BigBlog

So i had this midlife crisis and stepped off the corporate ladder and bought a donut shop. I tried to run it myself and employed staff to help me, thus leaving Kath to her Nutrimetics business.

Well that plan was expensive so Kath came on board after a while and sacked me (well sent me off to work), so i went and worked for a friend for a while. Then after staff got sacked i came back. We have been working really well together since and proved the power of teamwork. The little shop goes well under team jackson.

My dilema here is that i have applied for a job. I applied a while go (months), when we were having  a crisis and decided that would be better for me to go and earn and pay someone to do my shop work (hoping i was worth more). So was unsuccessful at this job application and forgot about it. Now Westpac have rung me up and expressed interest in me. The area manager had coffee with me to check me out and now has me coming in for an interview on tuesday (have completed online assesment too)

So im thinking would be great opportunity but............  that would leave Kath managing my mid life crisis and leaving her carrying all the workload.

Of course we need to sell the shop. We have an exit strategy which involves putting it on the market in about 12 months, but can we hold out that long?

Kaths nutrimetics business is going great and she could really do with some extra time for that.

Its tough for both of us working so much, but Kath gets extra hugs every day.We just keep struggling on and i feel so guilty ive created this position for Kath.

Today will be a better day

********* PLease comment**********************

I have been away from bigblog for some time, i went and embraced the evil that is facebook and was intending to blog there. My regular blogs have become irregular liveblogs on facebook, my friends dont comment as much as they used to here and you dont get comments from randoms.(a couple of which are now facebook friends)

So i think im gonna do a daily blog arain and post it here and in facebook too, not instead of byt aswell as.

 Whats do you think??????

PLease comment and let me know

Im done , after a couple of years blogging here. im done, im going to start blogging on facebook.The only reason i come here lately is to blog and dont seem to find time to check out other peoples blogs, i can go to facebook and contact people in real time chat. Enough justification my decision is made.

Ive already drawn one friend from bigblog to my facebook, Kim hoskins/hoskie has added me as friend and i invite you to do the same.

invite gav jackson or add donutboy@bigpond.net.au put bigblog in invite request so i know ehere you come from ( in case i dont know)

So catch ya on face book!!

Wow! what a great sailing trip. The stay on the boat the night before and an extra night after made it seem like we were away forever, just what we needed.

It was fantastic to go away with our friends. their were more laughs, music, partying and dancing then i have ever seen on that boat. We had all our friends from our sunday night get togethers and Darren flew up from brisbane (used to do sunday nights too) so it was Sunday night every night.

The weather sucked, it blew harder and rained more than i have ever seen on that boat but it didnt matter. we all had a ball anyway.

Then we had to brave floodwaters and get home. Our trip took a bit longer and we got home at 4. Just enough time to have a shower and go to work 5-9. I was/ am shatterred and it will take a bit to recover

My knee is shot (from before i went away) my calves are killing me (apparently from no shoes and sliding around on deck) and im sooooooooo sunburnt on my head. So i feel like crap but someehow so refreshed.

I have been getting into facebook, catching up with some people. I chatted with a mate who is policeman in gympie last night and i havnt caught p with in ages. I have dealt with my initial resistance and i am liking it. A friend of mine blogged the other day on facebook. I was blown away getting notification that she had blogged. I am thinking that i might change my blog over to facebook (have to figure that out) then family and friends would be notified when i blog. I would of course miss out on the random friends that come by. Have to think about that one...............

Another big day ahead. the staff did a great job of running the shop while we were away. Just have to find out what mess there is when we get there today.

Not echarged batteries just run down in a better way. Cant wait to get together on sunday and catch up for a de brief

what is it with facebook??? i went and started using it properly the other day, iv always had it set up so i had some invites and now i got "friends". So i log in to check it out and find myself looking at nothing for ages, i have to say, this is crap and log off. i ant believe it.

i work 3-9 tonight and it feels like a day off. my knees are sore and im just plain old and tired. im gonna go buy some new ink cartridges for printer (refilled too many times me thinks) and that will do until about 2 when i will start doing something about getting ready for work. Kath has done her back in just t make things fun. So we both working ourselves into he ground.

Had a good chat to gemma last night. Sounds like shes having fun. Finding out a bit more about grandma and leash (because shes living with em), good and bad. Good learning experience for her, but i still miss her :(

i got nothing..........................

please comment and let me know what you doing????

today will be a better day

PLanning to have a few days off next week, sunday through thursday and go sailing whitsundays on kaths parents boat. http://www.tallshipadventures.com.au/alexander_stewart.htm

So to make that happen , we have staff for the day to day. We need someone to decorate the donuts. I will go in and bake for the time away . Connor is learning the process, it not hard just gotta be organised. im getting a checklist together and a daily diary with some instructions, so he should be good. We will be out of phone range most of the time so hope he knows what hes doing by time we gone, lookin good so far.

last night jasmine woke up (well sort of sleep walking) crying and came out to me sitting in office, ipicked her up and cuddled her to my chest and settled her down. she was sort of sitting on my lap and must have thought she was on the toilet because she procedded to pee, not just a little bit but really let it go! i couldnt do anything so just let her go, saying, your not on the toilet, then she finished. and continued her cuddle. so we took her wet knickers off and put her back to bed, then i took my wee pants off and kath mopped the office, we couldnt stop laughing, she peed my pants!!

parents will be amused by that, most prople without kids will think its gross, but just another day for daddy.

i checked out facebook for the first time last night. what a time thief! search- donutboy@bigpond.net.au

i set it up ages ago and havnt used it, so ive got a few invites, mostly family. so ive got some friends already, then i searched and found some more. couldnt believe how long this all took. while doing this i was using my old mate msn and chatting with a friend in brisbane, who is on my face book, and we chat for hours, hes coming up for my birthday and will be great to catch up

took some photos with the camera yesterday, must transfer to pc.

my kneee has given in, too much standing i guess, so it has happened before and i have kneee support which i am wearing today, but basically i am falling to pieces.aaaaargh

so off to work i go, today is big training day for connor, bring it on. today will be a better day

remember - comment comment comment

I havnt been to gym in motnhs. Shame on me. Ive been so busy with the shop ive slipped back into old bad habits, just grabbing whatever is there to eat and drink. and with no gym= my diet has gone to crap and i have actually put some weight back on. Need to focus and put some effort into managing it. Kath is normally focussed on it too which makes it easier but she is so exhausted all the time too. What are we doing to ourselves??

Gemma comes home at the end of the week. I have been looking fo he everywhere. expecting he to be there, she has never been away for this long, 3 weeks. Jasmine on the other hand went away for 1 week and i wished it could have been 3. We had such a nice time together yesterday and then things turned bad when we had to have baths and dinner etc. Kids!!!!

At leat i ha d agood sleep last night. ive woken up slowly like ive had too much sleep (is there such a thing) Kath obviously had too much sleep and woke up before me and was watching tv.

We are still having issues with our builder that did our shop refit. the job isnt done, they make promises to come and fix things and never show up. We put up ith it because the shop can still function as there is nothing major, until now. I havnt seen it myself, kath just told me about a water leak coming from a pipe into the coffee machine, not sure about damage. it should be  asimple case of calling the builder and they fix it, but we cant rely on th turning up. so i will go to work and check it out. We dont need this problem

so off i go, comment comment comment

today will be a better day

Kath and I did half day each in shop yesterday. During our lunchtime transition we went shopping for a new tv.We had a collection of vouchers and we knew we could get a tv in the shopping centre. We found the tv we wanted for the bedroom,(with built in dvd) and presented the vouchers at the checkout at BIG W. imagine our dissapointment when they refused $200 of our Stockland vouchers. Apparently they can be used "anywhere" in the centre, except major retailers.

We bought the tv anyway (yay!), so then we had $200 burning in our pocket. e have been known to let vouchers expire so i took this opportunity for us to shop together and buy a new camera. So we got a nice camera with our $200. good little camera with 10 megapixels blah blah blah....... the only thing i cared about is that it has a rechargeable battery, that was always the issue with our other camera, then we had rechargeable aaa bateries, they always got lost or ended up in other things. so we will have the camera with us most of the time and expect some more photos on this blog.

Ponderosa commented on my blog on friday and mentioned that i dont reply to comments. thats right, i dont use my comments as a place for discussion. I make a statement/ blog, hopefully people comment and sometimes i will respond ( like now). Its the same thing when i write a letter to the editor , i wont be drawn into a discussion where letteres are written back and forth, by putting this blog out there i am prepared to accept comments and even critisism. I have enough trouble getting time to post let alone posting comments on my comments, so bottom line is, please comment (love comments) but dont be dissapointed if i dont respond.

Why did i bother to say all that?  i believe in defining expectations. Its a key to relationships eg reader and writer. Sometimes people still expect certain things even though they have been told in no uncertain terms what will happen. Thats why i asked Kath to be my girlfriend "will you go out with me?" when we got together at age 23 + 21, kath still laughs about that. I needed to define our relationship so i knew what to expect and avoid dissapointment. Later on when we were engaged i asked kath to lower her expectations to avoid dissapointment!

On  lighter note. today is my first day off since xmas and i am planning toi do just about nothing. i am going to get some stuff from officeworks and thats about it.

Connor started work on friday and then did a shift on saturday. Ive been joking that he is my apprentice. we are training him to decorate donuts, plan is he will do the job while we take 4 days off in a couple of weeks. his mum is good friend of ours. he is smart kid who has developed some good work ethics at first job at wendys. he has some hangups from it too, he made a bit of a mess when making a milkshake on first shift. he was concerned about the flak hed cop from other staff about it, apparently at wendys its a big deal, "conner made a mess, conner made a mess!" etc, kath just said make your milkshake and a mess and when your not busy go back and clean it up, so he is happy with our attitude to getting the job done. fingers crossed on this one.

crickets on so my day off is looking good, fingers crossed on that too, today will be abetter day

jasmine is back to daycare today. she came home on new years eve. then she came to work yesterday. yesterdays photo, although not clear, shows jasmine helping serve customers. She couldnt quite reach the counter so we put a box of water down and she used it as a step.

we wernt sure whether to open or not, last year was shocking trade. we did double this year so it was worth getting up. Kath was a champion. she went in and started on her own and we came in at lunchtime.

we had a new years eve party at our house, i was drunk and not looking forward to working in the moring, but kath saved me, thx Kath.

gemma is still in brisbane and having fun without the family. its good for her to live with others and see how other peoples family dynamics are different.

im totally consumed by work at the moment, i mean totally, doing like 80 hrs a week. im hoping that after school holidays we will be able to roster some people on and get some time off.

so family is ready and waiting, im off to work (surprise)

today will be a better day