had better get a move on and take Teddi for a walk, we still have some snow here but it looks like next week should be better. I have posted plenty of parcels this week and had no problems, I stick by my theory that the parcels are never very far from people and people don't like to get cold. I really don’t like the cold weather, only 53 days to go until Spring but who’s counting (smiley face)

Might see some of you at the show, do say hello if you see me, it is always good to put faces to names.