All Hail Betsy, the Duchess of Byron!

6/27/99

I am just in a totally crazy mood today.

eric said that he’d buy me a title! Apparently they auction off titles in London every now and then, and when eric’s rich he intends to become a lord or a duke. He offered to buy me a duchess title. There’s a possibility, when I move south, that John and I will move away from the thriving city of Warner Robins, where he lives now and which I affectionately call “Baskin Robbins,” and into the tiny two-taverns-and-a-gas-station community of Byron. Byron, GA!! Here I come!

eric also gave me a hand with the mailing list particulars. Since everyone on the World Wide Web will be frantically trying to get on my list, we worked out a rejection letter. Just to, you know, keep out the “riff raff.” I know it will be hard for some people to take, being rejected for the list, so I decided to enclose a small packet of cyanide with each notice.

Dear Sirs ( the rejection letter will read,) We are unable to process your application at this point in time. Please swallow the enclosed pill and have a nice day.

Hey, guess whose wedding’s back on? Right-o. Called John’s parents, they’re on the way. Called my parents, they whined a little, but they’re on the way. I told everybody that they can bring/invite whomever they want, but I don’t want to hear about it. Just don’t tell me a goddamn thing about it, just be there and there will be a wedding.

The first thing my mom said was, “What? What are you going to do about flowers, and a dress?”

Betsy: “I’m not worried about flowers, we’ll pick some up on the way there.”

Mom: “What about a dress? It’s too late to order a dress....”

Betsy: “We’ll pick one up on the way there.”

Mom: “Are you going to cancel this one? We don’t want to make flight arrangements if you’re going to cancel it again.”

Betsy: “Just buy the tickets and I won’t be able to cancel it.”

And I won’t. As long as everyone leaves me alone. John came close to not-leaving-me-alone today, when he asked, “Why does it have to be in Gatlinburg?”

Betsy: “Gatlinburg is where you go to get married. All there is in Gatlinburg are hotels, restaurants, and chapels. And a couple of nice views, I hear.”

John: “What? I thought there was cool stuff to do there, like casinos, or something.”

Betsy: “No, I said it’s like Vegas, only without the casinos.”

John: “...oh....”

I’ve pushed that conversation to the back of my mind.

I keep blaming everyone else for the failures of the other “weddings.” I still believe that if they had all just co-operated then something would have worked. Now it seems that they’re blaming all of the cancellations on moi. I can see my parents and John’s parents rolling their eyes at each other, right across 2,000 miles’ worth of the northern US. Like, oh, yeah, let’s all make reservations so she can cancel it again.

John and I had another of our snobbish giggles today over some of those standard mispronounced or misused words. One of us stumbled on the word “times,” often used in place of “multiply.” Especially by third graders. “Times it by three....”

Then it was “often”—I think so many people get this one wrong now that it’s accepted either way. I always knew it was pronounced “offen,” because my mom’s a very picky English teacher. John says he thought it was “offen,” but every other kid in school said “off-ten” and the teacher didn’t correct it. He said “off-ten” and I said, “dude, that’s ‘offen,’ haven’t you ever heard me say ‘offen’ before?” And he says (you guessed it) “Not off-ten.”

We’re still out on “pestle.” I’ve always said “pessel,” but John and his mother tell me it’s “pess-tel.” I said, “Yeah, like ‘ness-tel’ and ‘wress-tel.’” But who knows. I don’t use the word “pestle” offen enough to care.