the joy loop: let's start at the very beginning

it's a very good place to start

I’d like to tell the story of how this whole thing started. When I say this whole thing, I mean pie. And joy. And Pie & Mighty, or if you’ve been around for a long time rachelpiemaker dot wordpress dot com, because sometimes it takes a while and a good friend to come up with a good name. Telling this tale will take some time and the story will wander. I am not sure how long it will take to tell the story, but I expect what took seven years to live will take at least that many chapters to write.

Along the way of this telling I’ll change some names and probably fudge some of the details. All of this comes from the deepest well of love. I am in that well and I’ve been here for a little over a year now. Having this space and time has been lovely and cool, but now I am lonely and cold, and ready to come up and see what will happen next.

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I was in my early 20s when I set myself a goal: own a restaurant by the time I was 40 and then “retire” to run a bed & breakfast when I was 60. Ask me if I had any idea of what that might entail and I’d probably have stared at you like the clueless 20-something I was. What I knew is that I’d worked in restaurants for a decade (which in young people years is like, f o r e v e r) and knew it was my life’s work.

In 2004, almost 20 years after I’d started working in restaurants, I met my beloved Karen “Ratchet” Mattison. We met in church <enter all the old timey cliches here>. I was working at the church that her friend was being ordained at. Similar to working in a bar and bellying up to the bar for a drink or two after work, when I got done for the day working at the church, I’d peek my head around to see if anything was going on. I heard the organ bellowing as it was warming up and followed its sound to the sanctuary. Filing into a pew, I knelt and said a few “hey God, what’s up” type of prayers then sat back and looked around to see who else was there. Across the way and a few rows back was Ratchet. And Stacy.

I met Stacy when I was the bookkeeper at the Bryant Lake Bowl. She was a local pastry chef who was renting kitchen space from the sister place of BLB, Café Wyrd (now Barbette), making her world famous eclairs. I was the lady she gave the rent to. She’d come by my under-the-stairs-basement-dweller office with money, treats, and sunshine in tow. Other than Larry the egg guy, she was my favorite regular visitor.

A little more than half way through the service, right before the communion part, you do this thing called passing the peace. It’s like a mini-meet and greet of the people sitting around you. You’re only supposed to say “peace be with you” but often and especially for people like me it’s hard to keep it to those four little words. “What on earth are you doing here?” I asked. Normally I saw these two bellied up, drinking Point beer, and being the cool lesbians about town. No time for an answer, so we agreed to catch up after the service ended.

After we all went downstairs for the punch and cookie reception. Stacy caught me up on where she was working and Ratchet and I ate cookies, drank fantastically weak hi-C punch, and exchanged sparks and business cards.

Coming next …
Who is Stacy, what was the original dream, and why pie?

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a few joy-filled (and other complicated feelings) items of note

1. Lovely linkie-loos for your Monday
   - On April 21st 7 years ago (even though he didn’t believe in time, many of us still are trapped in it’s illusion, Prince left. This is an amazing story from a favorite artist of mine about him.

   - Dance like the whole world is watching and you were born for it, like this kiddo—> lucky_hang_hang.
   - If you’ve got a yard, have you ever thought of setting up a nature cam to see what’s happening in your yard?
   

2. Apologies
   I haven’t been writing here as much as I thought or said I would. I feel like that’s what y’all signed up for. I keep saying that writing is the thing I want to do, but then when I sit down I freeze. I’ve read articles and books that tell me this is normal.
   
   I used to sit down on Monday mornings and write The Pie Loop as soon as I had coffee in hand. I’d write until the thing was done. Towards the end of the shop days, it became more and more difficult, not because I didn’t have things to say, but because I didn’t have a way to say them that was both honest and on message (pie and joy, pie and joy, pie and joy). But this isn’t The Pie Loop. And you are here because (enter the reason you are here) and I am so dang grateful for it. So thank you. Like anything, this will get easier as we go.
   

3. What are you watching? Surely not this little gem.

   Ratchet and I love a good documentary. Recently, between shows (we watch a lot of series TV and sometimes need a quick smart thing in between our dramas) we surfed deep into Amazon Prime, and found this section called Freevee. It contained all sorts of weird and wonderful things we could watch—with ads. We landed on this short documentary called “Older Than Ireland.” Oh friends, if you like documentaries, history, and Ireland this is some must see movie watching. G’wan, pull up to the telly and enjoy the craic a bit.