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3.6 It Takes a Village

Jun23

So…. what is a ghost’s baby? A baby ghost. Zahra’s mystery was solved.

In any other family, this would have caused a stir. Well, all right, even here there was a bit of a stir. But these were the Samples. Samples are brave. Samples love nothing more than to sit down and have a fireside chat with the ghosts of their dead relatives.

When Zahra told her father that she had married Cycl0n3, he blinked and said, “You don’t think he’s a bit old for you? Seeing how he dated your grandmother, and he’s dead and all?” One she’d convinced him that she was truly happy, he shrugged and gave her his blessing. Before that moment, he hadn’t really thought of Cycl0n3 as any different than Susie or Connor. Ghosts have a right to be happy too, after all.

That’s just a bit of context to describe why the freakout at the Sample household wasn’t particularly freaked or out.

Lance was particularly delighted with his grandson. He’d have been delighted if Charles were green with tentacles.

Adjo couldn’t stop tickling and cuddling the new arrival.

All-in-all Zahra had plenty of help. Whenever Charles whimpered, someone was there with a bottle and a diaper, and for all that nobody really had to lose much sleep.

And of all of the Samples, Cycl0n3 was the most beside himself with pride and joy. Charles was his son. He’d made a new life, if a life was what this was, and if it wasn’t who cared anyway?

He’d longingly cared for Zahra, then Adjo and Shanni as babies, always figuring that his time was past. Now he had a wife and a new son. All was right with the world

3.5 Welcome Charles

Jun19

The Sample house was aflutter about the arrival of a new grandbaby.

None were more aflutter than Cycl0n3.

Everyone tried to prepare as much as they could.

The big question that nobody was asking was exactly what Zahra was carrying. A ghost’s baby would be… what? Zahra alone seemed unbothered by this. If anything, she was more excited by the big unknown. Her pregnancy was part impending motherhood and part science experiment, and that suited her just fine. She would have been disappointed if the child turned out to be an ordinary baby.

What she wasn’t ready for was just how much maternity leave was going to drive her crazy. She was climbing the walls for tasks to do. She took over most of the gardening from Layla.

She taught herself how to upgrade her computer.

And she counted down the days until the blessed day. When it came, she was more than ready.

Cycl0n3 was less ready. Connor’s ghost even drifted by to watch the excitement.

Charles Babbage Sample was born at 3:15 AM, and he didn’t disappoint.

He was definitely an unusual baby.

(WOOT! Ghost baby!)

3.4 Love in the Wrong Places

Jun17

Adjo and Shanni were still joined at the hip. They did as much as they could together.

But now that they were teens, their personalities began to really diverge.

Shanni took up cooking.

Adjo discovered his grandmother’s guitar in a closet, dusted it off, and started to strum.

It turned out he had a natural talent. He hadn’t been able to keep his little hands off the xylophone when he was a toddler.

But most of all, Shanni discovered *men*. Every day, she came home from school raving about some hot boy in homeroom or gym class.

The first boy she talked about two days in a row was Michael Bachelor. She virtually stalked him on the phone to get him to go out with her.

Adjo, on the other hand, just liked people. He was particularly popular with married women with children. He developed such a platonic entourage of older women that Layla started to get nervous.

He also loved his family in a way that Shanni couldn’t seem to understand.

Once Shanni was able to get Michael to answer her calls, it wasn’t long before she had him wrapped around her little finger.

They couldn’t keep their hands of each other.

The problem was, most of the time when Shanni called, Michael wasn’t home. He claimed he had a part-time job at the bookstore that ate up all his time. Adjo also had a part-time job at the grocery store for about three days before he quit from stress. (Dude. Part-time jobs for teens SUCK. They get no time to do more than school, work, and homework until the weekend. AND they get stressed out.) He saw Michael hanging around talking to his friends after work when he was supposed to be visiting Shannni.

When Shanni found out, she freaked out.

She broke up with Michael then and there. She didn’t have time for men who didn’t have time for her.

Adjo, on the other hand, developed a show, shy crush on Toya Ursine. Sure, she was his second cousin, but that just made the connection deeper on, like, a family level.

He got her to go out to the movies with him, and he was just starting to get her to warm up to him when the POLICE showed up.

Instead of a girlfriend, he was treated to a lecture from his mom about staying out after curfew.

3.3 Into the Oven

Jun16

Zahra wasted no time heading down to the science center to join her dream career.

Cycl0n3 found himself faced with yet another new start to his unlife. He was already a chess legend, so he got a hankering to try his hand at prose.

His journalism background made this an easy career to fall into. His lightly fictionalized account of his unlife, Ghosts Have Feelings Too became a bestseller.

He was so distracted that he picked up some of Layla’s fruit parfait, put it in his pocket, then pulled it out two days later and ate it.

Twice.

Maybe this was some sort of sympathetic connection to Zahra. She didn’t feel the slightest bit sick, but one night the test was positive anyway.

3.2 It’s Not Too Late

Jun14

Time passed, and Lance started to wonder if he was being just the teeniest bit of a jerk about Layla’s flirting.

One day, while she was out working in her garden, he decided it was time to make amends.

He loved her more now than he had the day he married her, and he hoped she could see his ranting and raving for what it was — fear that he would lose her.

When Layla returned home from work that day, Lance had arranged for a surprise.

It was her birthday, and he hadn’t forgotten.

(Not a bad age transition. I left her pretty much as she was.)

He took her on a second honeymoon back to Egypt, where they rocked the campsite.

(In case you can’t tell from the picture, whoohoo in tents causes the tent to jump up and dance around :). )

It had been a very long time since they’d been able to spend so much time with each other, one-on-one.

When they returned home, Lance built one last monument to his travel days and hung up his adventuring hat. It was time to spend more time with his family. Long past time.

And of course he and Layla could rock things a little closer to home too.

(So, I hadn’t *intended* for this to be Lance’s last vacation, but this one turned out to be just too weird. When I reset the town, the vacation destinations were reset as well. Not only are all Lance’s quests reset to the beginning, but there’s a young version of Layla wandering around in Egypt. Creepy…)

Simfail: Town Reboot

Jun13

Another tangent for technical gripes.

I replayed the three-birthday about eight times. The game kept freeze-crashing in the middle. The story in the post is the most amusing version, and also the only version where I got through all three birthday cakes, but it crashed before I could save. Antonio died at the party during about half the attempts.

Eventually, I got through the wretched birthday party day, but the game was still painfully unstable. After trying a bunch of things to fix corruption in the save file, I finally gave up. I used Twallan’s Porter mod to export the Samples and all the families with which they had significant relationships. Then I created a brand new copy of Sunset Valley, placed the exported house, and imported all the families. That seems to have stabilized things.

That means that starting about now, you’ll see references to the Bauers (Antonio’s widow and son), the Ursines, and the Williamses alongside a bunch of familiar Sunset Valley initial characters.

3.1 The Ghost-Traveler’s Wife

Jun13

Zahra was all grown up… and Cycl0n3 was in for a surprise.

Zahra and Cycl0n3 were both painfully awkward geeks, unlucky in friendship and unluckier in love. They had also known each other for all of Zahra’s life and almost all of Cycl0n3’s afterlife. In short, they understood each other, and neither of them was very used to being understood.

At least that was the case that Zahra made to him as she poured her feelings out in one great big torrent of words, peering at him with her too-serious green eyes. She wasn’t even afraid of rejection. The situation seemed so obvious to her that there was no way that he could *not* feel the same.

Cycl0n3, on the other hand, had literally changed Zahra’s diapers. When had everything changed while he was right there watching? Cycl0n3 never claimed to be an observant kind of guy. But he couldn’t deny their connection. It didn’t take Zahra long to bring him around.

It all moved so fast. Zahra so no reason to wait when she knew what she wanted.

She also had no need for approval from her family or any sort of fancy public display. Crowds made her nervous anyway.

“Till death do you part” seemed pretty meaningless here.

Just a few days ago, Cycl0n3 had completed what he thought was his greatest lifetime wish. Now he wondered if he might have been wishing for the wrong thing.

3.0 Passing the Torch to Zahra

Jun8

In due time, Zahra’s birthday came around. Along with Adjo and Shanni’s, all together in one big pile of aging up.

Layla threw a huge joint party for her beloved brood. Three birthday cakes were arrayed on the back lawn.

First Zahra.

Meanwhile, on the back patio, Layla’s dear Antonio Bauer, who was a little late to the event, decided to cash it in.

While Shanni had her moment to blow out the candles, half the guests were distracted by the arrival of Death behind her.

Antonio had no regrets in life, though he’d have been glad for more time. The sly dog left behind a young wife and a toddler, for heaven’s sake.

Shanni aged up surrounded only by close family.

Almost certainly NOT the look she’s going to stick with.

Death, having done his duty, stuck around to cheer Adjo on and get a slice of cake.

Now that she was of age, Lancelot passed the deeds to the family investments over to Zahra as his designated heir. His own life ambitions complete, he made ready to step to the sidelines.

After a wardrobe change, here we have…

Shanni.

Adjo.

(The first was his final look, but this pic has a great expression :).)

And our inheritor of the Sample line, Zahra, who decided to get a haircut. I do say, it looks good on her.