Airbag

Round 32: October 2036 (Spring)

last update/next update

Rose and Joanna Draper are both 41, Sylvia is 10 and Will and Levi are both 4.
(Amelia is 47, Wade is 46, Patience is 34 and Alice is 10)

Narrated by Rose Draper

Patience is due in just a couple of weeks now and I’m so excited for her and Rob.

Thank goodness this pregnancy has been relatively smooth-sailing, even with the inevitable stress of moving. I think I would have had the baby sleeping in the living room before I’d move while pregnant!

Patience thinks it was worth it though. She and Rob both earn good money and they were happy to pour it into buying their dream home.

Sylvia thought our house was huge when we moved in but she couldn’t believe the size of Patience’s place. It’s seriously enormous and there’s plenty of room for her to run around torturing her brothers.

Rob and Patience are thrilled with their new place but Patience says she’ll be even happier once they have a baby occupying that nursery. She's pretty keen for the baby to arrive already!

Joanna and I very briefly discussed having another baby. I was still having some urges to add to our family but she was fairly adamant that she was done.

It didn’t take long for me to come around to the idea either. I don’t really want to be pregnant again, or go through the whole adoption or insemination process.

It was worth it, to have the children we have now but I feel done now. Three kids is enough and I can’t really imagine having another baby.

I have time to myself now, for one thing. I can get out in the garden again, at long last. That was almost impossible, with two toddlers wanting attention.

The worst thing about moving here was leaving my vegetable patch behind but now I’ve got another one going in the yard. I can’t wait to have fresh strawberries to pick.

Will and Levi are often outside when I’m out there but they’re never too interested in what I’m doing.

They’re making lots of friends at school and they always seem to have one boy or another over.

None of our kids seem to have Joanna’s hermit tendencies; they’re all extremely social.

Levi and Will are still only pre-schoolers, so they still like hanging out with their parents a lot as well.

We should probably enjoy it while it lasts, if Sylvia is anything to go by.

She’s 10 and we’re both already complete embarrassments to her.

If we go out together as a family, Sylvia is always a few steps behind, pretending she doesn’t have parents.

When she gets sulky like that, we just ignore it and go about our business. I think we’ll probably be in for a really interesting time when Sylvia is a teenager though!

It’s hard to believe Sylvia is so grown-up now though. I sometimes still see her as the little baby we adopted all those years ago.

She is still very close to her friend Alice, who comes over most afternoons after school.

Alice and Sylvia also spend a good chunk of their weekends together as well. They’re both very indoorsy types and they’ve always got along so well.

It’s almost like Alice lives here sometimes. Her parents both work nights, so she ends up joining us for dinner a couple of times a week.

Previously, Alice and Sylvia spent most of their time reading together but they seem to do more gossiping than anything else these days.

I hope it’s all innocent and in good fun but I’m not allowed to know.

If I walk into the room, they both clam up pretty quickly. If I ask what they were talking about, they only ever respond with “nothing”.

I guess Sylvia’s getting close to that age where she doesn’t want us to know every single thing about her. She was so horrified by the prospect of starting high school and having Joanna be around all day.

She was convinced all the other kids would tease her for being the teacher’s daughter and that Joanna’s mere presence would make things hell for her.

Joanna tried reassuring her that plenty of teachers’ kids have been through the school unscathed but Sylvia wasn’t convinced.

As it turns out though, it won’t be an issue anyway. Joanna has decided to quit teaching and won't be at the school by the time Sylvia starts in 2038.

Joanna is a woman who likes to challenge herself and after almost 20 years of teaching, it’s no longer much of a challenge for her.

She’s also feeling a little burnt out after dealing with bratty teenagers for so many years.

I was surprised but not worried. I could support the family on my own for a while, if need be, but I knew Joanna wouldn’t make a decision like this unless she had a plan for what to do next.

And of course, I was right. Joanna wants to put her biology degree to good use and find work in natural science.

It’s the same field her brother works in and when we met up with Amelia and Wade that weekend, he and Joanna talked about little else.

It was a little boring for me and Amelia, I have to admit.

According to Wade though, it sounds like Joanna might have a good chance at getting a job fairly quickly.

I hope he’s right. Joanna is going to see out the school year, so she has a few months to find something.

Wade has promised he’ll keep an eye out for any positions at the lab he works at and recommend Joanna if he sees anything that might suit her.

So there’s that, and Joanna is doing her own job search as well, through more traditional means.

Ideally, she’d like to finish the year, have a couple of weeks’ break and then go right into her new job. Nothing has turned up yet but Joanna is feeling really confident about her chances.

Notes:

• Title is from Airbag by Radiohead.
• I don't know what Will is doing in that second last picture! It kind of reminded me of this Family Guy clip (and I bet if you've seen that clip before, you know exactly the one I'm talking about).
• This was Sylvia's last round as a child but she's already developing some teenage tendencies. She was a real moody little thing this round!
• Rose has the skills and job performance to be promoted to Media Magnate but hasn't progressed, for some reason. Abigail is a Media Magnate, so is that a Harder Jobs thing? That Rose won't be promoted while someone else is occupying the top spot? I have three Education Ministers, so it seems like an odd quirk of the mod, if so.
• The third Education Minister would be Joanna, who reached it just this round. I decided she's not the kind of woman to rest on her laurels at all though, so I'm letting her go for her LTW, which is to reach the top of the natural science career. I can't remember why I didn't let her do it in the first place. I think I might have just needed a teacher. But anyway, I imagine she'll be able to climb the ladder pretty fast, given her skills are maxed out. ;)