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LOVELY
ISLAND #1; #2; #3; #4; #5; #6; #7; #8; #9; #10; #11; #12; #13; #14; #15; #16; #17; #18; #19; #20; #21; #22; #23 Adopt-a-Family Journal --- Family #7 |
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Download Page for
the Herb Family |
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Scenario Meet the Herb family...Dill and Angelica Herb have recently moved into their dream home with their two children Cicely and Basil. The family have very little money left to furnish the place...Angelica is washing dishes for a living, and every time she comes home from work...Dill has sold another window or door....and now he's got a job as a pick pocket! Will this little family be able to rise above their financial difficulty, or will the walls of their 'Jericho' come tumbling down? |
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My Story (March 2007) |
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| NOTE: I had actually played the Herb family before the Seed family, but then I had to deal with my 83-year-old mother's fall and subsequent nursing needs for a couple of weeks before I could get back to my own computer. When I started to write their story, I looked for all the pictures I took before, that I'm sure I organized and stored, but I couldn't find them where I thought I had put them. So I deleted the lot and reinstalled it, starting over from scratch. Since I played it the second time through AFTER playing the Seed family, you'll see teen pictures of Sunflower Seed in this story. | |
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Reading through the scenario about the Herbs, one would think they are a totally dysfunctional family unit. However, I found them to be almost disgustingly normal and well-adjusted, except for Dill's outlandish career with a local crime syndicate, and except for one other thing that could significantly change the family's future, though it hasn't yet. |
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To begin with, I discovered that Dill is a wonderful father. When Basil was still just a toddler, Dill loved to get down on the floor with him and actually play with his little toddler toys with him. This is the first time I'd ever seen an adult Sim do this, so I was delighted with that aspect of Dill's personality, to say the least. Cicely is also a great older sister, who has always taken a great interest in playing with and caring for her younger brother Basil. As a whole, the family is very loving and caring. They are also very social. |
| Right from the get-go, the whole neighborhood seemed to squeeze itself into this barebones living room, and have a lot of fun doing it! One of the most interesting gatherings took place shortly before Basil grew out of the toddler stage, when Alec Gerard stopped by to visit. Obviously he was unaware of Dill's regular occupation...or was he trying to think of a way to arrest him without a search warrant? It's pretty obvious that the fruits of his labors weren't much on display here in this small household! | |
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| Angelica was still working in the fast food business even after Basil had gotten into elementary school. She was also working on her body skills, because early on she had been eating up a lot of her profits, and had gotten into rather a pear shape. Her boss had been nagging her about taking off some pounds, so as soon as she could afford it, she bought a stereo system. Immediately, the whole family began working out and dancing to their hearts' content. | |
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The family also made good use of the other skill-builders that began to appear in the living room as money became more available, since both Dill and Angelica were regularly advancing in their careers. |
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| The family's sociability has generally been a good thing. However, there is one drawback, and this is the problem I alluded to before. Dill seems to have an eye for the other ladies in the neighborhood, and for some reason, they seem to think his rather rough appearance is quite attractive, as well! In the photo at the left, he was in an advanced stage of flirting with Nicole Love. Angelica was at work, so she had no clue, but the kids aren't stupid...they noticed right away, and were NOT happy! Once Angelica returned home from work, though, things quickly got back to normal. | |
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| Another evening shortly thereafter, most of the neighborhood was again gathered in the Herb's living room, when Cicely quietly jumped right off the sofa into the life of a teenager, and a lovely one at that! She continues to be an A+ student, help out around the house, spend time with her family in all their varied activities, plus she's looking for a part-time job. Oh, yeah, and she also has a full-time boyfriend. Since then, Basil also has become an A+ teen, and he, too, is in love--with Emily Perry. | |
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At some point amid all that normalcy, Angelica decided to finally announce that her REAL lifetime aspiration is to reach the top of her...MUSIC career! Well, why didn't she tell me this EARLIER, for crying out loud? |
| It's not the easiest thing in the world to switch careers at a time in your life when your children are just choosing their own paths for their lives, but Angelica stood up for herself, and she is now on her way up the musical corporate ladder. | |
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| Since Angelica had taken a close look at what she wanted from life, Dill decided to do the same. As it turns out, he wasn't really interested in a life of crime after all, so in light of the fact that the family has two friends who are policemen, he also decided to change his career path. Unfortunately, it wasn't quite as easy for him, as job in the gaming field don't seem to be as easy to come by as those in the music field. The first day he was unemployed, Dill started hitting on Poppy Seed, who was receptive for a while, though she soon decided holding hands with a married man really wasn't worth her time. | |
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The morning of his second day unemployed, Dill took in the paper and settled in to check out the available jobs again. Yes! Finally! He applied for, and was accepted as the newest career gamer in the neighborhood (succeeding Sunflower Seed in that position). His job was to start the next morning at 9:00. |
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With that load off his mind, Dill saw the kids off to school. As the bus pulled away from the curb, a pretty young Townie walked by, who was immediately attracted to Dill. Though the mailman interrupted their conversation, she stuck around, and before long, she was monopolizing Dill's time, and he was loving it. |
| This is where I left the Herbs, and this is why I wonder what will happen to the seemingly close family in the future. Even though Dill and Angelica have embarked on more "normal" careers that could really cause them great contentment in their elder years, I somehow get this feeling that those years may not be spent together. What do you think? | |
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TUTORIAL NOTE: When winter
hit, something strange happened to Angelica and Dill Herb. They had
been upstairs on their bed after a bit of relaxing. I was playing
the kids, downstairs, when suddenly both adults came running
downstairs, heading for the bathtub. It only took a second for me to
realize that they were both freezing. They had enough money for me
to quickly add an extra counter and a cocoa machine to their kitchen
arrangement, and soon both of them were warm and comfy again, though
still parading around in their underwear. At first I couldn't figure out why this had happened, since they were INDOORS and protected by by a roof, at the time! Since I had taken a close-up picture of their cuddling time, I knew that it was NOT snowing inside their room, either. So...what went wrong? It was the way the roof was made. This was a pre-made Maxis house, by the way--not one made especially for this family. You'll find this type of roof in nearly every pre-made house in the pre-made neighborhoods, so beware of them when you are playing Seasons with those houses! In the first two pictures below, you can see that the main roof was made in one piece, then the dormers were fitted in. This means that the walls at either end of the long, main roof were not true walls. Thus that rectangle was not truly closed. Even though the roof covered the whole house and it could not snow inside the upper rooms (see the third shot), technically, the rooms were still "outside," due to not actually being an enclosed rectangle of real walls. |
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| The answer was to take off that main rectangle's roof, leaving the dormers in place, which also removed the end "walls." Then, while Dill and Angelica cavorted wildly in the kitchen in their underwear, I replaced the end walls (see the picture below) with full walls, completing the second story correctly. | |
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| Then I used several different roof tools to re-roof the house--only slightly differently than the original. Now it's ready to take on all the seasons--including the misty, rainy spring shown in the final picture below. | |
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