Second Thoughts...

On Sunday afternoon, I completed the vendor application for the Roots N Blues N BBQ festival and dropped it in the outgoing mail at Hy-Vee.  And before I could even roll my cart past the fancy cheese section, second thoughts invaded my brain.

I briefly considered turning my cart around and digging the envelope out of the mail slot, but I worried that felony charges of mail tampering might delay my quest to World Pie Domination.  And so I left it, but I've been questioning my decision all week.

Here's the thing...taking PJP to the next level is a must.  Jeanne and I tend to lose a lot of focus and drive when we become complacent, so it is best if we continually challenge ourselves and set up scenarios that cause us to freak out.  (Really, it is how you get the very best out of us.)  And so I think paying $750 bucks and renting a massive tent and contractually agreeing to have plenty of pie to sell over the course of a three-day event is just what we need to jump-start our busy fall season, right?  Right.  Yay us...I think.

And in what I consider to be a true marker of our continued emotional growth, today we started to make a list of things we need to consider in planning for our booth.  (If you are new around here, you are probably completely unimpressed.  If you've been reading for a while, you know that if we were doing this last year, we would have started that list about 10 days prior to the event, so six weeks out is notable indeed.)

In full disclosure, we listed about 15 things before we got overwhelmed and threw our pens down and went back to baking.  Because any list that starts with "rent portable hand-washing sink" and "figure out how many things we can plug into one circuit of electricity" makes me want to sigh.  The logistics of setting up a super cute, yet functional, 10x20 tent almost outweighs the nagging factor of trying to guess how many pies we will need to bake and bring with us every day (or over the course of the day).  The short answer is A LOT.  A LOT OF PIES.

And even if we have all the pies, great lighting, a darling display, and boxes, napkins, and forks to spare...what about signage so that people have a clue what our tent sells and how much it costs?  And even if have those things, how will we staff the tent AND PJP Buttonwood in a realistic way?  And even if we have all those things AND staff, can we bake all night, work all day, maintain our sanity, and ensure that we look presentable in PJP t-shirts not covered in flour?  Because what if Dwight Yoakum decides to stop by for a pie?  WHAT THEN?  Meeting Dwight Yoakum while covered in flour and crying is NOT on my bucket list, by the way.  Just saying.

Normally, I would feel overwhelmed by what is before us and to cope, I would choose to just ignore it all like a pie-obsessed version of Scarlett O'Hara.  But I think I've finally learned that nothing good ever comes from it.  And so I'm going to order some forks online.  Because we may not have anything else, but we will totally have some forks.  And that is a start.