One of my grandsons and two of my great-nieces are sharing their birth year and making their big entrance to the real world this year.  THEY’RE GOING TO BE 21 YEARS OLD.  Today is the big day for my great-niece Jane Elizabeth Fitzpatrick, shown on the right at a somewhat younger age.

According to my daughter Lisa, the common denominator among cousins,  – first cousins, second cousins, and cousins once, twice, and thrice removed is that somewhere in the mix, they have to share a grandparent. I strenuously object to that stingy rule.  What about the line of succession from all those venerable great-aunts in your family?  What about them, I’d like to know, huh?

This is Jane, joined below by her “cousins”, both of whom share her birth year. 

All three of them will be able to legally buy beer this year, so stand back!

And as far as Octo-woman is concerned, they are all direct cousins-for-life of her seven children.

Here’s Jane . . .

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And here’s my grandson Ford Joseph Covey, and my great-niece Kaylee Ann Ford Fulton (my nephew Jimmy Ford’s daughter.)  Ford lives next door to me in Seattle and attends Arizona State University. Kaylee – newly married last year – lives in Oregon and works in hair design.

The beautiful Jane is the daughter of my nephew Jeff and Carrie Fitzpatrick. She’s a student at University of Northern Iowa where she’s studying accounting.  I’m counting on her to go to work and straighten out all those errant gluttons on Wall Street. Hope springs eternal.

Jane just finished a summer class in Corporation Finance.  She living in Cedar Falls, Iowa while she’s in school. This summer, she’ll be working on campus and helping out at the summer theater on campus. I squirm to tell you that you can purchase tickets for the shows through Urinetown Tickets.  Lovely.  Remind me not to go there without an extra supply of Depends. 

Jane has a boyfriend named Kyle Armbrecht who seems like a healthy and reasonably well-adjusted citizen of the great state of Iowa.  (I was too, once, before I moved to a moister climate in Seattle and got stricken with mildew).

To keep from getting as rusty and creaky as some of us are, Jane is also going to be running a 5K race this summer.  Go, girl!

Happy 21st birthday, Jane.  But if you’re planning on celebrating in a bar, maybe you’d better have your I.D. ready!