Good morning from New York City. Before I get started this morning, I would like to ask one last time if any of you are willing to record a video testimonial or a video review of Dear Constance. That would be super helpful to me. It should probably be 45 seconds or less, and just to give you an idea, they’re going to go on the website probably within a little old-fashioned television set if we can that off. As you’re recording it, think of the fact that we’re doing it for someone who may have discovered me through the media and is coming to the website for the first time. Maybe they’ve heard an episode, maybe they haven’t. So, you’re not speaking to me, you’re speaking to people that we don’t know. Thank you in advance and please do support me on this if you have a minute.  I’d love to get it by Friday if possible.

So on to what I want to talk about today. I got together with my dear buddy, Sara Forden. She is one of my most intimate friends and we talk, and we have wonderful conversations, but we hadn’t been together in a long time. Since I believe last September. We were looking forward to a Sunday of our favorite shenanigans together, but what happened is when I went to pick her up. I saw immediately that she was very tired. Now mind you, we had had many message exchanges about how our day was going to go but the minute I saw her, I thought to myself, we need to reset here. Anyway, without getting into too many details, we had decided in advance that we were going to have an early meal. We knew exactly where we were going and we both wanted to get a good night’s sleep, right? So anyway, when I picked her up and I saw that she was so tired, I suggested that we start with the meal and a nap because while there were lots of things that we wanted to do, what was most important to us was simply to be together. That turned out to be a great idea. We had this wonderful meal, we had a nice nap and having had that reset, off we went into New York City on a very busy Sunday. And it’s funny, for the duration of the day, it was more of the same. Nothing went as planned, and everything was simply perfect.

Fast forward, we decided to have a light supper together and we got the perfect table outside. We were simply enjoying. a wonderful evening together and bam, it suddenly dawned on me that the window was closing on my car return (I rented a car for the weekend), and I immediately started calculating how quickly I could walk to the car and get to Avis. But I stopped myself. I realized that I was going to end the day in a panic and in that moment I made a swift, firm decision that I was not going to let that ruin the beautiful day we had spent together. It was as simple as that. Yeah, of course it was a bummer. But I looked at her straight in the eyes and I said, I don’t want to talk about it anymore. It is what it is.

She followed my lead. We didn’t talk about it anymore and we ended our meal and what happened? Just as we were leaving the restaurant to walk up 3rd Avenue towards the car and to get Sara back to her hotel, it started to rain and I said, we need to grab a taxi. And she said, no, let’s walk in the rain. And I said, no, it’s, it’s going to come down. Sure enough, it started coming down and we grabbed a taxi. Well, we got off at the wrong corner so we ended up walking in the rain to try to find the car, by which point the skies had completely opened up and we got soaked. Anyway, as I was driving home, I felt this exuberant sense of joy and I felt so much gratitude for our beautiful day and our beautiful friendship. I kept thinking to myself, what a perfect day. It was just so ironic that everything kept going sideways and the day kept getting better and better. We just embraced it.

I was thinking about my father because on those hot, hot balmy summer nights in St. Louis when I was growing up, there was nothing better than a summer shower and my father loved it. Oftentimes we’d be walking, and it would start to rain and he would say to me, don’t ever let the rain ruin anything. I was thinking to myself as I was getting ready for bed, thank God I didn’t let the extra day fee on the Avis car rental ruin a day in which nothing went as planned and everything was simply perfect.

That’s all for today. Until next time, from my heart to yours.