For Jeanne.

By the time most of you read this early on Thursday morning, Jeanne will be drinking a pot of Folgers coffee and celebrating her 63rd birthday.  She is unabashed by the mention of her age, taking it as a badge of honor (comparatively, I sat on the bathroom floor and ugly cried on my 40th...so I have a lot of maturing yet to do).  She will probably shoot me for publicly discussing her consumption of the Folgers coffee, though.  And that's before she even has our morning Starbucks together.  She's pretty hard core that way. So anyway, this is just to say that of all the unexpected joys that have come our way in the last two and a half years, the best has been the relationship between Jeanne and I.  Remember that I'm her only child, so we've always been very close.  But until you completely change your life and shake it upside down and all around to make a business work with another person, you never know exactly how much a relationship can withstand.  (We've basically just been doing the Hokey-Pokey for the last few years but at least we are shaking it all about together.)

We have been mad each other on occasion over the past two years - SO UNBELIEVABLY MAD - that we've yelled at each in the alleyway, cursed our decision to work together, and then cried out of frustration.  But we are usually over it in 15 minutes or so.  Or maybe an hour.  Or once it was half a day.  We've been pretty mad at each other for at least 3% of our relationship (all 492 months or so of it).

For the other 97% though, HOLY SMOKES do we have a good time together.  If you don't know by now, Jeanne is funny and unconventional and artistic and believes that we can do anything we put our minds to, no matter how big the idea.  I always try to keep that skill it in mind with my own daughter...the steady whisper that whatever she might dream up, we can figure out a way to get it done.

So, Jeanne, happy birthday a few hours early (though you will have been asleep for at least three hours by the time I post this).  Undoubtedly, we will find some shenanigans on your special day tomorrow.  And drink some wine.  Oh, and bake some pies.  There's no one else I would rather do it with...