Give or Take.

We’ve been on a break for the past two days, primarily because we are still tired from the gauntlet of the holidays…and also we know we won’t have another day off until Memorial Day. So much happens at PJP in one week that we often joke that time here is like dog years: one week of actual time = one year of perceived time. So 20 actual weeks until Memorial Day is around 20 years of perceived PJP time, plus the variation of 10 years in stress time for opening a second location and I think our next day off is in 30 years. Give or take.

All that said, anyone who owns a business knows that being closed to the public usually means working away in the store on all the stuff that can’t get done when the store is open. And that’s how Jason, the kids, and I spent seven hours today taking down Christmas decor, packing it all away, and then cleaning the front and resetting it with winter merchandise. It wasn’t my first choice of how to spend the first Tuesday of the year, but it will be 100% worth it to not walk into tomorrow to a full baking schedule AND a Christmas tree in the front window.

And look, just because it is a new year, I’m still the same me…and basically every single time a person pulled on the front door to come in and found it locked, I FELT LIKE A DISAPPOINTMENT. Bonus points for the one time when someone looked through the window at us sweeping and then got back in the car and called us and wanted to know why we weren’t open if we were in there with the lights on.

But tomorrow we are back at it with a full schedule and admittedly, I’m always a little excited to see our first baby pie out of the oven for the new year. In 2022, we will make thousands of baby pies (and really, thousands of every size of pie), so the first ones on the shelves and the first ones to scan through our system and find their way to their new homes always hold a special moment for us. Let’s just hope as many people come to the door tomorrow as they did today, minus the Christmas tree and the sweeping.