The Seventh Member...

This Memorial Day evening has me shaking my head at all my new freckles and wincing each time I need to move my sunburnt shoulders...so, in short, just how I like my holiday to transpire.       For the next 15 Saturday and Sundays, you'll find Team PJP at the Lake of the Ozarks, wherein we will enjoy rum-based cocktails while anchoring our boat in a cove and floating all day.  This routine is nothing new - for the past three years, we've spent our summer weekends on the water. I think about all the weekends where we've laid on the boat and discussed any number of topics.  And if someone would have said to me at this time last year that I would eventually spend the majority of the next 12 months establishing PJP V 2.0, I would have suggested they stop drinking the rum, because NO.  No, thank you.

That said, there was a lazy Saturday last summer wherein my then ten-year-old said out of the blue to Jeanne..."Hey mawmaw, I really think you should get a food truck and start making pies again."  And she didn't think it was a bad idea at all.  Later that night, they are on Google looking for food trucks on eBay and Craigslist and discussing the pros and cons of each one they discover.  And for the most part, I ignored it because well, FOOD TRUCK?  Or would it be a pie truck in this case?

But then not too soon after that Saturday, someone else I know said that we should consider doing a pie truck idea and I told Jeanne that information.  And she said to me:  "You know we could, right?"  And me, full of bravado and wistful romantic dreams of self-employment, said "Yes, it would be so cute and so fun!!!"

And a year later, PJP exists.  And it astounds me...much like when you fall in love with someone or bring a new baby home and you find yourself marveling that you ever lived a life before that person.  It amazes me that this time last year, there was no PJP and I was a girl who knew nothing of Triple Net commercial leases or 5 ton HVAC systems.  In short, we aren't the girls we were this time last year.  And we are feeling pretty good about that.

So in our cocktail swilling, sunbathing conversations this weekend, it was like PJP had become the seventh member of our family.  We discussed PJP in all aspects - how to grow PJP, how to develop new product at PJP, how to think of PJP in new and interesting ways - basically, if PJP were a person, she would have sat at the head of the table.  And now that PJP is a part of all we do, I can't imagine our lives without her...