I read all of your comments, I think. I even answered some. But I have puff-balls for eyes and can’t see past the mucus. I couldn’t make a decision as to which was the best comment because, by the time I’d stopped to blow my nose, wipe my eyes, cough, cough, cough, blow my eyes, wipe my cough, dry my zone, cough some more, I’d forgotten what I’d read.
Sorry about that.
If you are reading this, you are probably a subscriber (thanks for that, by the way; you are keeping me alive in the blogosphere). I don’t know how anyone else is managing to read me – each time I write a new post, the white space on my home page gets bigger. You have to scroll down to the backside of your monitor to read the last visible post, dated 15 December.
I could suppose that it is a glitch in the WordPress system, but they haven’t responded to my two emails and I do have a history of poking fun at the WordPress prompters…but the prompters are not the techies and the techies have always been quick to respond.
Hmm.
Could it be that the prompters have kidnapped the techies to punish the techies for being more popular than the prompters; or is it a fiendish plot to stop the techies from helping their relentless tormentor? Could it really be that I have an ego the size of Mohammed Ali and there is no correlation between my faulty blog and the absence of any help? That they don’t even know I exist and it is all coincidence?
Hmm.
It doesn’t help that I have been rendered offblogging for several days. I still have an appetite so I’m not yet a hospital case, but when I’d rather watch a bad movie than sit at the computer, I know I’ve been seriously unwell. However, I’m on the mend now, and intend to hound the techies, bombarding them with polite requests to get a move on, please, if it’s not too much trouble, thank you. I haven’t yet reached the begging stage and I can’t unwrite what I’ve written and wouldn’t anyway because you readers would lynch me (as soon as you found me hiding over in blogspot), but I’m getting there. I blog; therefore I am. I blog not; and a thousand bad movies are lined up to muddle my mind. Not pretty. Did you ever see Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes? Not blogging would be like living in that dreadful film for eternity; or until I found a new writing outlet, like anonymous, harassing letters to blogging techies who let me down when I needed them most.
I’m rambling; blame the phlegm. And the nogudnik techies out partying when they should be working.
Image via Wikipedia
I now have to catch up with the many comments that you managed to leave. I appreciate them; I do. Thank you. I like having hundreds of comments to read in Christmas week when I should be baking or shopping or drinking. Think I could manage that last one, actually. But the CoWAbunger announcement will be late because I can’t award it until I read your many, many, many comments. Thank you again.
Really.
Anyone know where the WordPress techies live? I won’t hurt them, I promise.
Really.
I ought to ban Pseu. This is the third time she’s won the CoWAbunger. And she had her own birthday post on Saturday. But her comment was just too funny not to win:
The post was about sending Christmas cards to the astronauts on the International Space Station. Her comment:
I’ll put them on my ‘over-seas’ list.
Well done again, Pseu! 
Here’s your cow third:
If anyone wants to complain about her third CoWAbunger, Pseu me. Check her out at http://pseu1.wordpress.com/
An outright winner this week, for respecting the integrity of this blog:
On my post A Prompt Too Far:
Wwwhack! Do you feel that? It is me throwing my shoe at your head.
Well done, Gobetween. I and my sore head salute you.
Here’s your award:
To read more of Gobetween’s unique perspective on life in South Africa, visit her blog at http://gobetweenflames.wordpress.com/
Though Pseu deserves a whole herd of them.
This is Pseu as you might know her:
On a joke post about fonts:
These jokes are just your type
On a joke post about owls:
It’s not that I don’t give a hoot, it’s just that I can’t be feathered.
On a post in which my son emulates his mother:
that Spud is a chip!!! hahahaha
(Not sure about the hysterical laughter there, Pseu.)
On a joke post where Garfield and friends fix a cold engine, Viv commented:
20 sleeping cats would keep the engine warm enough to start. Problem: getting 20 cats to move.
And Pseu replied:
you mean when they are catatonic?
And in the same post, àpropos of nothing at all:
Too many spiders in your house can turn it into a no fly zone.
As if all that wasn’t enough, Pseu even wrote a joke for me over in her own comments section:
What do you call a group of shipwrecked Richards?
Desert Island Dicks
(That might be lost in translation: here in the UK we have a Radio 4 programme called Desert Island Discs.)
Here is your award Pseu; well done!
Check out Pseu’s blog if you like close-up photography, poetry and interesting stories about life.
*
Before I award this week’s CoWAbunger, I have to ask you not to inundate me with outraged comments and hate mail.
I have gone against the habit of a lifetime and…accepted a compliment.
I know, I know! What was I thinking? All of you good, self-restrained commenters who never say anything nice to or about me must be furious. Those of you with less self-restraint who let slip the odd nice remark which I studiously ignore must be seething.
I’m sorry; I couldn’t help myself. I’m weak, I know, but she hit me on my Achilles scalp:
Here is the photo which inspired her sincere but factually incorrect compliment on my post France, Day 4:
I have dreadful hair; not manky like my teeth, but thin and mousey and flyaway. My plaits look like drab friendship bracelets; when my hair is short I look like a boy; when it’s long I have to tie it back because the static electric shocks to the lips really hurt. My family take turns thanking me for the hair in their food, despite tie backs and a head covering when I prepare meals. I have never, ever been complimented on my hair in my entire life. Is it any wonder I caved?
Thank you, Cindy, for making my day. Hair is your award:
And have another one for being nice about France:
Go and visit Cindy at her blog, The Only Cin; especially if you love good food.
I’m not doing this just on Viv’s say-so, though she does have a lot of influence over The Laughing Housewife (don’t tell her!); I’m doing it because it’s the right thing to do. Pleasing myself, pleasing a friend and choosing the winner never seemed so easy before.
For this excellent comment on I Always Listen To My Readers, in which I was hoist by my own petard, step up, Big Al.
I prepare to award the CoWAbunger by c+p comments I particularly like into draft posts. I had two CoWA drafts and therefore two possible winners of this week’s award. When I have more than one draft it’s hard to make a decision, but this week it was easy – both comments came from the same person. Those are the kind of tough choices I like making. The theme of two is apt, because she is known both as Bluebee and BeeBlue.
Whatever she’s called, she wins for her sagacious perspicacity and wisdom:
I think it’s time Maltesers sponsored this site
and for combining in one comment a pun and a pleasing image of me as a woman on the edge:
That DVT is clearly HAIRY stuff but we’d be bereft if you gave up living dangerously
Congratulations Bleebuel! Here’s your award:
Some excellent and funny comments this week, thank you; but I laughed hardest at this one from Perfecting Motherhood – who also sees cows every day, so I think she’ll be pleased:
Well, is the WP people had $1000 in superballs, I’d think they’d have an idea of what to do with them to take care of you, miss smarty pants…
It came on the post about superballs. What appealed to me was the image of enraged WordPress prompters pelting me with rubber balls. Not that I’m into that sort of thing, but what a great post it would make, once I stopped crying.
Here’s your award, PM:
This has been the best week so far for comments, and any of the seven that I ruled out would have been a worthy winner in another week – especially SammyDee, for calling me ‘bonkers’; but the Kurgan tells us There can be only one, so it has to be Sidey, for this little ditty, which helped make sense of an incomprehensible post:
I can also count in alcoholic
One Tequila
Two Tequila
Three Tequila
Floor!
Well done, Sidey! Here’s your award:
This week’s winner might surprise you if you’re new here; but regular readers know I can’t resist a corny joke. Throw in a fun number and she was bound to be a shoo-in: skipping politely over the double ‘the’, well done, Janie Jones of Janie’s Place 
Since we are talking numbers here, I will word my comment in the the form of a joke:
Why was the number 9 afraid?
Because seven “ate” nine.
I confess I did hesitate to give you the award because your blog is providing half my jokes for next year; but corn will out.
Here’s your award:
By the way, is your avatar a Gilmore Girl? I didn’t notice until I blew it up. If I’d known you’d have won a lot sooner, just for having great taste in tv.
If I hadn’t already awarded last week’s CoWAbunger, I’d have to give it to Nancy for her prescience:
Phase 2: In which Linda declares that her birthday WEEK started yesterday . . . with 6 more days to celebrate.
How right could one person be?
On Monday I had a visit from a friend in the morning, who brought me these:
There’d have been a lot more to show you but Spud insisted on being allowed to eat one.
In the evening, another friend came with a lovely set of toiletries, assuring me no offence was intended.
Then yesterday, yet another friend, with these:
The last time I did so well for flowers, a small person came out of me.
I also received an email telling me I had won two tickets to a comedy night with – what did I do to deserve such blessings? – a free buffet.
I love the saying, Some days you are the statue; some days you are the pigeon. Today, I am definitely a pigeon.
&
This week’s award winner is Lisa, the Alien Hippy, for giving me the biggest surprise of the week.
My binary post, 1.10.11 (there’s a phrase I never expected to write), posed a question. Call me silly but I didn’t actually expect an answer. But Lisa had one:
Hello lovely Tilly,
The binary number 11011 is equivalent to decimal 27 hexadecimal 1B.
I’m here because you make me giggle and I like to giggle….LOL
Love and hugs. Lisa. xx 
I can already hear you complaining that she ought to be disqualified for paying compliments, but I like her, so she isn’t.
Lisa writes two great blogs: one on coping with Asperger’s, which she only learned she had as an adult; and one that showcases her poetry and fabulous art work (a piece of which I hope to own one day). I recommend that you pop over and say ‘hi’.
This is one of her pieces; it’s wonderful:
Well done, Lisa, not only for surprising me, but also for (presumably) knowing the answer to one of life’s ridiculous questions. Here’s your award:
Apologies that it is a picture of a cow’s backside; it was difficult to find a photo of a binary cow.
To compensate, and because you like to giggle, here’s another:
And one more:
The worthy winner this week – not least because she has commented in recent times almost twice as much as her nearest rival and she’s worn me out – is Pseu.
The two comments that won her the award are:
From Joke 179:
Turn me around three tmes and I’m lost. Why hadn’t I thought of using the Cat Navigation?
She continued the joke on Of This That ‘n’ T’other:
This snake is quite obviously lost. Could you lend it the cat nav?
She managed to keep the Cat Nav running joke going through several posts over several days, I think. I’d find them for you but I’m going out.
She did lose an ‘i’ (and she might lose another before the ceremony is over), but Pseu is a blogger’s dream commenter: She write good. She funny. She do my research. She find You Tube videos. She should be writing this blog instead of me (without the Maltesers, of course).
In recognition of that, she is not going to receive an ordinary CoWAbunger Award, oh no! She will receive… she will receive…she will. She will. You can do it, Tilly; just grit your teeth and spit it out. PseuwillreceivetheCoWAbungerMalteserAwardforServicestoThisBlog’sComments
Section:
well done Pseu yadda yadda yadda whatever turn off the light on your way out
I am a little fat. I like food; what can I say? I have dull hair: mousey. I don’t wear much make-up and have no need of a dressing table. If I look like a bag lady, I chose my own clothes. If I look nice, the Hub picked them for me. Despite all this, I am a little vain. This photograph is from 2003. I had to go back that far to find one of me that I liked. But I don’t really care: my husband still thinks I’m beautiful and if he doesn’t, he loves me enough to lie about it. I’m lucky. I have two boys. They never lie to me. Still, you can't have everything.
The Laughing Housewife 
To all my fellow commentators, please vote on the following:
For making us answer polls on her blogs, Tilly Bud should be:
1. Henceforth and forever more banished from the blogosphere ____
2. Tied up in a room with a box of Maltesers just out of her reach ____
3. Be made to listen to a recording of WordPress prompts played over and over ____
4. Be made to listen to all the knock knock jokes that ever existed ____
or….. (and this is especially cruel)
5. Be complimented on every thing she writes ____
I found a wonderful picture of a cow doing a pole dance but I can’t use it. If you’re curious, it’s here. Then there was a picture of a bull goring a matador right where it would hurt me (in the mouth); I’d like to have used it – satisfying on so many levels – but Big Al was so charming and so funny that I decided to go with what he really deserves…a smiling cow. Here you go, Big Al:
Big Al isn’t funny just in here. Check out his blog, The Cvillean. Don’t be put off by the fact that he can’t seem to spell his own name.
Well done Al!