Thanks to a generous gift from her friend Elwood Riedmayer, Rivka had a little extra money around. As soon as the check cleared the bank she was on the phone with the adoption service. Not long after she received an adoptive placement of four siblings--two sets of fraternal twins!
The older pair were named Gretchen and Jeannie. Gretchen had red hair and green eyes.
Jeannie had brown hair and green eyes. Rivka couldn't help but think Jeannie looked a little bit like herself as a child, except Rivka's eyes were brown.
The second pair were Gavin and Theresa. Gavin had red hair and green eyes like Gretchen.
Theresa shared red hair with two of her older siblings, but was unique in having brown eyes.
Rivka soon realized that, getting on in years as she was, she might not be around long enough to see her children safely to adulthood. So she invited over her good friend Melanie Tse and asked if she would like to move in. Shockingly, Melanie agreed. (Later, Rivka would learn that Melanie herself had been raised in the foster system and thus felt for children without families.) Melanie brought a little money with her and they were able to lay the foundations for a new house to replace the flimsy shelter Rivka had erected. Melanie got a job as a record store clerk to help pay the bills; Rivka quit her dead-end job to stay home with the children.
Rivka's predictions about her longevity proved sadly correct. She passed on while all of her children were still in elementary school--just collapsed in the yard one day while birdwatching. Melanie organized a simple funeral and did the best she could to console the children.
Melanie became the children's legal guardian but never actually adopted them herself. She also never encouraged them to call her "Mom," emphasizing that Rivka was their mother. So they called her "Auntie Melanie."Despite this, Melanie essentially was a mother to the Dejackome children in the ensuing months and years. She helped them with homework...
...and she made them pancakes for breakfast sometimes.
Of course, the children did have to work through some trauma, considering they had barely left the orphanage when their kindly adoptive mother died. However, they were soon acting like happy, well-adjusted kids.
Melanie did occasionally let them get away with stuff she might not have otherwise, figuring that if they were happy it was okay to wear out the box springs a little bit.
Rivka had carried a fairly large insurance policy, so Melanie was able to pay for some improvements around the property. Of course, the first thing she did was put a protective fence around Rivka's grave and plant some flowers to pretty it up a bit.
Melanie was also able to improve the look of the interior of the house--three bedrooms, one bathroom, a well-appointed kitchen and dining room, and a living room with plenty of space for guests. (The Dejackome house is a rough model of a house in one of the novels I'm working on, so it's not necessarily well laid-out for Sim life. It works okay for the Dejackomes, though.)
Outside, Melanie planted some flowering shrubs to make the little gray house look more cheerful.Altogether, it was a pretty good week for the Dejackomes. Much better than Week One. Though the pictures don't reflect it, Rivka was actually very close to all her children despite the short time she got to spend with them. The reason she died in platinum was that as each child was adopted she rolled a want to be friends with that child, so I made sure she became friends. Then she'd roll a want to be best friends and I'd try to fulfill that too. (In case you didn't figure it out, I made up the stuff about the kids all being siblings, just like I did with the Whitfill kids. They looked so much alike it was an easy imaginative leap.)A nice side effect of this was that the kids got quite a lot of life insurance money when she died. Combined with Melanie's income, that money enabled them to live pretty comfortably.Melanie will probably die a spinster. She's a knowledge Sim (with a lifetime want to reach the top of the Gaming career), so she probably won't mind.
Rivka Dejackome's first few years in her new home were extremely difficult. She was trying to save up enough money to adopt some children, so she refrained from building herself a house. She slept under the stars and went to the gym in the nearby village whenever she needed a bath. Meanwhile, she got a job as a playground monitor, but lost it due to poor performance. (When you're an old woman, sleeping under the stars is not cool. It's just uncomfortable and therefore makes you cranky.) Since she was surviving off the free lunches provided for her at work, and since she still had not saved up enough money to adopt, she got another job right away--she doesn't remember what. It was just a job. Unfortunately, an unlucky chance caused
her to lose that job as well.
This time of her life was not all glum, however. Rivka made some new friends, such as her neighbor Larita Whitfill and a lovely young lady from the nearby college named Melanie Tse. One day, Rivka woke up from an uncomfortable nap on the grass to find that Melanie had caught dozens of fireflies in jars and lined them up along the sidewalk--it was a beautiful and heartening sight.
After she lost her second job and before she started at her third, Rivka broke down and had a meal at a restaurant...it so happened that the cheapest thing on the menu was chocolate cake. Rivka didn't mind making a meal out of that.
Not long afterwards, Rivka's resistance to spending her meager savings broke down entirely and she paid for the construction of a tiny shelter. She purchased a bed, a fridge, a toilet, and a shower. It was enough to provide for her needs, for which she was thankful, but now her savings were entirely gone and she still had not fulfilled her lifelong dream of becoming a mother. The first week with Rivka was rough and stressful for me to play, and there was nothing I could do about it because I'd set the precedent by playing the Kules for an entire week. Fortunately, by the time I played Rivka again, things were looking much brighter for her. But that will have to wait for the next installment.
Disclaimer: I am not affiliated in any way with EA Games, nor am I being compensated for my efforts. I just like the game.
Note: I am going to be writing part of this "in character" and then part of it not in character. I will indicate that by differences in text color.
Rivka Dejackome has always tried to do the right thing and make people happy. She married young. She was a good, loyal wife. The only thing she couldn't do was give her husband children, and he wouldn't adopt because he wanted to pass on his genes. Pass on his genes he did, over the years, though none of his many children shared his surname.
Then he died, and rather than being a dutiful wife and pining away, Rivka gathered up her savings and bought a parcel of land in Prosperity Plains. She hopes to be able to finally adopt children and have someone who loves her unconditionally, but financial strain and her own deteriorating health might crush her dreams yet again.
I got Rivka's name from a random name generator, and I love it. It really helped me develop her personality for some reason. (She's very sociable, but has depths she doesn't really reveal to anyone and a hidden reserve of spunk.)
She's Family aspiration and a Cancer (very balanced overall, but a little shy). Her lifetime want is to have 6 grandchildren. That'll happen if everything works out the way I hope, but not until long after she's dead, sadly. I'll have to name one of her grandchildren after her so I don't lose that awesome name.
In my head, I pronounce Rivka with short vowels and a slightly gutteral k. Her last name I pronounce Dee-jah-comb or Dee-zhah-comb. I toyed with having it be Dee-zhah-comb-eh, which sounded vaguely French, but gave up on that in favor of the simpler pronunciation.
Her property is on the west side of town and is called Dejackome Place. P.S. After I created her, I was reading the forums associated with this challenge and realized I could have rerolled this family, since it had only elders. But now I like Rivka and Larita (who you'll meet in a later post) too much to roll them away.
The older pair were named Gretchen and Jeannie. Gretchen had red hair and green eyes.
Jeannie had brown hair and green eyes. Rivka couldn't help but think Jeannie looked a little bit like herself as a child, except Rivka's eyes were brown.
The second pair were Gavin and Theresa. Gavin had red hair and green eyes like Gretchen.
Theresa shared red hair with two of her older siblings, but was unique in having brown eyes.
Rivka soon realized that, getting on in years as she was, she might not be around long enough to see her children safely to adulthood. So she invited over her good friend Melanie Tse and asked if she would like to move in. Shockingly, Melanie agreed. (Later, Rivka would learn that Melanie herself had been raised in the foster system and thus felt for children without families.) Melanie brought a little money with her and they were able to lay the foundations for a new house to replace the flimsy shelter Rivka had erected. Melanie got a job as a record store clerk to help pay the bills; Rivka quit her dead-end job to stay home with the children.
Rivka's predictions about her longevity proved sadly correct. She passed on while all of her children were still in elementary school--just collapsed in the yard one day while birdwatching. Melanie organized a simple funeral and did the best she could to console the children.
Melanie became the children's legal guardian but never actually adopted them herself. She also never encouraged them to call her "Mom," emphasizing that Rivka was their mother. So they called her "Auntie Melanie."
...and she made them pancakes for breakfast sometimes.
Of course, the children did have to work through some trauma, considering they had barely left the orphanage when their kindly adoptive mother died. However, they were soon acting like happy, well-adjusted kids.
Melanie did occasionally let them get away with stuff she might not have otherwise, figuring that if they were happy it was okay to wear out the box springs a little bit.
Rivka had carried a fairly large insurance policy, so Melanie was able to pay for some improvements around the property. Of course, the first thing she did was put a protective fence around Rivka's grave and plant some flowers to pretty it up a bit.
Melanie was also able to improve the look of the interior of the house--three bedrooms, one bathroom, a well-appointed kitchen and dining room, and a living room with plenty of space for guests. (The Dejackome house is a rough model of a house in one of the novels I'm working on, so it's not necessarily well laid-out for Sim life. It works okay for the Dejackomes, though.)
Outside, Melanie planted some flowering shrubs to make the little gray house look more cheerful.
