Satis-fied Part 3

 

Hey everybody, its me, Satis… I didn’t finish telling you guys about prom night.

So anyway, Michael Falcon (yes that’s him in the red sweater) asked me for a dance and I said, sure, okay, why not.  He’s a senior and I mean once you get past the pocket protector he’s actually kind of cute.  And then he told me he’d had a crush on me since he first saw me.  That part was a little bit much. 

Sierra became a toddler, and she spends a lot of time playing with this strange looking doll.  I’ve never seen this kind of doll before, some far-off relative sent it after she was born.  I swear, all Sierra does is cry and poop.  Mostly cry.  A lot. 

So Sety and I were in the kitchen eating PB &J sandwiches and we were casually talking when I found out Mr. Pythagoras, the math teacher and debate coach, had asked him to try out for the presidency.  “I so nervous,” he said between bites, “I dunno what to say.”

“Say what you’ve been saying in the debates,” I told him, “and you’ll do fine.”

“But I not been saying anything in the debates.”

“Obviously the teacher wouldn’t be suggesting you for the post if he didn’t see you had potential.”

I looked over.  It was mom, she’d been listening the whole time. 

“Why did you even join debate if you’re not going to say anything?”  I asked him.  But it hadn’t taken me long to figure it out.  He did it because of a girl.

Sety, Sety.  I love him and he’s my brother but sometimes I don’t know what to think.  I can’t see him not being president though, as I can’t think of anyone else to do it. 

As for me… well, I’ll be doing a lot more writing.  As in, I was just chosen to do articles for Student Gossip Weekly. 

Right up my alley.

Now that I’m prom queen and my brother is prom king, I get to dish out as much dirt as I got while I was in elementary school and just learning Simlish after coming from Egypt. 

And my first order of juicy gossip at Community School for the Not-So-Gifted….

Do everything you possibly can to avoid this girl. 

Her name is Candice Lakin and she makes a lot more enemies than friends.  Most of the other girls hate her and the boys do whatever they can to avoid her.  Candice picks fights with people for no reason at all.  Doesn’t matter if she knows them personally or not. 

There’s a new student in two of my classes.  I happened to come from newspaper when I saw the moving van park down the street.  Saw a man and a woman and this teenage boy get out.  I assume they’re his parents???

A Big Day

 

Hey, it’s me, Savannah, looking up from my novel to tell you about a HUGE day in the lives of the Plumbs. 

It began inauspiciously enough, with crying Sierra in the crib in our bedroom. 

The little tyrant disturbing my sleep really pissed me off.  It took me awhile to calm down, so I simply walked away. 

All Andy did was pick her up and she stopped crying.  Hate to say it but he is STILL way better at this parenthood thing than I am.  And yet he wants MORE children.  He has lied.

One of the neighbor kids, Michael Falcon, asked Satis to the prom.  Michael is kind of geeky, actually.  I’d rather her with a geek than a muscle bound guy who’s going to cheat on her. 

Meanwhile, Sety and AJ managed to chase each other around the house before finally taking it outside. 

And Andy, fresh from tending to Sierra, went outside to play hide and seek with Sage. 

It was time for AJ to blow out his candles.  Today he would become a teen. 

My little man all grown up *sniff*  and already he’s asking for a car and a driver’s license.  Sigh. 

Here he is after he got cleaned up.  Goodness he looks like his dad.  The brown hair is from my mom, shockingly enough.

After AJ blew out his candles, Sety and Satis sneaked out to go to their prom, also being held that evening. 

But AJ wasn’t the only person celebrating a birthday.

Yep yours truly.  Joining the ranks of the adults.

And who did I spy at my party?  Oh yes.  Bassy and then a lady in a bright pink vest.  Ugh.  Dad didn’t have to bring HER here.

Dena Hart.  As in, his new girlfriend.  Ugh.  Such a killjoy. 

Yep it’s me, with a few more age lines on my face.  I’m no longer a young adult.

 

I was tossing and turning in my bed when I heard Satis and Sety coming in from their prom.  They’d been named king and queen! 

They came in and ate PB & J sandwiches and went to bed.  By then we were ALL tired. 

Guest blogger - Satis!

Hallo! It's me, Satis Plumb.

I am a teenager, living in Sunset Valley. It's a nice place. Not as hot as home, but no place can be as hot as Al Simhara, Egypt, where I'm from.

My twin brother, Imsety, and I were adopted back when we were kids by Savannah Plumb. We don't remember much about it, and Mom has not talked much about it, either. We were told that we were adopted and we just excepted it.

When we were little, we had an Egyptian nursemaid, Halima Meshkenet. She spoke both Egyptian and Simlish to us.

I love to read. In fact, I think my love of books is the reason why my Simlish is much better than my twin brother's. Since coming to Sunset Valley, I read a lot of books and most of them were in Simlish.

One evening we were in the kitchen where my brothers, Sety and AJ, were eating lobster thermidor the butler had cooked.

"Have either of you boys done your homework?" I asked them while they ate. When they didn't answer I knew they had not done it.

The only thing on their mind seemed to be the fishing trip to Pinochle Pond they were planning for the weekend. Sety was explaining to AJ about the types of bait needed to catch goldfish. Whatever.

AJ is my little brother. He's the son of Savannah and her husband, Andrew. That's why he is called AJ, for Andrew Jeffery. He had Halima as a nanny too and because of that, he speaks very good Arabic. He mostly talks to Sety in Arabic and me in Simlish. AJ gets very high marks in school. He is in the elementary school section while Sety and I are in high school.

Mishmash

AJ has a little bit of an entitlement complex.  He always has to be first, whether it’s getting breakfast in the morning or getting on the bus to go to school.  Imsety and Satis basically humor him.

Speaking of AJ, his teacher asked for a common relic from Egypt or China for the archaeology display.  He has to be the luckiest kid at school because of what his mom does for a living, eh? So I gave him one of my Egyptian fossilized apples to use. 

Today he had a play date at Sammy Kincaid’s house (Sammy is Maeve’s younger brother).  He’s like me in that he can be friendly but mostly prefers to do his own thing.  I’ve heard Sammy Kincaid is REALLY smart and makes straight A’s.  I’m secretly hoping Sammy rubs off on him, even though he has asked for a telescope.  I have promised AJ that I will get his telescope if he shows me an A report card.  Right now he has a B. 

“Last one in the house is a rotten egg!” I heard Michael Falcon, one of Sety’s school chums, say.  Poor Satis was bringing up the rear, struggling to keep up with the boys. 

Andy used his day off to help Sety with his Simlish literature homework.  I am beginning to suspect that he is dyslexic.

I brought my concerns about Sety to Andy at breakfast. 

“Have you talked to his teacher?” Andy asked. 
“Talking to the administration is like talking to a brick wall sometimes.”

Then he suggested that I get on the school board. 

“The school board?”  I said.  “When am I going to have time for it, between my job and my archaeological work?”

“It’s an at-large position, last I remember it.  My step-grandma was on the school board in her day.”

Andy had rarely mentioned his family to me, so this surprised me. 

Even though I am apolitical, the school board does make some sense.  It’s not a political position, but if I get on I won’t feel so damn powerless while my children are being abused by the people in charge just because they are different.  I mean, damn it, I was born and raised in Sunset Valley.  I grew up here.  My father, my aunt, and all my siblings were educated in this school system.  If anyone knows how things should work here, it’s me. 

I still am hesitating about doing it.  What I’m not hesitating about is getting Sety tested for dyslexia. 

Meanwhile, Toya has had most of the Sage duties, especially since we put the baby crib in her room so she wouldn’t wake us up at night.  Hey, if we’re paying her $1200 simoleans to live under our roof…

Meanwhile, she and Andy have been getting to know each other.  He is slowly warming up to the idea of a butler being in the house.  With his soccer games more and more often and with my situation being in flux all the time, though he misses Halima, he’s beginning to appreciate Toya being around.  I love being right. 

For a little bit of Sunset Valley gossip:  There’s a new stylist in town.  Francy is still the main coiffeur but she now has an assistant, Jhonnie.  I found out about him when I took Sety to get a haircut.  Fran says she has Jhonnie on board to handle mostly male styles since her clientele is growing by leaps and bounds. 

Last but not least, my brother Sebastian (Bassy) sent me this glossy he had taken.  Remember, he’s now an actor in Bridgeport.  I kinda knew he’d go into show business, just not the branch he chose.  Mom is still ticked off at him for leaving Sunset Valley, as she thinks he could have done the same thing here.  Now that I am a parent myself, I can say Mom is just being protective.  I actually can’t say I blame him for leaving.  Obviously from his letters he felt like he needed to branch out and figure out what he wanted out of life. 

Entente

T minus one week until my brother goes off to acting school in Bridgeport and he's spending his days playing GTA San Andreas on the computer. Ahhh, boys will be boys, right.
Speaking of boys I've got my own boy issues. Sety wants to learn how to drive. What fun. And get this -- Cheesebum has volunteered to teach him.

Mom and I have come to a mutual entente. We basically stay the heck out of each other's way now. Although she did call the other day to complain about her baby going all the way down the coast. "Mom, he's a grown man now," I told her, "he can do what he wants."

I reminded her that we're still awaiting DNA test results that could throw all of this into a tizzy. I have told Bassy that if this baby is his he has got to take responsibility for it. I am not about to raise another child -- I'm raising 4 of my own.

Yes, four. That includes my newest daughter, Sage-blossom (yes that's her full name) Margaret Plumb. Cheesebutt has spoiled this one to pieces already, and I think she's way prettier than I am, lol. She's also very girly, the complete opposite of me.

Catching up

Most of you following this blog know a lot of my updates are being posted on my Facebook page. For those of you who are NOT regulars to my page, I’ll try to give a brief rundown of what’s been going on in Sunset Valley.

Mom got a new car! (Pastel pink of course) It’s one of those classic roadster type deals. Myself, I’ve been looking at another scooter to replace my trusty Kenspa, which I will give to Sety, who’s now a teen.

And she isn’t the only one with new wheels. This little ditty belongs to Bassy. He claims it has 140 horsepower, and Neil, he of the new dame on his shoulder, is the one he says souped it up.

I got new neighbors over on Pinochle. They moved here from Twinbrook and I have to say, they’re a bit … strange. I walked in to introduce myself (which, most of you reading this blog know, is tough for me to do!) and I must have caught her by surprise because she jumped. Apparently she had been doing some kind of upgrade or something because she had a wrench in her hand. We kinda looked at each other in suspicion.

Andy told me later she was Clare de Visser and she’d come to town with her parents and her girlfriend, Shana Jeffries. Shana was in the athletic track with him, that’s how he knew about it.

Andy went to the consignment store and picked up THIS little ditty. When he surprised me with it, he said it was a ‘metal box’ that I might be interested in. Oh Andy. Anybody with eyes could see it’s a time machine. Any man that buys his wife a time machine – knowing how crazy she is about history – is a keeper.

I hired Joyce Ann Ward, a famous photographer, to take pictures of my family, particularly my parents. I’m not sure how much time they have left so I’ll treasure them while they’re still around. She arrived ahead of schedule, catching my dad by surprise.

Dad was in the art room. “Who are you?” he asked with his sideways grin.

“I’m Ms. Ward,” began the redhead. “Your daughter hired me to come and take pictures.”

Dad laughed and shook his head.

Of course, this presented another problem. Since Ms. Ward arrived early, Bassy decided to make his presence known.

She asked if she could take a casual portrait of him in his bedroom, and he said yes, so he led her into his room. I asked him about this, and he swears up and down that nothing happened. Of course, this is my brother I’m talking about, so I don’t believe him for a second.

This is because he made his intentions plain the next day by openly flirting with her.

“I’d like to take a hot picture of you,” I overheard him telling her. Ugh. Seriously, Bassy, could you at least conceal your lasciviousness? I mean, I hired the woman to take pictures of the family. Talk about mixing business with pleasure. I still don’t know for certain if they slept together… but knowing my brother, I don’t doubt it.

The next day everyone gathered slowly in the courtyard for the family photo. Ms. Ward told all of us to find a place to stand.

Well this is all of us... except for Satis and AJ. Satis showed up 10 mins AFTER this was taken. I was pretty ticked.
Ok here's who's who. In the back row are Daisy Ramsey (Sebastian's GF), Bassy, my half-brother Noah, his wife Sadie, and their son Neil. In the next row are Dad, Mom, Andy and me. And that devil in the front is Imsety.
Of course, getting the pic taken was a major challenge, partly because it's hard getting everyone together with their schedules... and the other reason is because my brother made no secret about his affection for the photographer. Bassy could charm the pants off of a nun, seriously. It's crazy.