It hasn't rained properly for two weeks. What can this mean?
In December it either rains every day or it is bitter bitter cold because there is no cloud cover. Never above freezing, day or night, with urgent prayers offered for the pipes, and penances done in exchange for pipe safety. Please accept this small drab ugly misshapen handmade scarf, dear Pipe Lord, in exchange for winter pipe immunity, with many thanks, on bended knee, etc, yours truly, with love, from Herron Hill Dairy, and wear it around your Lordly neck for many years in good health and perpetuity and so on. If it be Thy Will.
But it has not rained at all by our standards, and yet the weather keeps coldish without being frigid. Around 30 at night and around 40 during the day, hardly any pipe danger. What can this mean? Please write if you know, we hope it isn't another sign of the Apocalypse.
Meanwhile the forecasters keep doing their swirly graphics on tv, tap dancing as they explain why this new development - no rain in December - is another sign of
La Nina - wetter winter than normal. It's very sad, probably they had the graphics made specially and can't return them now. Oh well.
Anyway for a while we almost thought La Nina might be a good name for the Betsy Family, but so many other good names were proposed that we set it aside.
I really like the Nubleones. But the Nubleones sounds a little too actual, like it might almost be a Powerful Family, not like the Betsy Family.
And the Darlins is a little too dear, because certain members of the Betsy Family really do hunger for power (Tangy), although most of them just hunger for food.
And the Real Housewives of the Key Peninsula, while tempting, doesn't take into account the fact that the Betsy Family hardly ever engages in catfights, and none of them have ever had their teeth whitened, nor had their udders surgically enhanced.
The Borg is nice, we like the singular plural, especially in this case, since it often appears that the Betsy Family shares a brain, and someone left it out in the summer meadow by accident instead of returning it to their Central Intelligence Agency, which the farmer keeps in a little oatmeal can in the tack room, and that's why they are all standing out in the rain crying wetly instead of just walking inside, where it's almost like it isn't raining at all - especially this December - since there is a little thing called a ROOF that seems somehow magically to keep the rain from touching you.
(Offscreen: Awestruck murmur from the Betsy Family: who invented that thing the ROOF? How did they think of it?)
Anyway we are down to two finalists. One is still the Kardashians. The other is the Bigolettos.
The Kardashians has the advantage of being instantly recognizable and of course there is a certain family resemblance, although in my opinion the Betsys are significantly more attractive than the actual Kardashians in almost every way, despite their Nubian roots. Especially Clementine, she is cute as a button.
The Bigolettos has the advantage of starting with B, nothing new for the Betsys to memorize. It also captures their essential Bigness, without being too subtle or freighted with unnecessary cleverness. Cleverness can be so tiresome, don't you think?
Next post: the undergoats.