Tuesday 14 March 2017

Peaches and cream

Round 36: May 2044 (Autumn)

Trent Kirby is 74, Megan is 72, Claudia and Jacob are 43, Daphne is 13 and Iris is 10. 
(Everett is 14, Keira and Felix are 13, Byron and Noel are 4 months old)

Narrated by Daphne Kirby


Now that I’m older, I often go across the road to help Mum out at the market. I’ll probably get a “real” part-time job when I’m old enough but maybe this will give me some more experience when that time comes. 


I’ve tried sales a little but Mum prefers me to stick to the register, while she takes care of sales. 

The register is kind of boring sometimes. We do okay but it’s not a constant stream of customers, so sometimes I’m just standing there waiting.

Plus the register is really old and unreliable. Half the time I can’t get it open at all and the other half of the time, it opens too fast and whacks me in the stomach. 

Mum says I’ll get used to it but I wish she’d just buy a new one already. 

Iris likes to “help” too. She could stay home with Dad or with Grandma and Grandpa but she doesn’t like to miss out on anything. 

She mostly just gets in the way but the customers find her charming, so Mum doesn’t mind too much. 

Grandpa doesn’t go to the market too often these days, though he always asks Mum how it’s going.

He considers himself retired now and is really enjoying taking it easy. 

Most of the work he does these days is of the babysitting variety. 

We have babies in the family again, after a long time with none. The last baby on the Kirby side was Iris!

Byron and Noel are super cute but I’m glad it’s Grandma and Grandpa babysitting them. 

I get to enjoy the fun parts of having baby cousins and hand them over to someone else when it’s time for the gross parts!

It’s a shame all of Byron and Noel’s cousins on our side are so much older than him. It’s been so fun growing up with Keira.

All our lives, we’ve been best friends and we’re either at my house or her house for a sleepover at least once a week.

My parents went out for their 14th anniversary recently and Keira came over that night. The nights when my parents are out are the best.

My grandparents are always home, of course, but it still seems more fun.

Probably because they’re old and go to bed at 8 o’clock anyway and then Keira and I are basically left to our own devices for the night.

We always sleep in the living room, because otherwise, we’d keep Iris up all night too. We never do that much sleeping, really. 

We watch a few movies and then we just chat and laugh until we’re too tired to continue.

And we make plenty of trips to the kitchen to raid the fridge for more snacks. 

This last sleepover was the first one we’d had in a while, so it seemed like even more fun than usual.

A couple of months ago, Keira started dating Felix Lane and she’s been spending a lot of time with him.

Sometimes, we’ll make plans to hang out together and then it turns out she’s brought Felix along. 

I don’t have anything against Felix - he can be pretty funny sometimes - but I’d like to get some one-on-one time with my best friend again. 

Still, our hangouts with Surprise Felix are better than the couple of times she’s cancelled totally, because Felix has asked her out somewhere.

When we do hang out these days, she talks about Felix about 80% of the time we’re together. 

I’m really not jealous of her. It’s just getting kind of boring.

I tried to talk to her about it and she was sort of apologetic about it.

Her solution was pretty annoying though. Now she’s obsessed with trying to get me a boyfriend.

She keeps prodding Everett Benton to ask me out and I hope my total lack of interest continues to put him off.

He’s nice enough but I’m not interested in him that way. 

Even if I was, I’m not allowed to start dating until I’m 15. 

My parents don’t want me to get into any situations I’m not ready for and they decided 15 was a reasonable age. 

Dad especially has been very clear about that. Dating is not happening before then.

I really don’t mind. I’m just hoping it’ll be enough to make Keira lay off for the foreseeable future. 

Mum thinks she’s just excited about having a boyfriend and that she’ll calm down and be back to the old Keira once the novelty wears off. I hope she’s right. 

Notes:
  • Title is from Peaches and Cream by Beck.
  • Yikes, exactly a month between updates! It's been difficult to get back into the swing of playing now that I'm back at work but I'm hoping this has got me back on track a bit. I think I should be able to get June birthdays (with a Lane family update) within a week. I'd love to be able to get a few updates ahead of the blog with my playing, like some bloggers can do, but I never seem to be able to do that!
  • Keira had lots of "kiss" and "date" icons popping up in her conversations with Daphne, so I would think it's all getting quite old at this point! I think it's pretty natural at that age, for it all to seem far more exciting and interesting than it is to anyone else!
  • Jacob was a victim of ACR's overly enthusiastic woohoo advertising when he was only 13, so I cannot imagine he would be too into the idea of his 13-year-old daughter possibly getting herself in the same situation. Claudia wouldn't either but I can see Jacob having a more personal stake in this. Fortunately for Daphne, no one has caught her eye yet anyway. Poor Everett is interested but it's totally one-sided. 

14 comments:

  1. An interesting update! I love how you write from different perspectives, sometimes it is an elderly person, sometimes a child or a teenager.

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    1. Glad you enjoyed it. I actually think I've only written from a child's perspective once and it was quite a while ago but I do enjoy mixing it up a bit. :)

      Thanks for reading and commenting!

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  2. huh, I did not know that about Jacob and ACR. No wonder why he wants her to wait a bit before dating-lol :)

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    1. Yeah, I was a lot more careful with ACR for my young teens after that! I turn off woohoo for them entirely until 15. It was a bit much!

      Thanks for reading and commenting!

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  3. Daphne and Iris are super cute! Ha, a sleepover with grandparents who go to bed by eight would be fun! This makes me want to do a sleepover for my sims. Someone made an event mod for it and now my kiddie sims keep begging for one.

    Aw, that's always rocky when one of two besties starts dating and the other one isn't. I was always the one who didn't have a boyfriend when we were younger because I was also forbidden to date at that age, lol! This felt very true to life. With the way Keira is constantly talking about her dude even when she isn't with him, and Daphne trying not to seem like she's jealous. Because she's really not jealous, she's just annoyed!

    Claudia and Jacob looked great for their date night. Did you take any outtakes from their date, or was it just staged?

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    1. Yeah, my sister and I used to stay overnight at our grandparents' place and they'd be in bed by 7:30. Then the inappropriate TV commenced! That's very cool that they've been modded into TS4! They exist in TS3 but they never seemed to work too well, so I just fake it in TS2 instead. ;)

      I was also the boyfriendless one when I was a teen! I have a very strong memory of being at a train station with my friend while she quite literally sucked face with her then-bf...and we were waiting for a train, so I pretty much just had to put up with it! So maybe Daphne should thank her lucky stars that Keira isn't quite that bad, lol! Although she'll definitely be happy if Claudia turns out to be right and Keira calms down a little in the coming months.

      And no, I was pressed for time this session, so poor Jacob and Claudia didn't have an actual date! They were sent upstairs to relax on their bed, which is what I always make my sims do when I need them out of the way. I should send them on a little date now that I have some time, to make up for it.

      Thanks for reading and commenting!

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  4. This was a great update- I love the girls' sleepover, raiding the fridge, watching movies, camped out on the living room floor. The conversation with Jacob, Claudia, and Daphne was really cute, with Dad being so adamant about no dating till 15 and mom trying to reassure her. It really sounds like their limits are a relief to Daphne, who would be pushed into dating before she really wants to by Keira, otherwise. With Finn and Victoria having started their family in college, I thought they might be a little stricter on Keira, but everyone reacts to life events differently. And college is a whole different thing than being a victim of ACR woohoo advertising at 13, good grief. Nice to hear you're back at work and how is your dad? Take care!

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    1. I love Keira and Daphne together, so the sleepover was a lot of fun for me to set up. I had more ideas and then remembered the CC for those ideas was all in my old game, lol! It was mostly just junk food deco and the like, so not a huge deal.

      I think Daphne is quite relieved to have an excuse not to date, apart from just not being that interested yet. She's rolled a First Kiss want that very quickly rolled away, so I think it's all a bit abstract for her at the moment. Her parents don't mind. ;)

      Finn and Victoria have been through the whole teen dating thing before with Declan and Caitlin. They were both pretty sensible teens in that way, so I can see them being more relaxed on that front than Claudia and Jacob. And yes, college is totally different to 13! There's not much parents can do about what their kids get up to at college.

      Thanks for asking, Dad is well and is feeling pretty good. His heart function has gone up a little bit since getting the pacemaker/defibrillator installed. We've had some issues with communication from his cardiologist's office (the doctor is great, his staff is not so much) but other than that, not too many complaints. :)

      Thanks for reading and commenting!

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  5. Daphne is adorable, I love her freckles and she looks so much like her mum! Loved the sleep over scenes. Being a teenager and having a friend over when your parents aren't home is always the best. I laughed at them raiding the fridge!

    I have to agree with her parents on the dating age too. Personally I think 13 is too young to have a boyfriend. At that age you should still be able to enjoy being a kid.

    Oh the days of playing OFB. *sigh* That was such a great expansion and I'm still bummed that EA never brought it out for TS3. Oh well I can relive it through your blog! ;)

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    1. It's funny that you should say you think Daphne looks like her mum; when I took the family portrait this session, I examined it for a few minutes and came to the conclusion that she looks a lot like her dad! She's got her mother's colouring though, which skews things a little.

      13 is definitely on the young side for dating. When I'm deciding on stuff like that, I try to imagine what kinds of dating rules those particular parents might have. People's opinions on these sorts of things tendy to vary.

      OFB is great! I didn't get to enjoy it as much as I might have this round, as a modded object I used to use to crate the veggies doesn't seem to be showing up (even in a vanilla game). That's why all the pics are in that one section of the market! So I guess the veggies will stay with the Kirby family now, as they look weird just lined up on the shelves. I'll have to sort out something with CC for the store.

      Thanks for reading and commenting!

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  6. I love this family, and this update was wonderful! You really captured some great shots and voices; it brought back a fair bit of nostalgia on my part. Love the shot of the parents leaving at the door, and Claudia's posture toward Jacob in that pic, and then all the sleepover shots especially with Daphne rolling back and feet in the air.

    It's difficult when someone begins dating, young love seems to be all-consuming. Many friendships went to the side while first-loves took the spotlight, and I know I was just as guilty though I tried to be aware of it, it was difficult to not fall in that love trap.

    It's good that Daphne is aware of what she wants though, or in this case, doesn't want. She doesn't feel pressured to actually find a boyfriend before she's ready, and that shows great maturity. Nice that her parents are lending a hand with forbidding it as well. Everett is a cutie! I wonder if she'll eventually grow feelings for him, or if he'll just have to move on.

    I like that Iris just gets in the way at the market, one of my scouts has a little sister named Iris, and she pretty much always believes that Iris is in the way, so I definitely giggled. And Noel and Byron are adorable!! It is too bad that they don't have cousins on this side to grow up with.

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    1. Ha, I was trying out different floor poses for the girls and came across that one for Daphne and thought it was perfect for a teen. Past your early 20s, it gets uncomfortable sitting that way! I can't remember what pose that was with Claudia and Jacob, though I was happy with how that shot turned out too.

      Oh, yeah, teenagers dating are just completely self-absorbed. I definitely remember friends and classmates being that way at that age. Most of us grow out of it, fortunately for Daphne. ;) She does have some chemistry with Everett (2 bolts, so decent chemistry), so it's possible something could develop in the future. So far though, the interest has all been from him. Poor guy!

      Isn't that what little sisters are for at that age? Getting in the way? Ha, you can tell I'm a big sister! Rebecca's kids are all going to be much younger than Claudia and Victoria's but Hope and Malcolm's children will be much closer in age, at least. :)

      Thanks for reading and commenting!

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  7. I love how Keira's answer to Daphne not wanting to hear so much about Felix is to find a boyfriend for Daphne, lol! Sounds like something a best friend with a boyfriend would do, like it's the perfect solution for everyone. But it's good that Daphne isn't in a rush to find a boyfriend just to have one. She seems to be pretty mature for her age.

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    1. It's the kind of terrible solution a 13-year-old might come up with, assuming everyone wants to date as much as she does! Daphne's current lack of interest in dating should stave off the grey hairs for her parents. ;) She has her head screwed on straight, I think.

      Thanks for reading and commenting!

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