Too many hats!

Too many hats! (Dictionary definition: To wear too many hats - To hold too many responsibilities or assume too many roles at the same time) That’s it, me to a tee but I’m getting there, I’m feeling calmer and more in control. I had a lovely birthday weekend, thanks for all your best wishes and thanks also for all your orders, it has been a great week.

My bug room is full, full, full but I’m gradually getting everything organised and in the right place. The weather is freezing but me and the bugs are nice and snug. I have spent most of this week either in my office catching up on paperwork or in the bug room. Goodness knows what the electricity bill will be but I ‘need’ the heat, I just can’t stand getting cold or even remotely chilled (I bought a new electric blanket yesterday with my Amazon birthday gift card).

Unbelievably I still haven’t managed to find time to put all the new animals that I got from the recent show onto my website. I have scribbled notes everywhere but it is almost two weeks ago now so I am struggling to remember what I have and haven’t yet entered onto the site and onto my stock lists on the computer. I like lists and quite honestly wouldn’t be able to manage without them. I have an everyday list of jobs (most never get done on the day but are carried over to the next day), I have a list of jobs for my daughter to help me with (while she is only working part time), a list of jobs for my husband (which he mostly ignores), a list of things that my mother in-law needs done, a list of jobs that my elder sister needs done and it goes on!

Not everything that I got from the SEAS show will be going on my website as I am hoping to breed from some of the animals. I am still trying to master scorpions, I bought a trio of very large, black Heterometrus scorpions. They are two females and a male and have never been housed together. I have almost finished the set up and then I will gradually introduce them to each other and watch their interactions before hopefully feeling confident to leave them together eventually. The beautiful Tail-less Whip scorpion that I got from a friend at the show, has produced babies (she was clearly pregnant but they can sometimes reabsorb the eggs), her whole abdomen is covered in miniature Whip scorpions. They look so cute, I will try to keep a photographic record of them as they grow. The baby ones that I bought at the show are selling very well, I can’t believe how much they eat! I keep putting crickets in the box and they keep disappearing overnight. I really like scorpions, I was delighted to find scorpions in our room in Costa Rica. I do realise that not everyone would be so delighted (hubby wasn’t too thrilled). Have I mentioned that I went to Costa Rica? (ha,ha)

I got some ‘bug themed’ presents for my birthday last Saturday. Hubby bought me the book on Costa Rican insects that our young guide showed me (I think I mentioned before that I had tried to find a copy in Spanish to send him but it was sadly only produced in English). My hubby also gave me Amazon vouchers so that I could order the book on Costa Rican snakes that my friend forgot to bring along to the show. Unfortunately, Amazon only sell the book in German (hence spending my gift card on a new electric blanket). Why can’t everyone just speak the same language? I’m sure we will do one day. I got some spider craft kits from a friend, she thought they would be useful for my Ginny’s Jungle parties and my daughter made me a super Fimo model scorpion.
Must just finish with a couple of quotes from people at the SEAS show, they both made me laugh out loud. I was talking to a German friend about breeding tarantulas and he said in a very serious Germanic way “nothing is difficult when you do it right” (I guess he’s correct but I don’t think it’s quite that simple) and my favourite was from a lady standing next to me at one of the stalls who turned to me and said  “you don’t look like the sort of lady who would buy tarantulas”!!!