Satisfied mind

Round 36: February 2044 (Summer)

last update/Ruby's next update/next update

Lane 2 household profile

Luc Lane is 51, Asha is 47, Ruby is 17, Marcus is 15 and Felix is 13. 

(Grace is 14)

Narrated by Marcus Lane

Dad is semi-retired from touring now, so he’s been at home a lot more recently.

He’s at the stage where he doesn’t need to tour to make money - he makes enough off royalties and record sales - so he doesn’t feel the drive to go out on the road as often as he once did.

He used to go once or twice a year but now he’s saying he probably won’t go for maybe the next five years. Possibly not even then.

Mum’s pretty happy about that. She’s done a little touring herself but never as often as Dad.

I guess because Mum and Dad both have sort of non-traditional careers and because Mum never went herself, they’ve never really pushed college as the be-all and end-all.

Despite the lack of pressure though, Ruby’s going off to college next year, so this is our last year all together as a family.

She started interning at Ramona’s mum’s work after school a few years ago and has decided she wants to be a fashion designer.

She did pretty well on the SAS, as well as earning some additional scholarships, so she’ll have a bit of money to play around with too.

Ruby can’t wait to go and I personally can’t wait to see her off!

Some days I could almost imagine missing her but most days, I’m happy she’s going.

She thinks it’s her duty as big sister to be an asshole whenever the mood strikes her.

Occasionally though, we’ll also have the best laughs together.

I’m still looking forward to taking over her room when she leaves though. I’m changing everything in there.

For now though, Ruby’s room has become her “design studio”. She bought this ancient looking sewing machine at a garage sale, moved some things around and set it up.

To me, it looked old enough that it wouldn’t even work any more but Ruby didn’t care for my scepticism.

I was wrong anyway. The machine is pretty loud though, which makes me glad our bedroom is the floor below Ruby’s. Ruby is often sewing late into the night these days, after everyone is in bed.

I still share a room with Felix, which isn’t too awful, except for all the sports crap he hangs up everywhere.

Including over my bed. I used to be a lot more interested in sports when I was younger but these days, I really don’t want anything to do with it at all.

Felix is still very into it. I dread PE and he lives for it.

I prefer metalwork and even though it’s probably not cool, I like the more academic parts of school as well.

Right now, I’m working pretty hard on a presentation we have to do for history class. We were put into pairs and I was matched with Grace Benton.

She’s not really who I would have chosen to work with. I’m good friends with her brother Everett but I’ve never had all that much to do with Grace.

I have to admit that we were a bit awkward together at first. We couldn’t seem to agree on anything.

Seeing we had no choice but to stick it our or get a bad grade, we pushed through and ended up finding out that we do have a couple of things in common.

We both hate sports, for one thing and we bonded a little bit over that.

We also both want to see the world outside Sullivan some day. I don’t even know where I want to go first but somewhere, definitely.

And even though we each have a few years before we have to worry about college or finding a job, we’re already developing some solid ideas for what we want to do.

Grace is thinking about journalism or something in the restaurant/food industry. I’m also thinking about journalism but I’m also considering architecture or game development.

Mum says my cousin Josh’s girlfriend is in game development and suggested I talk to her about it before I decide anything.

I might but I’m not thinking too seriously about it yet. I’m just glad to have some ideas to look into a little bit more closely when the time comes.

Notes:

• Ruby scored a 52 on her SAS. Not enough to get half-tuition normally but because she also earned the Quigley Visual Arts Scholarship and is choosing a creative major, she'll get half-tuition based on that. Not that Luc and Asha would have any trouble affording full price anyway - kind of a power couple, like Rob and Patience!
• The thing with Marcus and Grace was a little experiment of mine. I've always known negative bolts could disappear but I was curious to see exactly what it took. So when I noticed Grace and Marcus had negative chemistry and hadn't yet met (and so had a 0/0 relationship), I wanted to see what would happen. And what happened was that they became friends and the negative bolt was still there. But the next time they saw each other, it disappeared. They now have neutral chemistry but with matching turn-ons, I could probably get it up to positive. I'm just seeing what will happen though. I don't have too many expectations that they'll ever date. They're good buddies now though.