Parklife

Round 20: Spring 2012

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Jace Novak is 55, Magdalena is 48, Lia is 15, Maia is 10 and Tessa is 3.
(Ione Romilly is 16)

Narrated by Lia Novak

It's no wonder I still haven't had my first kiss. Every time I look in the mirror, there's another pimple on my face. I put cream on them but in the mean time, I have to walk around with a face full of zits.

I know plenty of boys but the only one I even remotely like is going out with my best friend. Even if I wanted to betray Ione, I'd be too shy to make a move on him anyway. I just wish I'd met him first and that it had been us who kissed in the cafeteria that day.

I would talk to Mum about it but she's so busy with Tessa all the time. Tessa is suffering from some slight delays in speech, so Mum works with her on that a lot. And then she works as well. It's hardly something I can talk to Dad about. I don't want to tell any of my friends at school either, in case it gets back to Ione.

Ione suspects something is up, I think. She asks me what's wrong all the time. She asks less, now that I manage to suppress the urge to cringe every time I see her and Gordon kissing or hugging. But I still can't help but mope around all the time. I must be really fun to be around right now.

I went to the mall to get some comfort food and ran into Gordon in the food court. I'm usually shy with people but Gordon is so easy to talk to. I try to avoid him though. I want to get over him and spending time with him just makes me like him more.

So I'm throwing myself into my hobbies. I still haven't made anything more complicated than a toy robot but I'm trying. I wanted to get a car to work on too, like Ione's parents got her, but Dad said we couldn't afford it.

Mum was worried about me isolating myself, so she asked Dad to take me to help him out at Rosa Lucida.

So this is how I spend most Sundays now. I've got a silver badge in Flower Arranging and I enjoy it much more than I thought I would! I think Mum meant for me to work downstairs with the customers though.

He wants me to take over the store when he's too old to run it any more. I would like to but I wish I had his talent for sales. I guess I should go down and practise, right? I won't get better unless I try.

I decided to try and pull myself out of my funk. I found a matchmaking service listed in the newspaper and I thought I'd give it a try. I didn't have much money to pay though, so I was warned that I would get what I paid for.

So I ended up getting set up with Elmer, who I already knew from school. Honestly, he's kind of a sleaze. He's pretty much had his eyes on every girl at school at one time or another. But we had fun, I guess.

I let him kiss me goodbye but I probably shouldn't have. It was kind of anti-climactic for a first kiss and I really don't want to see him again.

Elmer wanted to see me again though. I was reading in the living room late that same night when I saw someone hanging around our front step. It turned out to be Elmer. I went out to him, which was a mistake because he kept trying to convince me to let him inside. Kind of creepy.

I think I would have been too unsettled to sleep after that, so it was a good thing I had so much study to do. I just dosed myself up with caffeine and got to it!

I stayed up all night but I think I'm finally clued in enough to get that engineering scholarship. Ione is definitely going to college - she starts in 2014 - so I want to make sure I can join her when it's my turn the next year. I've been working so hard.

Maia is a different story.

Mum and Dad never had to force me to do my homework and they weren't expecting to have to push Maia at all either, figuring we were pretty similar. It turns out she had four homework assignments piled up on her desk and her grades had slipped to a C-!

She got a lecture from Dad and was ordered into her room until she'd finished all her assignments.

Notes:

• Writing Lia's weirdness about Gordon and Ione in as a little crush made more sense than what I suspect is the issue, which is that she's quite shy. Why on earth would you react like that just because you were shy? But then again, I have other Sims who are shy and they don't blink an eye when they see romantic interactions taking place in front of them. So there must be more to it than that.
• Lia's chemistry with Gordon is slightly higher than Ione's, by about 10 points or so. Lia is very shy though and Gordon isn't that outgoing himself and they've never made a move to flirt or anything like that. As of now, they're friends with a daily relationship of less than 70 and a long-term of less than 30.
• When Ione goes off to college, I'll send Gordon with her, seeing he's forced himself in. It wouldn't be right for him to stay in suspended animation now!
• Lia's aspiration started out in the low gold/high green and dipped pretty quickly into the red. All she wanted was to go on a date, flirt with someone and slow dance (and go to college, but she can't do that yet)! The wants would spin every morning but they'd reroll around to the same ones as before. So she was kind of depressed.
• Elmer has an unrequited crush on Lia. They have one bolt of attraction but he's very fond of her. He flirts a lot with her but she's yet to show much interest. But hanging around outside someone's house at 1am is creepy, so who can blame her?
• I forgot about Maia's homework the first time but the rest was me experimenting. I wanted to see if Sims would roll the want to do homework if their grades slipped. Some would but Maia isn't one of them. She just doesn't care! Definitely not a future Knowledge Sim, this one!