Happy Birthday, Janie Jones!

There sure are a lot of birthdays in December.   I guess we know what bloggers’ parents like to do in March.

 

 

This is Rosie the Riveter.  In America, she’s a famous World War II icon.

 

My friend Janie Jones, who has a birthday today, is not really called Janie Jones; it’s a pseudonym.  She uses Rosie the Riveter’s picture, sort of: it’s a facsimile she drew to make sure the nasty SOPA people (remember them?) can’t lock her up:

 

 

I can see her building planes and munitions because she’s tough, after the things life has thrown at her; though she’d rather tell a joke – usually dreadful, and therefore hilarious to me.

 

I have always liked her blog but I liked it even more way back when I was awarding Cowabungers (remember them?) for the blogger who left the best comment of the week in here.  To stay clear of the SOPA police (you must remember them), she didn’t use the image that was her award which I had stolen from elsewhere on the internet; instead, she drew another facsimile:

 

 

Janie put it in her sidebar and gave it the title:

 

Winner of the Coveted CoWAbunger Award, October 10, 2011

 

See that?  COVETED.

 

I like Janie Jones a lot.

 

*

 

I Like Janie Jones A Lot: A Birthday Poem

 

I like Janie Jones a lot.
Of plenty she’s not got.
She works real hard
though it be ard
uous to raise alone a tot.
Dedicated parents are scarce
in this selfish universe,
but selfish she is not.

 

I like Janie Jones a bunch.
One day I’ll buy her lunch.
I might even tease her
with a single Malteser
she won’t be allowed to munch.
Dedicated poems can be ard
uous to write but not hard
this time.  This line is the punch.

 

Sorry for the weak ending, Janie.
I know it’s kind of lamey.

 

Happy birthday, Janie Jones.  I hope the future’s rosy.

 

Happy Birthday Single 7″ (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

Tip-Sliding Away

Think of a time you let something slide, only for it to eat away at you later. Tell us how you’d fix it today. 

It wasn’t so much a sliding as a tipping.

It was 1991.  Tory Boy was about ten months old.

My younger brother was staying with us in our Johannesburg flat.  The Hub, Little Brother, Tory Boy and I decided to walk to the nearby SPAR to pick up a few bits.

The Hub pushed his beautiful baby boy in his beautiful bright-blue-for-a-boy pram.  We got about twenty yards from the building’s entrance when a wheel of the pram caught on the gravel and Tory Boy tipped right out, face first into the ground.

I swear it was nervous laughter on my part.

My brother laughed because I laughed (I’m very infectious).  The Hub wrestled with the pram, swooped up Baby and yelled at me the terrible mother who laughed when her baby fell face-first into gravel, all at the same time.

My response (I swear it was nervous laughter on my part) has always eaten away at me.  Mostly because every time Tory Boy brings it up the Hub glares at me and refuses to believe that it was nervous laughter on my part.  Tory Boy doesn’t actually remember the incident but the story impressed him first time he heard it and he likes to remind me of it.  Often.  At least once every time he comes home, as if I don’t have enough guilt just bearing the title, ‘Mother’.  I wouldn’t mind, but he doesn’t even have any scarring from the facial gravel indents.

To fix it, I’d have to have a do-over.  Next time, they can go shopping without me.

 

Joke 622

Mary and Joseph looking for an inn (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

By comic Zoe Lyons:

Mary said to Joseph, “Put the rubbish out, love.”

“I can’t,” he replied. “It’s Christmas – there’s no room in the bin.”