9,408

Today I traveled to Atlanta with my almost 14 year old daughter to tackle the Atlanta Gift Mart, while Jeanne stayed and tackled a busy week at PJP Buttonwood. And when our respective days were over, we all reported the same outcome despite our 675 mile separation: basically, it’s hot and our feet hurt.

You already know that it is super hot at PJP Buttonwood all the time. And you can probably guess that Jeanne’s feet often hurt because we have concrete floors and she won’t allow for fatigue mats because no one ever sweeps up the flour under them to her satisfaction.

But here’s the truth about the Atlanta Gift Mart: IT IS SO OVERWHELMING.

Everyone told me that, but I’m an expert level shopper and so I was dubious about this advice. I move fairly quickly, am mostly decisive, and don’t linger on items that I’m not interested in. (And if you want to know what Jeanne shops like, please reverse all of the above statements. TRUE STORY.)

After arriving in Atlanta and checking into our hotel, we went to building one of three to register and pick up our name badges. And then we shopped ON ONE SINGLE FLOOR OF ONE SINGLE BUILDING FOR FOUR HOURS. That means we still have 17 floors in the first building and 18 stories in the other two buildings. Uh…

I don’t even know. It was like a time vortex.

In the end, we walked 9,408 steps this afternoon (no joke according to my Apple watch) and made just one solid purchase to ship in mid-August for PJP Nifong. But that one purchase made us so happy that it was worth every single one of those steps. The harder part is all the things we liked, except we don’t know if any one would also like it enough to purchase it in our store. It is super hard to keep a focus and not think just about what Jeanne or I would buy, but what a wide range of our customers would like to buy. Plus, just when you think you’ve seen all the cute, you go to the next store and it is just more cute. Jeesh.

Also, it is super good that you can’t cash-and-carry much out of what we saw today or I would be researching how to cancel my plane ticket and rent a U-Haul truck to come home with because I saw many, many, many things I would like to own for both PJP and for my house. (675 miles away, Behind-The-Scenes Jason just cringed.)

Our goal for tomorrow is to do at least the 17 stories in the first building. I’ll let you know how that works out for us. Ahem.