Work/Life Balance
In all honesty, the quest for a work/life balance as a small business owner is generally a total fail around the holidays. As a prime example, I just ordered groceries on my phone and paid Wal-Mart an extra $9.95 to deliver them to my house tomorrow so that I can mark one item off my to-do list this week. If they charged another $9.95 to bring them inside and unpack them, I would have paid for that convenience as well. (Honestly, I would pay more than $9.95 for that service.)
But look, this is all just to say that absolutely no one in our family has time for an extended weekend out of town this time of year. That said, Jason celebrated a milestone birthday on Sunday and we surprised him with a short trip to Chicago. We had the loveliest time and the destination, agenda, and all were a complete surprise to Jason and that made it even more fun. We took the train from La Plata to Chicago - a first for us all. And then I did my very best to not obsess about what was going on in the stores and what needed to be done for Thanksgiving prep.
And now we are back and in full Thanksgiving mode. I’m already worn out, but that’s a given. Let’s break it down.
Our Thanksgiving order system closed last Saturday. Nothing says celebrating a birthday like spending time hotspotting off your phone wi-fi to login and close the order system down.
Now we begin the part where every other phone call is a call to order Thanksgiving and then you have to disappoint people repeatedly because we can’t accommodate any more orders. Someone today said she thought she was way ahead of the game by coming to order today and I had to tell her that the whole shebang was already over for this year.
We are a bit north of 3,000 pies for next week. And in the time of a sluggish economy, I’m thankful for every single one of those.
That’s actually up from last year, so that’s promising. Pumpkin is #1 for the 11th year in a row.
Our freezer trailer was delivered to Nifong today so we can start loading extra supplies into it as we start the preparations for next week. I originally planned for it last Thursday but then hated to pay $255 a day for it when I knew I would not be there to fill it with items, though I couldn’t really explain that to Jason because he didn’t even know we were going to be gone.
So that’s all. If I fall off the grid for a bit, just know I’m working at one store or the other. And paying $9.95 for Wal-Mart to drop off a 15 pound frozen turkey off at our doorstep next Wednesday.
