Let's Unpack.
Lately, I’ve noticed that I have a lot of anxiety on Monday nights…exactly the sort of thing that I had on Sunday nights when I had a non-PJP job. So basically, I have Sunday night anxiety on a Monday night. And when I told Jeanne this, she said that would actually be a good title for a book and then she rolled her eyes at me.
So, let’s unpack my anxiety. In no particular order, here’s what is driving it:
It’s late October and if I didn’t have anxiety, we should all be significantly more worried about me. I consider November to be the Super Bowl of pie baking and all the work of the last few weeks - the thousands of Jelly Jars and tarts, the hundreds of nine-inch pies, the 45 minute wait on $5 Friday, that’s just been the training program for the month that lies ahead. This Saturday, we will host our annual Team PJP bonfire as our way of saying, “hey, we are going to bake thousands of pies together over the next six weeks, so let’s have all the fun now so you remember how much you like us as you open your 80th can of pumpkin.”
We are 31 days from day-before-Thanksgiving pie pickups. We’ve begun discussing the logistics at PJP, much like operating room teams meet to simulate vastly complex surgeries before the actual event. I’m not suggesting that Thanksgiving pie and life-saving surgeries are similar, but we want to be the best at what we do and that requires a lot of discussion and a lot of planning. And a solid amount of obsessing.
Speaking of making our Thanksgiving the best, Kevin has been tweaking our online order form to make it as concise and easy to use as possible. When you hear our hearts breaking in December, that’s us watching Kevin graduate and relocate to Arkansas for his first job in his career field. Thankfully, we are all like a small gang, so while he isn’t there to make Dutch Apple topping and log into SquareSpace for me, he’s staying on the group chat.
And while I don’t even want to think about December just yet, someone needed to tell me that it is only like 64 days until Christmas and then I just wanted to lay my head down on the table. Christmas Eve falls on a Monday this year, so I suspicion we will be open from 9-1 for holiday pickups that day. I haven’t told Jeanne that yet, so um…Jeanne, does that work for you?
And then it will be 2019, which seems foreign and basically impossible because just a few years ago, we were partying like it was 1999 (because it was). And that means a whole new set of goals, plans, and hopefully big and exciting changes for PJP as she turns five. What are they? Who knows. We’ve got some ideas, of course, because if there is one thing we never lack…it’s ideas. Or anxiety about those ideas.
