Tag: simblr

Screams, bees, and sleep 

The evening sets and I hear a scream. It’s a sim, in a battle to the death with a carnivorous plant. I manage to save him, and keep going, my bag heavier with the gifts he gave me as thanks. 

By then it’s almost night. I decide to set camp, but not before digging around for potential treasure. Finally, unbothered by the swarm of bees around, I eat my cheese sandwich of a dinner, and crawl into my tent to sleep like a brick.

Another very safe day in the jungle.

Pedestals and Broken Planes

I can never get enough of my omiscan adventures. Weird-looking gates, bridges above crevasses, old crashed planes, and dancing around an ancient pedestal so that no trap crushes me when I reach for its treasure.

And of course, some chests to rummage through to find a relic or two. Also, gathering all the avocados I see.

Not only does this allow me no time to let the sadness take over me, this is genuinely what I like doing best.

Back Home Again

The weather in the jungle is impossibly steamy. Even for me, who truly enjoys the warmer possible weathers, it feels like I’m cooking. So I don’t linger in my bungalow and head straight to the bar in the town center. If I’m gonna burn, I’ll do it with a fresh drink in hand!

When I exit the jungle, I’m hit by how truly stunning the warm sunlight looks, casting its rays on this place, and I linger a little bit outside, playing chess against myself by the fountain.

Easier

Finally one day I wake up, and I feel ready. Ready to clean up the piles of clothes on the floor, ready to finish that honey cake with a smile on my face, ready to work on what I love again. It’s not easy, but I make it through that day, and I know I’ll make it through the next, too.

Before going to bed that night, on a whim, I take a plane ticket to Selvadorada.

Together

Summer rolls around with its first holiday, Music Day. I’m in absolutely no mood to celebrate, but when my entire family rolls around with smiles and hugs, I feel that part of the immense weight lifts off of me. It’s been a little while since I laughed, and it feels good to toast in Gram’s memory. At the end of the day we all feel warmer, and it doesn’t have much to do with either the arrival of summer or the campfire we build.

The first days are the hardest

I don’t sleep well, and my reclaimed bedroom is getting messier by the day. I haven’t even been picking up my laundry off the ground. Let it pile up.

Gram’s last floral arrangement still sits on the living room table, fresh and in bloom. I have no inclination for gardening, no knowledge of how to make another one. I know once this one has wilted, there will be no other one. And when I pull a slice of the honey cake Gram had baked, there’s no meowing at my feet requesting that I “accidentally” drop a bite.

I hate this.

After the Speech

People trickle out of the temple, hugging each other and trying to offer the last of their kind words.

My ex-colleague, Evan, tries to go in for what he thinks is a comforting hug. But to me it feels like one in a long list of attempts to get closer to me, to bond, to create something where there is nothing. And this is the worst possible moment.

Mom and the two weird women hang around for a while, but I don’t pay attention to what they say.

And pretty soon, I’m all alone.

Last Farewells to Gram

It’s the day of her funeral and Mom made sure we would send her off properly, with color and flowers, just like she would have wanted, just as she lived.

Mom is too shaken up to give the eulogy, so I step up to the altar for her. And I speak about Gram, about how important she was to me, to Noland and Miranda, to mom, to my grandmothers, including grandma Justine, who she adopted as her own daughter. 

I remind everybody how she selflessly raised not only her own children but her two youngest sisters, on her own, when great-great-grandmother Ariana died.

The people who knew her best came today, including Mom’s childhood friends Marie, and Charlotte and Shanna, with their youngest kid. And some people in the back, two strange women I don’t recognize and who look incredibly snob. But Mom says they belong here.