Birthday for Grateful-J

 Coworker Grateful-J has done me more good turns at the store than anyone. Carpentry favors, for instance, like mounting slat board.
(True, the fluorescent lights he hung in my workspace came crashing down, smashing things on my desk . . .  But I wasn't there, so no harm, no foul. And that's back when he was drinking, a lot, which he quit doing.)

He's the one who organized the workplace housewarming gift for me of a Stanley tool bag crammed with every kind of tool, including a little golf pencil.

Best of all is the toy mash-ups he leaves in my area:
the koala-headed baby I posted yesterday; a Care Bear riding a flying dragon; two male action figures in a compromising position; a shark eating a Barbie.
They make me laugh out loud.

I call him Jester, and I sing him a little song when I see him first thing, from the Old Dutch potato chip jingle.

Jester, potato chip,
Jester, the happy chip,
Crispy crunchy light and snappy,
Jester, po-ta-to chip.

I never had a brother . . . [Oh, wait, I have a brother, but [many sad bad things], and I literally forget.]
I never had a brother like Grateful-J, who's like a brother in a story--sweet and goofy and giving, and kind of a mess, with a world of troubles. [Well, yeah, those last two things.]

I wanted to make an extra effort for his forty-second birthday today. I asked him what kind of cake he likes, and he said any kind.
"But specifically? If you tell me, I'll make it."

"Chocolate. Or coconut."

So, German Chocolate Cake it is---I found this recipe that calls for two frostings: the usual coconut pecan penuche AND a chocolate buttercream.

And this morning, I watercolored a quick card for him. He forages for mushrooms, and this is banded mottlegill, a psilocybin mushroom which grows around here and confers Grateful Dead properties he likes.*  (Not deadly though!)

And this is some little scamp trying to sneak frosting off the cake:

* "During the early part of the 20th century this species [banded mottlegill] was often referred to as the 'weed Panaeolus' because it was a common occurrence in beds of the commercially grown grocery store mushroom Agaricus bisporus.
Because of its intoxicating properties the mushroom farmers had to weed it out from the edible mushrooms."
--inaturalist.org/guide_taxa/636080