New Baby and New Problems–Redux

 

After I had Sierra, I felt hopelessly out of shape.  So I decided to make an appearance at the local gym to try to lose some of the post-pregnancy weight. 

Toya’s pies and rich meals were murder on my figure.  So I started with aerobics and worked my way up. 

Then when I was on the treadmill, my phone rang.  It was Noah.  He told me that Sadie had died. 

When I got to the mansion I was in a little bit of a state of shock.  Surely explained a lot.  I didn’t even know she had been sick.  I guess I’d been so busy with my own family – between driving all over town to Satis’s newspaper staff meetings, AJ’s scouts and Sage’s ballet classes, plus my own unexpected pregnancy, I barely had time to breathe, let alone keep up with neighborhood gossip.

I’d also heard through the grapevine that just before Sadie died, Neil had moved out with his girlfriend, Noelle Hong, and into a house down my street.  There’s definitely a lot more to this than meets the eye. 

I found out something else too.  I found out dad had been having an affair.

I decided to confront him.  But first, he asked about the kids, and I told him about Sety and my plan to send him (and the rest of the kids) away to Fort Starch Military Academy.  I also told him that Andy was opposed to my plan and insisted on disciplining Sety on his own, without consultation from me.

“Well, princess,” he said, “it’s a good thing that Andrew is taking such an active role in the upbringing of the kids, but the two of you have to come to some kind of agreement on Imsety’s future.  Have you spoken to his counselors at school?”

“We have, and Sety continues to act up.”

“Well, Imsety is clearly testing the two of you.  He wants to see how far you go before you snap.  You did the same thing to your mother and me when you were  his age.”  I could still see the twinkle in his eye, even if it was fading with age. 

“Is it true?” I asked, “about the affair?”

Dad cast his head down.

“Who is it?”

“Dena Hart,” he whispered.  “Beatrice Hart’s daughter.  I never told you about Beatrice –“

Dad slipped into storytelling mode.  And when he gets into that mode it’s hard for him to break out of it.

Apparently Beatrice Hart was the best friend of Holly Alto (Noah’s mom).  She was, depending on who you spoke to, either the second or third woman my father bedded.  And apparently, of the two of them, he had been with Beatrice, then called Bebe, first.  “I think I may have slept with Beatrice only once,” he recalled.  Sometimes I wonder if my father ever loved any woman. 

“How long has this been going on?”  I tried to hold back tears.

“Since right after Sebastian left.” It was my mother, coming in from behind.

She found out about the affair, and though they are still living under the same roof, it is as if they are strangers.  It’s definitely an odd state of being.  I know if Andy even THINKS about cheating on me, he is out the door. 

Meanwhile, back at home the war between Andy and Sety rages on unabated.  When Sety walked in out of a police car in the middle of the night again, this time after apparently stealing some tests from his teacher’s file cabinet, Andy’s voice rose to unprecedented decibel levels.  I’d truly never seen him so angry.  “I don’t know what’s happened to you, son,” Andy roared, “but you are in a lot of trouble!”

“You not my father,” Sety’s familiar broken Simlish refrain continued. 

“No, boy, I’m not your father.  But I certainly don’t want to see you ending up like your father –“

“What you know about my father? You don’t know nothing about my father.”

“I know enough about your father to know that he will never see the outside of a jail cell as long as he lives, and at the rate you are going you are going to suffer the same fate, unless you change right now.  You are GROUNDED, young man! You can forget about going to your prom and any other non-school activity.”

He then sent Sety to his room. 

New Baby and New Problems

 

Hey everyone,

Well, a lot has happened since I updated you guys last. 

First and foremost,  Andy and I had another baby, named Sierra.  I was surprised as well when I found out I was pregnant. 

I really thought I was done with kids after Sage, but apparently the Watcher or whoever the Sim deity is saw otherwise.  I don’t know, it’s like I’m cursed or something.  I didn’t even want kids at all and now I’ve got five. 

I spotted Neil and Noelle, his girlfriend, talking outside the hospital about some party.  My partying days ended the moment I brought Sety and Satis from Egypt.

Oh… speaking of Sety and Satis…

They’re teens now, and Sety reminds me a lot of Neil at his age.  Except I think Sety is worse. 

Oh, he and AJ still talk about their favorite subject (that’s fishing) and almost every weekend they go up to Pinochle Pond to go fishing…and AJ’s Arabic is almost as good as Sety’s…

…but there’s something else too.

The school surveillance camera caught him going into the building at three in the morning.  Apparently he’d covered the principal’s office with toilet paper.  He denied it but then the cop showed him the picture.

When he was being pursued he took off like a ghost out of the ground. 

Meanwhile, I felt that Andy’s warm body wasn’t next to mine anymore. 

Next thing I knew, I heard yelling in the kitchen.  Lots and lots of yelling.  I had never heard Andy so upset. 

I didn’t hear too much of the conversation as I was drifting in and out of consciousness, but I heard Sety say in his broken Simlish, “you’re not my dad, you no tell me what to do!”

“Young man, as long as you're part of this family, you're expected to behave yourself!  And that means not being brought home by the police.  You understand?”

As for the younger kids, Sage started school finally.  I thought she’d never get out of diapers.  Andy built her and AJ a tree house in the backyard. 

She already seems to have made a new friend.  I think this little guy is Alfred Light. 

She enjoys it when Toya reads her a bedtime story at night while I’m at work. 

She’s fitting right in with the older kids.  She seems to particularly like tagging along with Satis and I think she’s picking up some Arabic words. 

Before he left for his soccer tournament Andy made sure to tuck AJ into bed. 

A Different Kind of Ghost Hunting Assignment

I was called to the home of Darrel Marks and Tracey Gonzalez the other night, they had a problem with a ghost.  Darrel, if you remember, was my first high school crush.  And Tracey is his current girlfriend. 

It wasn’t just any ghost.  It was one of those ghosts in Medieval dress.  And she was not happy with me.  This was my toughest ghost yet. 

She was difficult to catch, too.  My first attempt to zap her with the Banshee Blaster was an abysmal failure.  Even though I am a Level 8 ghost hunter, I can and do fail first attempts from time to time, painful as it is for me to admit.  So, she approached me. 

“You are a lack-witted cur for doing this to me,” she said in a haughty accent that sounded a little like Old Simlish and a little like British and a little like French.  By the accent, I could tell that she had been of the nobility. 

Finally I attempted for the second time to vanquish this pesky ghost.  By the time I was done it was two in the morning and I was exhausted. 

Despite myself, I gathered a name, Alys de Montfort, and a cause of death, a wizard’s spell gone awry. 

The next day at brunch I brooded over Alys de Montfort.  I had to find out everything I could about her. 

While on a visit to my parents’ I grabbed my laptop and typed in “Alys de Montfort”…

Alys de Montfort had been of Norman heritage through her father’s side of the family.  She ascended the throne of the kingdom of Arkovia after her father, King Edward, had been killed in a swordfight by his own nephew, Prince Michael.  When she was a young girl she had been subjected to lessons in etiquette and manners given by her father’s aunt, Cordelia, but she also secretly took lessons in magic and wizardry from a visiting alchemist.

Alys de Montfort was a very scholarly and learned queen.  She built what was then the largest library on the continent in her castle.

She sought to secure and consolidate her power by issuing edicts.  Her first edict was that her murderous cousin was not allowed to set foot in Arkovia again. 

Realizing that her hold on the throne was tenuous until she married, Alys cleverly held off all her suitors, constantly telling them that she would consider their proposals even though she had no intention of ever getting married.  The most persistent of her suitors was the Merchant Prince of Tredony. 

Alys enjoyed long jaunts through the forests surrounding her castle, where she would occasionally hunt bears.  Her advisers hated this and constantly complained about it. 

She was noted for having a bit of a temper; her advisers hated this and called it ‘unladylike.’ 

She also had some skills in sword fighting.  She once had to defend herself against a bandit. 

When she asked for money to build a magic laboratory in the castle, her royal advisers refused; instead she appropriated some of her dowry money to do it.  

A magic experiment gone wrong is the generally accepted reason historians give for Alys de Montfort’s death; attempts to revive her failed.  After her death, Arkovia fell to the Nimbans from the far north; the kingdom was never fully the same. 

After the medieval period, most of the provinces were split up and boundaries realigned.  I didn’t realize Sunset Valley was this old.  Apparently it was built on the ruins of one of the ancient provinces. 

A thousand Sim years ago, a remarkable woman named Alys de Montfort became queen of a distant land.  How did her ghost wind up in Sunset Valley, at the home of my ex-crush and his current girlfriend?  

With those questions in mind, I began the draft of my third book. 

More from Satis

In the old stories of Egypt, Satis was the goddess of the floods of the Nile River. My name means "she who shoots forth." According to the books, she was a war, hunting, and fertility goddess who was seen as the mother of the river. Our mother, Fatima, named me and my twin brother Imsety after Egyptian gods. I suppose she meant us to become god like.
I don't remember much about her or our father, Samir. Mom told us that he was a major crime boss in a company called MorcuCorp. We were little when we were adopted and smuggled away from Egypt and neither of us have been back since.
It has been a struggle for us to hold on to our Egyptian language and customs since arriving in Sunset Valley. When Halima was here she helped with that, but now that she is gone all Imsety and I have of Egypt is each other. I miss her, a lot. I'm sure Imsety does, too.

One thing Mom and I have in common is we both love to read.  As soon as I got to Sunset Valley she gave me her own Simlish primers first, then I moved on to more challenging books, including her own aunt Meg Plumb’s Moon Colony series.  My love of reading is the reason my Simlish is much better than my brother’s.  I’ve been complemented on my good diction and penmanship. 

The house next door to ours on Pinochle Point had been vacant for as long as I can remember, until very recently, when a family moved in.  The best part is the family has not one, but TWO girls our age! 

The oldest of the two girls, Carrie Phillips, asked if she could ride the bus home with me.  I didn’t refuse. 

School has not been easy for me or my brother.  We’ve been teased for our heavily accented Simlish and I’ve often sat alone in the cafeteria, or if Imsety has the same lunch period, he’d come sit by me.  “My parents thought a change of scenery might do us some good,” Carrie said as she sat next to me.  I didn’t know what that meant.

I followed Carrie into her home, and she explained that they hadn’t quite finished packing yet, so there were boxes all over. 

Meanwhile, I took a glance outside the window and I saw Imsety running toward our house with Carrie’s younger sister, Amy.  Amy has a blond ponytail, while Carrie’s hair is darker. 

“Satis,” Carrie said, “you have an unusual name.”

“It’s Egyptian,” I told her. 

“Wow, you’re from Egypt?  Where all the pyramids and stuff are?”

“You got it.”

Carrie told me her father Peter and her mother Elizabeth decided to move the family for a change of scenery.  Then, Peter got a job at Landgraab Industries and Elizabeth began working at Doo Peas in journalism.

I got the feeling there was something Carrie wasn’t telling me.

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.

Mom's Surprise Announcement

Don't ask why but I decided to pay my mother a visit. And my mother has this hare brained idea to run for the at-large seat on the Sunset Valley city council.

I mean, I understand it's something to do and she's bored now that Bassy and I are out of the house... but still, it's a little surprising, considering we're decidedly apolitical.

Digging further, though, it's not so surprising that mom has political cajones. Her paternal grandfather, Sir Henry Bellingham, was a member of the British parliament. Even further back, another ancestor was a special aide to one of the British kings.

"Dear, sit and look pretty for the cameras," she told me as I sat next to dad. Talk about awkward. I'd rather be in the bottom of an Egyptian fire pit.

I don't know about mom's chances for winning. She's running against a pretty formidable candidate, Christy Gustafsson. Apparently Ms. G is well established in political circles. Mom has name recognition as the former conductor of the Sunset Valley orchestra so she has going for her. Ms. G's politics are pretty strange, though. She once led a protest against marriage in front of City Hall.

Hello again

Hello again everyone. C'est moi, just checking in.
Things have been pretty busy at Casa Plumb. Dad is still dad, of course. Sometimes I wonder where he gets the energy. He did another concert just last week. Mom is still mom, which means we get a steady diet of ambrosia and sharp commentary about our lives. She has not gotten over the fact that Bassy left Sunset Valley and is now a movie star in Bridgeport.
And Andy? Well, he is still Andy.
The other day I was checking the website for the new boarding school that's going to open in Sunset Valley pretty soon when he walked in. "You're really not thinking about sending the kids there, right?" he asked me.
"Actually, Andy, I am," I told him.
"What the heck is wrong with you?" he asked me. "You adopt two children from Egypt only to decide to send them off to some finishing school."
"I'm not sending them off, Andrew. I'm giving them opportunities I never had. Isn't that the point?"
"No, the point is to be there for them and give them love and attention, not to ship them off to the next person. You don't spend any time with them as it is. I don't know how you do it, between managing your aunt's estate, this household, and your brother's movie career. You're stretched way too thin."
"My brother has his own manager, and as for Aunt Margaret's estate, I have a financial planner."
"The point is, why are you even considering these schools?"
"I want my children to have the finest education possible. I've battled with the Sunset Valley school system long enough. Since they don't get that my children have special needs, then someone will."

"How much do these schools cost?"

"The one I'm looking at, Smuggleworth, is $1600 a child."

"Four children? By my math that's $6400."

I shrugged. "We can afford it. Besides, I could get my parents to chip in too."

"Savannah, that's not right. Sending your kids off to boarding school is not the way to go! What kind of mother are you?"

"Someone who grew up in a household that valued education and is seeking the best way of giving her children that much better a head start in life."

I sighed. I knew somehow that this was not going to end well.