Part of the domestic executive plan was to get some home companions in the shape of Basset hounds. Well now were in it seemed prudent to start the search for our new additions to the household.

As luck would have it there were puppies born in the Coramandel on 16 November. Here they are 3 days old. We’re hoping to be able to pick two of these little pups and bring them home in early 2008.

After blogging about this for a year the time has actually arrived and I am now officially a domestic executive again. Well, part time anyway!

I’ve trundled my desk drawers to a pod down the office to free up the desk for the incoming Acting GM. Written up the desk file and signed over authority on budgets. A few celebratory drinks tonight to mark the transition.

Now I have to get to business sorting out the house move and getting myself some coaching clients. This coming week is pretty busy with a training course for two days so no rest for the wicked.

All in all it feels mighty wierd but it does feel good.

It feels really wierd at work. I think I am now officially a lame duck General Manager.

With only 8 more working days in this role my email traffic has almost ground to a halt, the phone only rings to recruitment consultants or advertising sales people and my staff look at me with that knowing look that they don’t need to listen to me any more. But hey, life could be worse.

I’m certainly ready to move on to other things. I’m looking forward to clearing my desk and swopping it with one of my team that’s taking on the Acting GM role until they make a firm appointment. I’ll only be in the office two days a week aiming to complete a couple of projects for the CE. That’s of course if the senior management get around to making a decision!

Away from work it’s all go on the home furnishing front. I’ve almost cracked the curtain selection – just need a rethink on one of the colour chosen for our bedroom painting. Although MT likes it, it’s just not a fashionable colour and it’s proving impossible to find the furnishings to match. Funny how I keep being directed to a certain football club for their ready made curtain line which seems to match the colour he’s chosen!

Let there be light – we’ve about finished choosing light fittings which in itself is a marathon affair. I’ve also order my new home office furniture which is going to be very pretty rather than heading off to officemax for the standard laminate affair. Well, this domestic executive has got to have something to enjoy as I run my micro empire from the country.

Well, I think I will anyway. Turns out that the great information superhighway doesn’t quite stretch to Kaitoke. It’s more like a country lane. I joke not! How can it be that in that part of the world there is a gap in provision which seems to sit slap bang where we have bought our land. MT has been making enquiries and seems that there are a list of technical issues as long as your arm whilst getting broadband at home will be an engineering challenge. But, fingers crossed that with a southerly breeze and none of the other 38 users that will be linked to our BB exchange we might be able to read the Archers synopsis on-line. Whether we’ll still be able to listen again will on-line is a whole different matter.

Readers, you need to wish me luck on this because if we can’t get the Archers, we won’t get any of the other household popular listening, the Guardian, Telegraph, Spectator and Economist on-line. Not to mention the CCFC on-line TV, BBC sport and other manly pursuits. Me thinks the technology might be fixed quicker than you think and it won’t be because Domestic Executive enterprises needs it to earn a living!

At last, I’m on the home run to domestic executive life. Only 35 more days to go before I finish my full time contract with MSD. Can’t wait.

After months of people being in denial they headhunters have finally been called and the search is on to replace me. They are a bit late in the day but they’ll get one of my managers to step up into an acting role until the new person comes along.

So what will I be doing you ask?

I’ll be working 20 hours a week for MSD until 7 December working on “special projects”. I’ve always wanted to be a “special projects person” as it seems to me that they swan around doing very little in particular but getting paid for doing so! I’ve got a few bits and pieces to keep me ticking over and keep on track and that will be fun. In my spare time away from work there is plenty to do:
- a house move
- visitors arriving from 13 December until end of March
- setting up my domestic executive business.

I really don’t know where the time has gone but with a countdown now in days I can’t help but get excited by the prospects.

MTs career is moving in new ways too – well he’s moved his desk from Willis Street to Tory Street! He’s finally got his new team set up and can get on with building a new mobile phone network to connect New Zealanders. Rumour has it that they are changing the name of the company to Telepom…….

Telecom New Zealand today announced that Dr Paul Reynolds has been appointed as its Chief Executive Officer, effective from late September 2007.Paul is currently CEO of BT Wholesale, the wholesale business of UK-based telecommunications and IT company BT Group.Paul joined BT in 1983 after completing a doctorate in geology at the University of London. Since then he has had a distinguished career, encompassing senior leadership roles in sales and marketing, strategy, information systems, broadband, and guiding BT’s wholesale business through the complex process of operational separation, when Openreach was created. He has served on BT’s Board of Directors since 2001.

Paul will succeed Theresa Gattung, who leaves Telecom on Friday after twelve years at the company, the past eight as the company’s CEO.Simon Moutter has been appointed as acting CEO until Paul Reynolds formally takes up his role. Simon has held a variety of roles at Telecom, including that of Chief Operating Officer, and has a deep understanding of the business. Chairman Wayne Boyd said he and the Telecom Board were delighted, after a global recruitment process, to have secured the appointment of Paul Reynolds.“Globally there are few leaders in the telecommunications industry with Paul’s combination of skills, knowledge and experience,” Mr Boyd said.“Paul has led programmes of significant change at one of the world’s largest telecommunications companies, in a regulatory environment that has parallels to New Zealand’s.”

In 2006, the Telecommunications Industry Association of America awarded Dr Reynolds its ‘Global Icon’ award for his leadership and innovation.“Given his senior contribution at BT, in a wide variety of roles, Paul is ideally placed to lead one of Australasia’s most significant telecommunications and IT companies at this time.”Paul Reynolds said he and his family were looking forward to coming to live in New Zealand.“I’m passionate about the telecommunications industry and its power to transform the way people interact, live, work and play.“I’ve been a keen observer of the New Zealand experience, and am now looking forward to leading a company that will help to shape the country’s future.”Paul Reynolds will be based in Auckland and commence his new role at Telecom in late-September

For someone who had to retake her GSCE in Maths numbers have never been my friends. Living with someone who can delight in reading pages of numbers this is often a reason for discussion on how I should improve my mathematical abilities.

Thank goodness for spreadsheets that’s all I can say. After years of following the Coates theory of budgeting (she’ll know who she is) I am adept at making complicated spreadsheets to prove what is quite a simple point.

In my case it’s been costings for bathroom fittings, tiling and joinery. It’s not been much fun when the number in the bottom right hand corner never seems to match what it should. In other words, why is that I all the things I like are so darned expensive. I blame my mother who had impeccable taste.

Still, we are making progress with the decisions although there is still plenty of sharpening of pencils to get prices closer to where they ought to be. I shall be so pleased when they are as I might actually sleep through the night and stop worrying that my dreams for being a full time domestic executive may just end up being that, dreams!

At least we won the lottery this week – yes, true. Not enough to pay for the fancy shower him indoors is coveting but $75 is better than a poke in the eye!

It’s been a while since I looked at the countdown position and it seems that time has stood still, or I simply couldn’t count earlier in the year. It is now 24 weeks until the end of my contract with MSD. If I want to have the fancy tiles in the hall and a new sofa that will be extended by another 9 weeks. But, then that’s it for this executive domestic for a while as I’ll be busy welcoming our first visitors and starting my domestic executive life.

This doesn’t seem too long to wait but I can’t help feeling a little impatient for this time to come. Reading my new birthday books on vegetable growing it’s just as well I have that long to start to plan and prepare the new kitchen garden ready for full time occupation.

I’ve been enjoying my day dreaming for my domestic executive life on my special day as a good distraction from realising how old I am getting. I baked for the my birthday morning tea in the office – rhubarb & walnut muffins, chocolate gingercake and cheese and onion muffins (for those savoury types).

Good to make myself popular for a few moments when people were grateful for the sugar rush. There was much discussion about the need for baking when you’re living in a country community and the role that the WI (women’s institute) plays in the UK. This got me thinking about what exists within New Zealand for women and you won’t be surprised to know that there is a few (after all NZ was the first country in the world to give women the vote).

New Zealand federation of Women’s Institute’s – www.cwi.org.nz
Rural Women New Zealand – www.ruralwomen.org
National Council for Women of New Zealand – www.ncwnz.co.nz

May look up my local branch when we move to Kaitoke, a whole market for my cakes and coaching!

Phew, another week passes in a flash. Now it’s only a four day countdown until the Easter long weekend. Can’t wait to step off the executive grind for a few days and seek out some warm weather up on the East Coast.

We’re off to Hawkes Bay www.hawkesbaynz.com for some r&r with hop along in tow. Naomi is joining us to see the sights and chill out at the vineyards.

We must be getting old as we’re returning to the same place we stayed last Easter which is a cottage in a beautiful location at Cape South. www.capesouthcottages.co.nz .

It’s been a funny week with the weather – heatwave and autumn in Wellington and extreme storms up in Northland that have caused huge flooding in the Bay of Island. Not what you need just prior to the holiday weekend. Hopefully it will continue to stay fine long enough for us to get the foundations cemented in on the house.

There’s a lovely kiwi phrase which sums up how I feel this week. “I’m so over it…..”

This covers off the results of about 3 months work to prepare for a senior management conference which was completely thrown out of the window due to a last minute rethink by our leader. It’s been a tortuous process to get the planning and preparation done and having seen the signs of change brewing in the air I started to prepare myself for the inevitable last minute trials and tribulations.

Being “over it” places you in a space where it really doesn’t matter any more. An emotional detachment that protects yourself from disappointment, anger and frustration that can otherwise just gnaw away at you and potentially send you into a spiral of despair.

Whether it’s adopting the kiwi attitude or simply that I’m just older and wiser, the hystrionics have washed over me this week and I’m already moving on to something more interesting and more satisfying that thankfully does not involve anyone from the senior management team.

Sitting on the deck this evening enjoying the evening sun, a glass of wine and reflecting on the fact that at last the house project is underway was so much more fun. And, remembering that the countdown to being a domestic executive has only 30 weeks to go. For once in my life, I’m really hoping time does fly by!

Boy was I pleased to leave the office at the end of this week. It feels like it’s gone on forever with every day bring new and interesting (not) challenges to face.

We started with a story on the front page of the Dom (Wellington Daily) with a Hells Pizza manager claiming that Work and Income (one of MSD’s service lines) telling a single parent beneficiary that she was better off not working but claiming benefit instead. As you might imagine this caused a little upset in the bosses office and the bosses, bosses office. Still, my media maestro closed down the story as nonsense within 1 hour and 15 minutes (nearly a record) but nevertheless some damage was done. It’s just not the thing you need first thing on a Monday morning.

By mid week there was plenty of angst trying to calm the brows in the Minister’s Office who were getting overly excited about all sorts of things. Somehow our no surprises policy is still surprising them!

The end of the week culminated in a huge gorrilla (not the usual monkey) being passed my way to pick up the pieces of someone else failure. I did have a chuckle when my boss suggested I spend the weekend getting up to speed on the social development of NZ and reading the infamous Briefing for Incoming Ministers, a document that runs to about 600 pages. In my normal kiwi dilligent way, I’m spending the weekend reading the Short Life and Long Times of Mrs Beeton. Who wants to lay a bet that the gorrilla will have changed shaped anyway by 10am on Monday!

Big week next week though – new coaching course starting which should be fun. Best dust off my notes from my last course to save any embarressing moments on the teleclass.

It’s been a gorgeous week and definitely not a good place to be in the office. It’s been hot, stuffy and people have been generally grumpy to be stuck inside. Still, it was only a three day week this week for this executive after taking a day’s leave and then Waitangi Day so I shouldn’t really be complaining.

Here’s what I would like to be doing this time next year. Heading off to the hills to escape the rat race!

JT hiking Somes Island track, Waitaingi Day 2007