Thirteen

Round 19: Summer 2009

last update/next update

Joseph Carmody is 74, Vivienne is 69 and Betsy and Kimberly are both 38.

Narrated by Betsy Carmody

So Jesse finally got off his ass and decided to go out on his own. Well, he's not really on his own. Two of my former students, Evan and Amelia, decided to move out of their parents' place but didn't have enough money for the deposit on the apartment. That's where Jesse came in. And yeah, he really did get in the taxi in his pyjamas.



It's much quieter in the house now, without a constant stream of girls coming in and out and the TV at full blast at 2am. It's all very calm and I almost miss having Jesse living here.

Almost. The fact that he's not here has meant that Kimberly and I can start the adoption process again. We have plenty of space to turn Jesse's old room into a bedroom for Sarah when she's older and to leave the nursery as is for the new baby. Or toddler. We probably won't adopt a newborn this time. We'd like to but we don't have enough for the $10,000 fee.

Mum retired recently and has been taking care of Sarah while we're all at work. She said she got bored of journalism and would rather stay at home with her granddaughter.

I think she might be bored at home though, honestly. I came home from school the other day, only to see her attempting to repair the television by herself. I've never known her to take an interest in electronics before so she must have been desperate for something to do.

We haven't been approved for adoption yet but we're pretty sure we will be, so we've brought up the idea of a little brother or sister with Sarah. I don't know how much she understands but she seems excited.

Anna and Emil came over for dinner earlier this week. They arrived at about 2pm, because neither of them have anything to do during the day anyway. Anna is 6 years out of college and still not working and Emil works about 12 hours for the whole week.

Mum is very worried about their employment situation and is worried they'll turn to crime to make ends meet. Where she got that from I don't know, but Emil was offended at the mere suggestion.

Anna doesn't really think things like employment and contributing to society are all that important though so she just cooed over Yul and ignored Mum when she switched from nagging Emil to nagging Anna.

While we were waiting for Dad to finish making dinner, we all gathered in the living room to catch up. Most of that time was spent listening to Anna bragging, which I'm used to.

I was still relieved when I had to excuse myself to answer the phone though.

It was really good news - we've been approved! We weren't too worried about being rejected but you still tend to worry until you get that phone call. Now we just have to wait for them to match us up with a child!

Random pic:
A pic from Emil and Anna's visit. All the adults were congregated around the television. Just guess who was talking when Joseph and Betsy made these faces! It's Joseph's face that kills me here. But Anna inspires these kinds of reactions in people, apparently.

Notes:

• I never considered what my new system would do to adoption but I'm liking it anyway. I had Betsy call for the adoption service on the last day I played. The kid will come "the next day", which for Betsy and Kimberly could be up to two years from now, game time. I know adoption in RL can be a long process, so this pleases me.
• And duh, I only just noticed the Temperature option on the Lot Debugger, which has solved my problems with the new season not taking. The Maxis reward object didn't work any better than the hack I was using before, so I'm glad I figured out the Debugger.
• Vivienne didn't speak to Emil about anything but crime for their entire visit. And he was rude and dismissive to each of her attempts.
• Anna doesn't really have anything to brag about but her speech bubbles often contain herself and she uses the Brag interaction autonomously quite a bit. That's how I imagine her being, so it makes me laugh when she acts that way of her own accord.