Dear, Mr. Ebay

Dear Mr. Ebay,

How does it feel to be sat in your solid gold mansion? Have you recently decided to remodel, landscape or maybe add an extra wing? Or perhaps, was your swimming pool of cash in need of a refill?
I only ask because for some, ridiculous reason, my fees have gone up. I know you too must be shocked and dismayed at this fact.
I discovered yesterday that for "some reason" a handful of my listings had been set to "gallery picture plus" costing me an extra £2.95 per item per month. And did you know that this had been automatically set up by yourself?
I had no idea you had such an interest in increasing my sales.
I really do wish you had spoken to me beforehand as most of the listings you added this "larger picture in search bar to increase sales" to didn't even have a picture.
I'm sure though that this was only an oversight. It's also unfortunate that you didn't think that perhaps the £25 a month charge was the difference between paying myself and my company going broke.
But don't let that ruin your afternoon swim in the cash pool.
I know we can't all be squillionaires and that your opinion of what matters and mine will differ, but perhaps you could leave the business decisions to me next time?

Yours Sincerely,
Holly

P.S. Thanks also for ending 100 of my listings. I see that this is because you have decided to alter shipping rates. I'm sure the message informing me of this change was hand-written by you and that the post man simply misplaced it.
I know you wouldn't have wanted to cause me any extra hassle or waste my time, and given your previous interest in improving my sales, wouldn't have wanted to end my listings unnecessarily. I'm sure that message will turn up eventually. In the meantime please enjoy the doll enclosed in this package. I made it in the likeness of you and I'm thinking of selling them on Ebay. Whatdya think?

Leopards are dying. FACT!

My favourite TV channel seems to be sponsored by every charity under the sun as each commercial is a plea for just £X a month.
My favourite advert is the leopard one. It informed me that there are only 37, 37 leopards! Left in the wild - this really made me pay attention and try figure out how to afford £36 a year to adopt E'ulgeri.
Then D came home and we were watching my favourite TV channel (because I hid the remote) when the same advert came on.almost.

Advert: "There are only 35 leopards left in the wild"
Me: WTF? That advert was on an hour ago and there were 37 alive then!
D: There you go killing things with your mind-bullets again.
Me: Dammit!

Roarke is a moron

What you see above is the image of a cat, so stupid he can give himself a concussion.

Last night after watching Lambing Live (more about that tomorrow) I realised one of my girl cats was out. It's pitch black and I walk through the dining room (without turning a light on) and up to the french door so I can open it and let her in.
No sooner have I put my hand on the door than a solid "THUNK" noise is heard against the glass. I am now part-way to opening the door and shut it firmly again seeing the streak of black and thinking my neighbours stupid dog has broken into my yard.
I then slowly re-open the door to discover Roarke giving me his "why did you hit me" face while falling over.
Yes, he in his eagerness to use his magical cat-powers* to open the door, ran head-first into it.
Roarke spent the next twenty minutes purring desperately, wobbling around while looking cross-eyed, and could only be described as "DIZZY".
D spent the rest of the evening testing Roarke reflexes - it would seem he has none - and I allowed him to sleep on the bed just in case he started dying or choking on his tongue or something.
Today he is doing fine, but not once has he left the house via the french windows. Instead he is asking for the front door or window to be opened. Delayed smartness.
What was most confusing about last night is the door opening makes a significant noise which usually is enough to call the cats in without me hollering. What Roarke thought he was doing is beyond me, I'm slightly concerned he'd been head butting the door for an hour to try get it to open once his cat powers* had failed.

* Magical cat powers include, but are not excluded to, staring at something until it does what you want it to do.

I like writing I do

There is a local on-line selling group which covers just our town and the villages around it. It helps you get rid of stuff that's oversized for posting and works a bit like gumtree. I found my bike on this site and sold my air walker amongst other things and it's a great, local way to sell for free.
They are working on releasing a website for us to sell via auction (for free we hope) but it concerns me when they send us a message such as this;

"Well we telled you about a month ago we was opening are very own auction site well were now happy to say were on the last steps and hoping to open the site at 8pm full address we be given soon."

Seriously? Seriously, you telled us? You was doing what? Oh, you was opening a site?
Makes me feel like I'm speaking to a 5yr old. Clearly this is not going to turn out as the "next Ebay" and it's taking all my self control NOT to comment on their post with the grammatically correct translation..what dya think...should I?

EDIT: Ahhaha, here is a previous post from the same clueless schmuck
"Coming soon to the internet in front off you are very own bid site little like that money making site called ebay but best thing about are site its 100% free were aiming to get are site fully working by sunday 8.00pm were the link will be posted stand by"

The tax year cometh!

Finally the tax year ends today! Woohoo!
So far I have managed to spend an extra £150 on stock and I get to go post my items later today which should spend some more of my accountable cash.
I've celebrated by ordering lunch to be delivered from one of those "we only deliver to businesses" places.
When D placed the order she kept saying "we don't do homes" but un-perturbed he gave her my company name and address so finally she agreed to deliver. We even made sure to order THREE sammiches just so we looked official and fully staffed (one is for my tea while D is working the 2-10pm shift tonight.) D intends on handing my business card over when he receives the food, but I'm pretty certain that we're probably gonna have to give them a tour of the office to get them to hand over the grub first!
I hope you are all enjoying your end of the tax year celebrations....oh is it just me that celebrates? Well i'll save a bite of sandwich for ya!

Who knew running a business could be so hectic?

This is a very quick catch-up, now that the toblerone frenzy has ended I realise how much is left to be done.
The tax year ends in three short days and I CAN'T WAIT! Then I'm probably going to owe £800 tax so I need to get on earning that cash for the tax man. It's complicated as I shouldn't be paying tax (and can't afford to) on my new business but because I worked for nine months last year in a "real" paid job, I'm liable - which TOTALLY SUCKS! So even though I earned and paid tax on 13k last year and only earned £600 (untaxed) from my business I probably still owe £800. On the good side I don't need to pay it until Jan 2012, it's advisable to try pay it before then though.

With the tax year ending I have a lot of paperwork to get through, sums to do and stock to check (whoop-de-freeking-do) I need to also decide if staying with the (th)E(y stole my money)B(y heck their cut is large)(What)A(ridiculous shop price)(wh)Y(are the costs so high?) or if I'm going to float a few items cheaply until August and then throw all my stock back on-line over Christmas (with the help of D taking his holiday's then to help me) and only truly trade on there aug-march. Still undecided but I have until the 15th to have a solution.

And on top of that, I want to bake a cake today before my eggs go off, a chocolate cake, with proper chocolate,

So my apologies if my blog over the next fortnight is haywire, lacking content or written by me when tired, mardy and at midnight.
After the 15th I'm back to normal working-ness (I dearly hope) and none of this ridiculous adding up, squeezing pennies and trying to understand why my bank balance and my account balance disagree...seriously where is the extra 20 quid.
For now I'm going to pop and see el'crazy'momma of mine as it's Mothers Day here, and if I don't do it now I'll get busy working and it'll be midnight when I realise I never went to see her.
So if any of ya'll have some extra motivation just "lying" around send it my way, please, oh and an extra £800 couldn't hurt either :P

EDIT: Also just to explain the title, they do tell you in all the books and bumf that a business is a lot of work. Which isn't a problem, I like work and my ex-staff said there was no way I could fail because of how hard I work and how motivated I am (thanks btw Alex) What they straight out don't tell you is that you have to think AND DO lots of things at once, so you always feels like your mind is running with all this information and you can't process it all fast enough. So I now have whiteboards to write the things to do down in the (false) hope they will vacate my mind.
So to be clear, I'm not whining about the workload, I'm whining about the sheer responsibility of feeling like I need to do ten jobs, be in ten places and resolve ten things simultaneously.
When I can finally hire staff it will be a happy day!

So we ate some toblerone, got bored, and made this video, did I mention D is on poorly-pills which are judgement-wrecking