Bury me with it

Round 36: August 2043 (Winter)

last update/Lauren's last update/next update

Jessica Royce-Nihill and Emma Gottlieb are 23 and Lauren Carmody is 22.
(Abigail is 60, Louisa is 23, Austin and Declan is 22 and Caitlin is 20)

Narrated by Lauren Carmody

Not long after graduation, I got a job working as a blogger for the online version of the same publication as my mum works at. I’d rather work somewhere different but there’s not a lot of choice around here. 

I really want to get my writing in print but I have to work my way up to that and earn it. 

I’m being very careful to make sure everyone can see I’m pulling my weight. The last thing I want is for someone to assume I’m only there because Mum is the boss. 

She’s actually harder on me than anyone. It’s never unfair but she doesn’t hold back if she thinks I could have done something better.

Emma’s not quite in her dream job yet either. What she really wants is to make her living with her sculpting but she’s not there yet.

In the mean time, she’s teaching art classes at an art school a few blocks away.

I honestly cannot imagine Emma teaching at all. She’s the most impatient person I know.

These people she’s teaching are all hobby artists, not “real” artists and she totally looks down her nose at them. 

I don’t know how long she’ll last! She’s putting up with it for now because it’s paying the bills but it’s not her passion. 

She’s dying for some distraction and really wants to meet somebody, so Louisa suggested she look online. 

She hated the idea but she was getting desperate, so she took the advice anyway.

So far, she hasn’t found a single girl she likes though. I think she’s being picky but she’s insisting everyone she’s met online is crazy or annoying. 

Jessica scored a job with a catering company straight after graduation but she’s getting really restless there.

They took her on as a decorator and she was hoping with enough time, she’d be allowed into the kitchen. So far, it hasn’t happened. 

She’s started looking around at other companies, to see if she might have better luck elsewhere but nothing so far.

She is really happy she gets to see Declan so often again, at least. They had three years together at uni, a year apart at the beginning and another at the end. 

They survived that time apart and seem to be all the better for it. They’re adorably happy together. 

Declan’s still studying for his Master’s but he’s not living on campus any more, so their separation is all behind them now. 

He lives in the building right behind us, so he and Jessica are in and out of each other’s apartments all the time. 

He also lives with Austin, which also means Austin hangs around here a fair bit too.

I pretend to be annoyed sometimes, because he just invites himself in and never calls first but I like seeing him. We’d never been away from each other before I went off to college and it was pretty weird at times. 

It’s nice living close by again, while still having our own spaces to retreat to.

Now that I’m back home, I’ve been meeting up with Austin and his girlfriend Nora a lot. 

I’d met her before, of course. They came up to visit me on campus a few times and she's been coming to all our family things for ages. But I’m getting to know her so much better now. 

I’m liking her more and more. I like to think we’d be friends even without our common link in Austin.

But I also have to say that I think she’s been absolutely awesome for my brother.

She’s quite ambitious and I think that has pushed Austin a little more in that direction too, which is nice to see. 

I hope Nora sticks around for a good while yet and I can tell Austin is hoping for the same. 

I wish I was as lucky in love as Austin is right now but unfortunately, I’m not. 

I had been seeing Dane for the last couple of years but I ended things with him when it turned out he wasn’t the kind of guy I thought he was.

I would never have found out if not for Caitlin. Dane is still on campus for another six months, so Caitlin saw him more than I did and one day, she happened to see him making out with some other girl. 

Caitlin wasn’t sure if maybe it was something I was okay with or if we’d split up but seeing Dane looked guilty when he spotted her, she put two and two together and decided to tell me. 

He tried to tell me that it was nothing because it was just making out.

I don’t really care how far it went. It was really just the fact that it was all going on behind my back. It’s just not something I’m willing to put up with, so I said goodbye to Dane and didn’t look back.

I actually feel good about it. Better than I thought I’d feel breaking up with someone anyway. 

Now that I'm single, I really want to forget about guys for a while. I want to just focus on myself and spend some quality time with friends.

Notes:

• Title is from Bury Me With It by Modest Mouse.
• Sorry this took so long! It's been 12 days since the last update but much, much since the last proper story update and I feel bad about that. :( I'm trying to get ready to play my next family as we speak, so I can play them in a more timely fashion. I really want to get to Connor and Lila's wedding, which is just three sessions away!
• Lauren and Dane's break-up was prompted by something that happened while I was playing my uni boys this round. Dane lives in that dorm and was constantly making out with one of the other dormies. :\ Caitlin visits Brendan there a lot (of her own accord, which I think is quite cute and very Caitlin) and did actually witness one of the make out sessions. I didn't get a pic at the time. I considered staging one and then I thought I kind of preferred this update without it.
• I've also changed Lauren's aspiration from Romance/Knowledge to Popularity/Knowledge. I've never really been happy with Romance for her - for a Romance sim, I think she's too nice and too serious. She's never been one to roll those multiple wants anyway and has always been more of a serial monogamist, if anything. So she's Popularity now. :) She was rolling romantic wants for someone near the end of the session but I'm not quite ready to do anything about those yet. But things will be happening for her eventually.
• I cannot find anyone for Emma! I need to put that matchmaker crystal ball thing back in my game, because without it, it's just not happening. Not only did she not meet anyone who she has chemistry with, she didn't even meet anyone who liked girls!
• Jessica started this round really depressed. Way into the red and she did the aspiration failure animation two or three times. She had really hard wants to fulfill, so I couldn't even do much about it for a while. I actually have no idea what upset her so much, so I just wrote it in as job woes!