Flame

Round 30: April 2031 (Autumn)

last update/next update

Kit Royce is 71, Max Nihill is 44, Zaria Royce-Nihill is 43, Josh is 17 and Jessica is 11.
(Eliot is 45, Cordy is 38 and Lila is 18)

Narrated by Zaria Royce-Nihill

Josh is planning on going into journalism when he graduates but I keep telling him he should consider politics. I think he'd be fantastic at it. He's been working as a door-to-door poller after school and wasn't having much success with responses, so he hit on the idea of phone polls. People have been much more receptive to answering questions over the phone.

I think Josh has been spending at least a little of that phone time chatting with his friends but as long as he gets his work done, I'll let it slide. He did well enough that we had him work on my campaign for governor.

We lost but that's okay. It was disappointing but there's always next time. I've been very busy anyway, helping to form the new hood council.

The council is made up of members from all sorts of different fields. It's been so interesting getting to know everybody.

We've only had one meeting so far and everyone was very opinionated but I think we'll work well together as well.

Eliot is an old friend of mine and Max's from our college days and I'm really glad he agreed to come on board. He's representing military interests.

I'd never had the opportunity to talk much with Kendal about anything other than Josh (she is his school principal) but she seems so nice.
Sarah is very sweet too but it might be a while before we see her again. She's currently very pregnant and by the time our next meeting rolls around, she'll have a newborn to attend to.

I've been at Max for a while to hire a manager and he finally did. He promoted his hostess. She knows the business, so she'll be able to handle it.

Often, he'd be working 7 days a week before, so I felt like I never saw him. He's home every night now, so our schedules are in sync and we can spend a lot more time together.

Max has even been joining me on my evening jogs again.

It's so nice having him around more often. The hot tub was going to waste!

I can tell Max is having a little trouble relinquishing control of his business though. We went to dinner with Eliot and Cordy the other night and Max insisted that we go to his restaurant, so he could "check up on things".

But even with that, we had a wonderful night. Front Page is a truly fantastic restaurant and I'd say that even if I wasn't married to the owner.

We go to other restaurants a lot as well but I don't think any of them are as good.

Josh has really been buckling down with his schoolwork and he's doing so well. He was getting Cs and now he's getting Bs.

Mum has been making him play chess with her, instead of video games. She thinks that's why his grades have gone up but I've seen Josh cheating! But Max says cheating is a skill in itself.

We found out he got into Suffolk, which is a relief. He wasn't sure he'd get in for a while there, but his hard work has paid off. I'm very proud but I can't believe my little boy is going off to university next year!

Josh hates it when I say stuff like that but really, I don't feel old enough to have an almost-grown son!

I'm hoping the good news will temper Josh's mood swings a little. Sometimes he's fine and laughing like everything's just great.

The next minute, he'll be ranting and raving and getting upset at the tiniest thing.

I tend to let Max handle him when he's like that. Max and Josh are eerily similar and Max usually knows what to say to calm him down.

I think it might have something to do with Lila. Her being in college and Josh still here at home might be starting to wear.

They seem okay when they're hanging out here but that tends to be rare. Mostly, Josh takes her out. And he's not going to talk to his mother about any girl problems he's having.

Fingers crossed that Jessica's teen years aren't as difficult as Josh's. They say girls are worse than boys, but I don't know if that will hold true in our case.

For brother and sister, Josh and Jessica don't have much in common. Josh will fly into a rage at the drop of a hat and Jessica is very easygoing. I can only hope it continues.

Jessica loves school, so if she keeps it up, we won't have the issues with grades that we had with Josh. She's always got straight As.

She's also adamantly not interested in boys yet. I was getting a little nervous about that, so I asked her.


Jessica looked at me like I was insane for even mentioning the idea.

I don't know how long this stay of execution from boy-craziness will last but it's made Max very happy.

As a teenager, Max was exactly the kind of boy dads hate so any boy Jessica brings home will be viewed with extreme suspicion. If my dad could see Max now, I'm sure he'd laugh!

Extras:
So this would be the chance card that inspired Josh's little bit at the town hall. I'm going to try to work more of these into the story, if they're not too silly (some of them really are!) and if it's something that I can do.

Notes:

• Title is from Flame by Sebadoh.
• So this is Sullivan's new hood council. I chose the members in much the same way Sari did in her recent post. The most senior Sims in Architecture, Business, Education, Intelligence, Law Enforcement, Medicine, Military and all Sims in the Politics career are all represented. I assigned an area of special interest to each of the Politics Sims as well. Where there were two Sims equally advanced in one of the careers, I just chose one but in the future, I'll put up a poll and you guys can vote.
• We probably won't see the hood council members working a lot, unless there's a particular project in their field. But seeing my governors always have a second job, it made sense to me that they wouldn't be doing all the work of running the hood on their own. Hence the council.
• I'm hoping to get a proper council page up in the side bar but for now, the hood council is made up of the following Sims:

Governor - Kirstin Sitko
Town Planning Representative (Architecture) - Sarah Moretti
Commerce Representative (Business) - James Novak
Education Representative (Education) - Kendal Draper
Intelligence Representative (Intelligence) - [vacant]
Public Safety Representative (Law Enforcement) - Evan Moretti
Health Representative (Medicine) - David Sitko
Defense Representative (Military) - Eliot Lane
Agriculture Representative (Politics) - Claudia Kirby
Youth Representative (Politics) - Zaria Royce-Nihill

• It was insanely hot here in Sydney yesterday and my computer was not happy. I really want to get some more of Kit in (she's very excited about Asha's new baby and she's honestly one of my most involved grandparents) but the game was not co-operating at all, so I had to get the essentials done and be satisfied with that!
• Zaria's dad Leo was very protective of Zaria and Asha. He actually got along quite well with Max but every time I sent him on a date with Zaria, Leo would autonomously show up, like he was watching out for his little girl. So when Jessica starts dating, Max will get a little taste of how Leo probably felt when Max and Zaria were younger.