This Is For You, Owen Teague

Earlier this afternoon, Ms. Owen Teague parked front and center at PJP West, walked in the door, eyed me directly and exclaimed, “Oh good, I have a question for you”.

Because I’m the captain of the PJP Ship, I’m fairly used to customers seeking me out to ask all manor of questions from where we find gooseberries in the winter (Poland), to what time we start baking (early), or if we get tired of the delicious smell inside of our stores (not really, we have olfactory fatigue for the smell of pie).

But when Ms. Teague directly about the whereabouts of this daily online world pie domination blog and where she might find all the latest posts, I basically had no answers. We’ve had this TREMENDOUSLY interesting year at PJP and my words have seemingly missing in action. Someone tape this blog to the back of a milk carton, asap.

I would say that through last fall and into this year, I’ve worked harder than I’ve ever worked In my life. Obviously the holidays are our busiest time, but then the mental requirements of 2024 have been the literal worst. Perhaps you’ve noticed our economy is in the garbage? Everything is more expensive and I could basically draft you a manifesto about the price of eggs in less than the time it would take you to crack a dozen of them. Fighting to keep our sales flat from previous years - or heaven forbid, inch those numbers up - is like suiting up for a battle where the rules change daily and absolutely no one listens to you.

And so maybe for those reasons - the whole who-the-heck-wants-to-talk-about-all-my-entrepreneurial-woes reasons - I went a bit radio silent here. But trust me, I still had an absolute overwhelming amount to say. And when Ms. Owen Teague reminded me that she couldn’t wait to read my perspective on our daily life, it pulled my heart strings a little bit and brought me right back here. I 100% owe her one of her favorite pies - a baby Lemon Raspberry - for stopping by to tell me. I needed to hear it, Ms. Teague.

So, I guess I’m back. And for the first top of discussion, I would like to share that our double door refrigerator at PJP Nifong has been completely broken since July 20th. We’ve had FIVE repairmen visit, with one suggesting we just buy a new refrigerator and another suggesting we fix it easily by having a part 3D printed. OH MY GOODNESS. (I don’t even remember what the other three said, but it was basically a lot of blah, blah, blah.)

And then one two weeks ago, Repairman #5 - let’s call him Cody - said he could replace the compressor and he would be back in two days and the refrigerator would work perfectly. Spoiler alert: Cody hasn’t returned since. Someone put Cody on the back of a milk carton.

I’m not even kidding.

Apparently neither Cody - nor repairmen #1, #2, #3, or #4 - know what it is like to be staring down the barrel of Thanksgiving with a single door refrigerator that barely holds even groceries to last us a few days. And if I’m going to pay $48 for 15 dozen eggs, I’m going to need a place to put them. Does Cody know that?

Allegedly, Cody is coming back tomorrow. The dispatch lady at his company said she felt pretty confident. I’m glad one of us does.

At least I know what we can talk about tomorrow here. It hinges on you, Cody.