Banovelmouth, chapter 5: Alone (Part Two)
A few days after Satellite Ears and Regina got married, I got a phone call from Not a blue woman. He invited me over to his house. I accepted his invitation, and walked over there.
I rang the doorbell, and Valerie answered the door.
“Hi, Bananamouth!” said Valerie. “It’s nice to see you again! Come on in!”
I entered the house. “It’s nice to see you too, Valerie,” I said. “You and Not a blue woman must be very busy with Reuil.”
“Oh, we sure are,” said Valerie. “We hardly get any sleep anymore. But it’s all worth it!”
“I guess you can hire nannies to babysit for you sometimes,” I said.
“We’ve done that a couple of times,” said Valerie. “But the other day, our nanny peed on the floor! So we fired her.”
“That’s terrible!” I said. “By the way, where’s Not a blue woman?”
“He was out in the backyard changing the baby the last time I saw him,” said Valerie. “He should still be out there, I suppose.”
I went outside to the backyard. Not a blue woman was standing there, holding the baby. Reuil had grown quite a bit bigger since I had last seen him.
“Hi, Bananamouth!” said Not a blue woman. “How have you been?”
“I’ve been great!” I said. “Let me know if you want any help with the baby. Would you like me to help play with him, or feed him, or anything?”
“Well, come to think of it, you could give Reuil a bath now, if you’d like to help.” Not a blue woman handed the baby to me.
“That’s a good idea,” I said. “I can bathe the baby, while you chase off that teenager who’s behind you and is about to steal your gnome.”
“Wha --- HEY!” Not a blue woman yelled. He turned around and chased off a scared-looking blond teenage boy who had been standing near the gnome sculpture in the backyard. “You measly rotten gnome-stealing thieving scum, you! If I ever catch you anywhere near my property ever again, I’ll trap you here, build a wall around you, put a flame machine inside the wall, and set you on FIRE!”
I went inside with Reuil, hoping he hadn’t been scared by the gnome incident, but he looked pretty unfazed. I brought him to the kitchen sink, removed his diaper, and gave him a bath. I then dried him off and put the diaper back on.
I walked into the living room holding Reuil. Valerie was sitting on the living room couch.
“What should I do with Reuil now?” I asked Valerie. “Does he need to be fed now, or put to bed, or anything?”
Valerie said, “I think he's fine now. I don’t think he needs anything at the moment. You can hold him a while longer if you wish.”
“Is Not a blue woman okay?” I asked. “He seemed rather angry.”
“Oh, he gets so upset over that stupid gnome sometimes,” sighed Valerie. “I have half a mind to just get rid of the damn thing when he’s not looking.”
“Oh, is that all,” I said, trying not to laugh. I played with baby Reuil for a while, tossing him in the air and cuddling him. Then I handed him to Valerie.
Not a blue woman came inside. “Sorry about that,” he said.
“It was nice visiting you guys and helping out with the baby,” I said, “but it’s getting kind of late in the day, so I think I should go back home now.
“Okay,” said Not a blue woman. “Thanks for coming over and helping with Reuil.”
“You’re welcome, Not a blue woman,” I said. “If you ever need any more help with the baby, just let me know.”
I gradually got used to living in a house by myself. I came to welcome the relative lack of distractions. It was quite nice to be able to watch whatever TV show I wanted, and turn on the radio without worrying about waking up Not a blue woman while he napped on the couch, or being able to study or read novels for long periods of time without one of my brothers begging me to play Red Hands with them because they were bored.
I did very well in my job as a field researcher. One day, I got a phone call from my boss. He told me to report to his office at SimLabs the next day. When I went into his office the next day, I was really worried. I thought maybe he was about to fire me or demote me, but I was wrong! He informed me that I’d been promoted to the position of Science Teacher!
“Bananamouth,” my boss said to me, “now you’ll be working in the local high school, so you won’t be coming to SimLabs. Do you know where the high school is?”
“No, I don’t, actually,” I said.
“Don’t worry about it,” said my boss. “Dana, your new carpool driver, will pick you up at your house and take you to the high school. She drives a red car, so look out for her. She’ll pick you up at 8 o’clock every morning.”
“What will my new working hours be?” I asked my boss.
“9 in the morning until 3 in the afternoon, every weekday, and you will get the weekends off,” he answered.
“That sounds good,” I said.
“I won’t be your boss anymore,” he said. “Your new boss will be the high school principal. It was nice working with you, Bananamouth. You’ve been a good employee.”
Being a high school science teacher was quite hectic. I was hardly prepared for a lot of the things that I encountered in that high school! The students wouldn’t always listen to me. It was really hard to get them to behave sometimes - well, most of the time, actually. And they didn’t always understand how to do experiments properly, so sometimes they would make the worst messes in the school science lab. I could usually get them to clean up any messes that they made in the lab, but sometimes they didn’t have any time to clean up because they had to rush off to their next class, and so I got stuck with cleaning up after them. Oh well, I guess they couldn’t really be blamed for wanting to rush off and not be late for their next class.
I can’t say I really enjoyed being a science teacher, but at least it was quite a well-paying job. I was always glad when it was time to go home. The high school students got out in the early afternoon every day, but I had to stay later and clean up lab messes and grade science papers and work on the students’ report cards. When I got home, sometimes I’d go straight into bed. Sometimes I’d phone Satellite Ears or Not a blue woman, or one of the people that I’d met around town. Sometimes I would study cleaning so that I could get better at cleaning the school lab messes, or I’d practice chess in the hopes of gaining more intelligence so that I’d get a better job someday. Sometimes I’d watch TV for a while, or turn on the radio and dance.
Satellite Ears phoned me one day when I had just come home from another day at work.
“Hi, Bananamouth,” he said. “I have some great news to tell you!”
“Oh, good,” I said. “What is it?”
“Regina’s pregnant!” said Satellite Ears.
“Hooray!” I said. “I hope that it won’t be a difficult pregnancy.”
“Oh, I’m sure she can pull through, “said Satellite Ears. “We decided to turn that extra upstairs room into the baby’s room. We put a green alien-themed crib in there, and a blue and white changing table.”
“I admire you,” I said. “I don’t think I’d have the patience to look after a baby full-time.”
“Well, it’s always worth it,” said Satellite Ears.
“Yes, Valerie was saying that to me once,” I said.
“So, how have you been? What’s it like being a science teacher?”
“It’s not always that bad,” I said, “but it can get really annoying sometimes. There’s this student I had named Edward Fuchs. He never did any schoolwork properly, and never did his homework, either. And he never did what he was told to do in class. Mostly he sat around in the back of the classroom bragging to his friends about how many gnomes he’d stolen the night before.”
“Oh my goodness!” said Satellite Ears.
“Eventually, he got sent to the principal’s office so many times that he got kicked out of school,” I said.
“Oh dear,” said Satellite Ears. “He sounds like a real troublemaker.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Thank goodness I don’t have to deal with him anymore. So, how’s med school going?”
“It’s going really well, actually,” said Satellite Ears. “I’m progressing well, and learning a lot. It’s still hard to find time to do things. Hopefully I’ll be able to handle a new baby and all my studies at med school and my paramedic job.”
“I’m sure you’ll manage,” I said.
“Well, I have to go clean the toilet now,” said Satellite Ears. “Goodbye, Bananamouth.”
“See you later,” I said.
I phoned Not a blue woman one day.
“Not a blue woman,” I said, “I’m having some trouble keeping my house clean, and I don’t know what to do. I’ve become rather skilled at cleaning up messes in the lab, so I guess I just get tired of all that cleaning when I come back to my own house. I guess I just can’t always be bothered to clean up all the chip bags that I leave around, or clean up after leaky showers and such. I guess when I lived with you guys, you did most of the cleaning, now that I think of it.”
“Well,” said Not a blue woman, “I can think of a few things that you can do about it. You can hire a maid, for one. Valerie and I have a maid. With all the rushing around that we have to do while taking care of the baby, we don’t always have time to get everything in the house clean.”
“That sounds like a good idea,” I said. “And I think I could afford it.”
“Another thing you can do,” said Not a blue woman, “is get yourself an indoor garbage can, if you don’t have one already. Then you won’t have to go all the way out to the garbage can on the front lawn to throw stuff away.”
“Oh, that’s a great idea!” I said. “Now why on earth did I not think of that myself?”
“The only drawback is that you do have to take out the trash to the outdoor garbage can once in a while,” said Not a blue woman. “But yeah, having an indoor garbage can is very convenient, and well worth it. Besides, if you get both a maid and an indoor trash can, the maid will often take out the garbage if it’s full.”
“Thanks very much for all of your suggestions, Not a blue woman,” I said. “By the way, how is Reuil doing?”
“He’s doing really well,” said Not a blue woman. “He’s getting bigger, and I think he’ll be ready to learn to walk soon.”
“That’s great!” I said. “Well, I think I’ll follow your advice about getting a maid and an indoor trash can. Thanks again, Not a blue woman!”
“You’re welcome, Bananamouth,” said Not a blue woman.
I phoned the number for maid service right away. The guy who answered the phone said that the maid would come over to my house every day starting the next morning, and that it would cost 40 simoleons per day for the service. I thanked the guy and hung up the phone. Then I bought an indoor garbage can. It was a small inexpensive metal can. I put it in the living room.
The next day, as I got into the red carpool car and went off to work, I saw a white and pink van pull up to my house, and someone came out. I figured that it was the maid. When I got home from work, I went inside my house. There was a man cleaning the bathroom floor. He had short brown hair, and was wearing a blue shirt with rolled-up sleeves, blue gloves, black pants, and black shoes with blue designs on them.
“Hello,” said the man. “My name is Remington Harris, and I’m your new maid.”
“Hi there,” I said. “Thank you for cleaning my house. It looks so much better now!”
“You’re welcome,” said the maid. “I’m almost finished in here.” He finished cleaning the bathroom floor. Then the pink and white van came back, and he got into it and it drove away.
I decided to phone Not a blue woman again a few days later.
“Hi, Not a blue woman,” I said.
“Hi, Bananamouth!” said Not a blue woman. “How have you been?”
“I hired a maid and got an indoor garbage can, like you suggested,” I said. “My house has been so much cleaner ever since!”
“That’s great!” said Not a blue woman.
“I would just like to thank you again for suggesting those things to me,” I said.
“Hey, any time,” said Not a blue woman. “Oh, by the way, guess what?”
“Hmm, I don’t know,” I said. “What?”
“The other day, I asked Valerie to marry me, and she said yes!”
“That’s fabulous!” I said. “Do you have any idea when you guys are going to get married?”
“Well, I don’t think it’ll be too soon,” Not a blue woman replied. “We do have a lot of work to do, and we’re busy with Reuil. We figured we’d get married in a little while when Reuil is a little bit older.”
“That sounds like a good idea,” I said.
“I guess we don’t really have to have a big fancy wedding. I heard that we can even get married if there’s nobody else around. Just the two of us, at home, as long as I have the wedding ring to give to her.”
“Oh, I guess that’s right,” I said. “But wouldn’t you rather have a big fancy wedding party?”
“I don’t know,” said Not a blue woman. “A wedding with just me and Valerie and without any sort of really big party would definitely be much easier, and I think that it would be more convenient for us, with a young child and all. Besides, it wouldn’t require any extensive planning.”
I was a bit disappointed, but I just played along and said, “Good idea.”
“Or, another thing I could do, is that I could marry Valerie in the simple way, by just giving her the ring, but I could invite you and Satellite Ears and Regina over to watch us. And we could all have some wine or dance to the DJ machine or play Red hands after.”
I thought that sounded like a really good idea, so I said, “Oh, that sounds great!”
“Yes, I think that might be the best idea,” said Not a blue woman. “By the way, did you hear that Regina is pregnant now?”
“Yes!” I said. “Satellite Ears phoned me last week with the news.”
“I wonder if I should go ahead and marry Valerie while Regina is still pregnant, or if I should wait until her baby is born,” said Not a blue woman. “If I have the wedding too late in her pregnancy, she might not be able to come.”
“Well, what you could do is phone Satellite Ears and Regina and see what they think of all of these wedding ideas of yours,” I suggested.
“I think I’ll do that,” Not a blue woman said. “That’s a good suggestion.” Then he said, “Oh dear, I have to go now. Reuil just threw up on the floor.”
“Oh no!” I said. “Well, I’ll see you later, Not a blue woman.”
“Bye now.”
A very scary incident happened one day.
I came home from my job as a high school science teacher, and I wanted to make dinner. I thought I was a reasonably good cook, so for dinner that day I decided to make a meal that was a little more complicated than the dinners that I usually made.
“Today is the day that I make lobster thermidor!” I said to myself. I gathered together the lobster, cheese, fish, shallots, cream, mustard, wine, lemon juice, and spices that I needed to make the lobster thermidor. I cut up the lobster, and then I made the sauce. Everything was going very well until I tried actually cooking the lobster. Suddenly, huge flames appeared all over the stove!
I was really, really scared! Luckily, there was a smoke alarm in the kitchen, near the stove. The smoke alarm is so high-tech that it can detect smoke and contact the local fire department right away when smoke has been detected.
A fire truck soon stopped on the street outside of my house. A fireman came inside, and found me panicking in front of the burning stove. He sprayed the hose with a stove.
“There, the fire’s been put out,” the fireman said. “Please be more careful next time.”
“I’ll try to be more careful,” I said.
After the fireman had gone away, I got the lobster thermidor. It was very burnt, but I did not want to waste it, so I just went ahead and ate it anyway. I felt sad that I’d burned it, but I resolved to cook less dangerous foods until I felt I was really ready to have a crack at making lobster thermidor again.
On one of my days off, the phone rang.
“Hello, Bananamouth here,” I said.
“Hi, Bananamouth, it’s Not a blue woman.”
“Hi, Not a blue woman!” I said. “It’s nice to hear from you. How are things going?”
“Quite good,” said Not a blue woman. “I wanted to tell you that Valerie and I are thinking of getting married tonight, and I’d like to invite you over.”
“Oh, good!” I said. “I’ll be there tonight. Will anyone else be there?”
“I’m planning to ask Satellite Ears over too,” said Not a blue woman. “Regina’s going to be having her baby relatively soon, so she has to stay home, but she’s okay with that.”
“Okay,” I said. “What time should I come over tonight?”
“About 8 o’clock would be good,” said Not a blue woman.
“Okay, see you then,” I said. “Goodbye.”
I arrived at Not a blue woman’s house at a few minutes before 8 that night. Not a blue woman answered the door, and invited me in.
“Hi, Bananamouth!” said Not a blue woman. “Welcome!”
I walked into the living room. Valerie was sitting on the couch. “Is Satellite Ears here?” I asked.
“He’s out in the backyard playing with Reuil,” said Not a blue woman. “I’ll go out there and ask him to come over here.” Not a blue woman went outside, and returned soon after with Satellite Ears. Satellite Ears was holding Reuil. He put Reuil down on the living room floor.
“Is everybody ready now?” asked Valerie.
“Yes!” said me and Satellite Ears.
“I sure am!” said Not a blue woman. He went over to Valerie, and put a ring on her finger, and they hugged and kissed. Satellite Ears and I cheered.
“So, I guess your name will be Valerie Goodman now,” said Satellite Ears.
“Yes indeed,” said Valerie.
Not a blue woman ordered some pizza, and when it came, we each took a slice (except for Reuil, who was perfectly content with his bottle of milk.) We sat at the dinner table and talked about all sorts of things. I told everyone about my lobster thermidor incident. Not a blue woman reassured me, and said that it was a very difficult thing to make, and that he hasn’t even tried to make it yet even though he’s very good at cooking. I felt a bit better. Satellite Ears talked a bit about the beach that he and Regina had gone to for their honeymoon, and the fancy hotel that they’d stayed at. We were all saying that we wondered when Satellite Ears and Regina’s baby would be born, and whether it would be a boy or a girl.
After we finished supper, we danced to the radio for a while, and then we went home.
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The next morning before I left for work, I got a phone call. “This is unusual,” I thought. “I don’t get phone calls at this time of day very often. I wonder who it could be.”
I picked up the phone. “Hello,” I said.
“Bananamouth!” It was Satellite Ears’s voice on the other end of the line. “I have some great news! Regina had her baby last night after I got home from Not a blue woman’s house!”
“Wow!” I said. “Is it a boy or a girl?”
“It’s a girl,” said Satellite Ears. “We decided to name her Nora. She was born at 11:47 last night.”
“Congratulations!” I said. “If you ever need any help with the baby, just let me know.”
“Okay, we will,” said Satellite Ears. “Thanks.”
I rang the doorbell, and Valerie answered the door.
“Hi, Bananamouth!” said Valerie. “It’s nice to see you again! Come on in!”
I entered the house. “It’s nice to see you too, Valerie,” I said. “You and Not a blue woman must be very busy with Reuil.”
“Oh, we sure are,” said Valerie. “We hardly get any sleep anymore. But it’s all worth it!”
“I guess you can hire nannies to babysit for you sometimes,” I said.
“We’ve done that a couple of times,” said Valerie. “But the other day, our nanny peed on the floor! So we fired her.”
“That’s terrible!” I said. “By the way, where’s Not a blue woman?”
“He was out in the backyard changing the baby the last time I saw him,” said Valerie. “He should still be out there, I suppose.”
I went outside to the backyard. Not a blue woman was standing there, holding the baby. Reuil had grown quite a bit bigger since I had last seen him.
“Hi, Bananamouth!” said Not a blue woman. “How have you been?”
“I’ve been great!” I said. “Let me know if you want any help with the baby. Would you like me to help play with him, or feed him, or anything?”
“Well, come to think of it, you could give Reuil a bath now, if you’d like to help.” Not a blue woman handed the baby to me.
“That’s a good idea,” I said. “I can bathe the baby, while you chase off that teenager who’s behind you and is about to steal your gnome.”
“Wha --- HEY!” Not a blue woman yelled. He turned around and chased off a scared-looking blond teenage boy who had been standing near the gnome sculpture in the backyard. “You measly rotten gnome-stealing thieving scum, you! If I ever catch you anywhere near my property ever again, I’ll trap you here, build a wall around you, put a flame machine inside the wall, and set you on FIRE!”
I went inside with Reuil, hoping he hadn’t been scared by the gnome incident, but he looked pretty unfazed. I brought him to the kitchen sink, removed his diaper, and gave him a bath. I then dried him off and put the diaper back on.
I walked into the living room holding Reuil. Valerie was sitting on the living room couch.
“What should I do with Reuil now?” I asked Valerie. “Does he need to be fed now, or put to bed, or anything?”
Valerie said, “I think he's fine now. I don’t think he needs anything at the moment. You can hold him a while longer if you wish.”
“Is Not a blue woman okay?” I asked. “He seemed rather angry.”
“Oh, he gets so upset over that stupid gnome sometimes,” sighed Valerie. “I have half a mind to just get rid of the damn thing when he’s not looking.”
“Oh, is that all,” I said, trying not to laugh. I played with baby Reuil for a while, tossing him in the air and cuddling him. Then I handed him to Valerie.
Not a blue woman came inside. “Sorry about that,” he said.
“It was nice visiting you guys and helping out with the baby,” I said, “but it’s getting kind of late in the day, so I think I should go back home now.
“Okay,” said Not a blue woman. “Thanks for coming over and helping with Reuil.”
“You’re welcome, Not a blue woman,” I said. “If you ever need any more help with the baby, just let me know.”
I gradually got used to living in a house by myself. I came to welcome the relative lack of distractions. It was quite nice to be able to watch whatever TV show I wanted, and turn on the radio without worrying about waking up Not a blue woman while he napped on the couch, or being able to study or read novels for long periods of time without one of my brothers begging me to play Red Hands with them because they were bored.
I did very well in my job as a field researcher. One day, I got a phone call from my boss. He told me to report to his office at SimLabs the next day. When I went into his office the next day, I was really worried. I thought maybe he was about to fire me or demote me, but I was wrong! He informed me that I’d been promoted to the position of Science Teacher!
“Bananamouth,” my boss said to me, “now you’ll be working in the local high school, so you won’t be coming to SimLabs. Do you know where the high school is?”
“No, I don’t, actually,” I said.
“Don’t worry about it,” said my boss. “Dana, your new carpool driver, will pick you up at your house and take you to the high school. She drives a red car, so look out for her. She’ll pick you up at 8 o’clock every morning.”
“What will my new working hours be?” I asked my boss.
“9 in the morning until 3 in the afternoon, every weekday, and you will get the weekends off,” he answered.
“That sounds good,” I said.
“I won’t be your boss anymore,” he said. “Your new boss will be the high school principal. It was nice working with you, Bananamouth. You’ve been a good employee.”
Being a high school science teacher was quite hectic. I was hardly prepared for a lot of the things that I encountered in that high school! The students wouldn’t always listen to me. It was really hard to get them to behave sometimes - well, most of the time, actually. And they didn’t always understand how to do experiments properly, so sometimes they would make the worst messes in the school science lab. I could usually get them to clean up any messes that they made in the lab, but sometimes they didn’t have any time to clean up because they had to rush off to their next class, and so I got stuck with cleaning up after them. Oh well, I guess they couldn’t really be blamed for wanting to rush off and not be late for their next class.
I can’t say I really enjoyed being a science teacher, but at least it was quite a well-paying job. I was always glad when it was time to go home. The high school students got out in the early afternoon every day, but I had to stay later and clean up lab messes and grade science papers and work on the students’ report cards. When I got home, sometimes I’d go straight into bed. Sometimes I’d phone Satellite Ears or Not a blue woman, or one of the people that I’d met around town. Sometimes I would study cleaning so that I could get better at cleaning the school lab messes, or I’d practice chess in the hopes of gaining more intelligence so that I’d get a better job someday. Sometimes I’d watch TV for a while, or turn on the radio and dance.
Satellite Ears phoned me one day when I had just come home from another day at work.
“Hi, Bananamouth,” he said. “I have some great news to tell you!”
“Oh, good,” I said. “What is it?”
“Regina’s pregnant!” said Satellite Ears.
“Hooray!” I said. “I hope that it won’t be a difficult pregnancy.”
“Oh, I’m sure she can pull through, “said Satellite Ears. “We decided to turn that extra upstairs room into the baby’s room. We put a green alien-themed crib in there, and a blue and white changing table.”
“I admire you,” I said. “I don’t think I’d have the patience to look after a baby full-time.”
“Well, it’s always worth it,” said Satellite Ears.
“Yes, Valerie was saying that to me once,” I said.
“So, how have you been? What’s it like being a science teacher?”
“It’s not always that bad,” I said, “but it can get really annoying sometimes. There’s this student I had named Edward Fuchs. He never did any schoolwork properly, and never did his homework, either. And he never did what he was told to do in class. Mostly he sat around in the back of the classroom bragging to his friends about how many gnomes he’d stolen the night before.”
“Oh my goodness!” said Satellite Ears.
“Eventually, he got sent to the principal’s office so many times that he got kicked out of school,” I said.
“Oh dear,” said Satellite Ears. “He sounds like a real troublemaker.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Thank goodness I don’t have to deal with him anymore. So, how’s med school going?”
“It’s going really well, actually,” said Satellite Ears. “I’m progressing well, and learning a lot. It’s still hard to find time to do things. Hopefully I’ll be able to handle a new baby and all my studies at med school and my paramedic job.”
“I’m sure you’ll manage,” I said.
“Well, I have to go clean the toilet now,” said Satellite Ears. “Goodbye, Bananamouth.”
“See you later,” I said.
I phoned Not a blue woman one day.
“Not a blue woman,” I said, “I’m having some trouble keeping my house clean, and I don’t know what to do. I’ve become rather skilled at cleaning up messes in the lab, so I guess I just get tired of all that cleaning when I come back to my own house. I guess I just can’t always be bothered to clean up all the chip bags that I leave around, or clean up after leaky showers and such. I guess when I lived with you guys, you did most of the cleaning, now that I think of it.”
“Well,” said Not a blue woman, “I can think of a few things that you can do about it. You can hire a maid, for one. Valerie and I have a maid. With all the rushing around that we have to do while taking care of the baby, we don’t always have time to get everything in the house clean.”
“That sounds like a good idea,” I said. “And I think I could afford it.”
“Another thing you can do,” said Not a blue woman, “is get yourself an indoor garbage can, if you don’t have one already. Then you won’t have to go all the way out to the garbage can on the front lawn to throw stuff away.”
“Oh, that’s a great idea!” I said. “Now why on earth did I not think of that myself?”
“The only drawback is that you do have to take out the trash to the outdoor garbage can once in a while,” said Not a blue woman. “But yeah, having an indoor garbage can is very convenient, and well worth it. Besides, if you get both a maid and an indoor trash can, the maid will often take out the garbage if it’s full.”
“Thanks very much for all of your suggestions, Not a blue woman,” I said. “By the way, how is Reuil doing?”
“He’s doing really well,” said Not a blue woman. “He’s getting bigger, and I think he’ll be ready to learn to walk soon.”
“That’s great!” I said. “Well, I think I’ll follow your advice about getting a maid and an indoor trash can. Thanks again, Not a blue woman!”
“You’re welcome, Bananamouth,” said Not a blue woman.
I phoned the number for maid service right away. The guy who answered the phone said that the maid would come over to my house every day starting the next morning, and that it would cost 40 simoleons per day for the service. I thanked the guy and hung up the phone. Then I bought an indoor garbage can. It was a small inexpensive metal can. I put it in the living room.
The next day, as I got into the red carpool car and went off to work, I saw a white and pink van pull up to my house, and someone came out. I figured that it was the maid. When I got home from work, I went inside my house. There was a man cleaning the bathroom floor. He had short brown hair, and was wearing a blue shirt with rolled-up sleeves, blue gloves, black pants, and black shoes with blue designs on them.
“Hello,” said the man. “My name is Remington Harris, and I’m your new maid.”
“Hi there,” I said. “Thank you for cleaning my house. It looks so much better now!”
“You’re welcome,” said the maid. “I’m almost finished in here.” He finished cleaning the bathroom floor. Then the pink and white van came back, and he got into it and it drove away.
I decided to phone Not a blue woman again a few days later.
“Hi, Not a blue woman,” I said.
“Hi, Bananamouth!” said Not a blue woman. “How have you been?”
“I hired a maid and got an indoor garbage can, like you suggested,” I said. “My house has been so much cleaner ever since!”
“That’s great!” said Not a blue woman.
“I would just like to thank you again for suggesting those things to me,” I said.
“Hey, any time,” said Not a blue woman. “Oh, by the way, guess what?”
“Hmm, I don’t know,” I said. “What?”
“The other day, I asked Valerie to marry me, and she said yes!”
“That’s fabulous!” I said. “Do you have any idea when you guys are going to get married?”
“Well, I don’t think it’ll be too soon,” Not a blue woman replied. “We do have a lot of work to do, and we’re busy with Reuil. We figured we’d get married in a little while when Reuil is a little bit older.”
“That sounds like a good idea,” I said.
“I guess we don’t really have to have a big fancy wedding. I heard that we can even get married if there’s nobody else around. Just the two of us, at home, as long as I have the wedding ring to give to her.”
“Oh, I guess that’s right,” I said. “But wouldn’t you rather have a big fancy wedding party?”
“I don’t know,” said Not a blue woman. “A wedding with just me and Valerie and without any sort of really big party would definitely be much easier, and I think that it would be more convenient for us, with a young child and all. Besides, it wouldn’t require any extensive planning.”
I was a bit disappointed, but I just played along and said, “Good idea.”
“Or, another thing I could do, is that I could marry Valerie in the simple way, by just giving her the ring, but I could invite you and Satellite Ears and Regina over to watch us. And we could all have some wine or dance to the DJ machine or play Red hands after.”
I thought that sounded like a really good idea, so I said, “Oh, that sounds great!”
“Yes, I think that might be the best idea,” said Not a blue woman. “By the way, did you hear that Regina is pregnant now?”
“Yes!” I said. “Satellite Ears phoned me last week with the news.”
“I wonder if I should go ahead and marry Valerie while Regina is still pregnant, or if I should wait until her baby is born,” said Not a blue woman. “If I have the wedding too late in her pregnancy, she might not be able to come.”
“Well, what you could do is phone Satellite Ears and Regina and see what they think of all of these wedding ideas of yours,” I suggested.
“I think I’ll do that,” Not a blue woman said. “That’s a good suggestion.” Then he said, “Oh dear, I have to go now. Reuil just threw up on the floor.”
“Oh no!” I said. “Well, I’ll see you later, Not a blue woman.”
“Bye now.”
A very scary incident happened one day.
I came home from my job as a high school science teacher, and I wanted to make dinner. I thought I was a reasonably good cook, so for dinner that day I decided to make a meal that was a little more complicated than the dinners that I usually made.
“Today is the day that I make lobster thermidor!” I said to myself. I gathered together the lobster, cheese, fish, shallots, cream, mustard, wine, lemon juice, and spices that I needed to make the lobster thermidor. I cut up the lobster, and then I made the sauce. Everything was going very well until I tried actually cooking the lobster. Suddenly, huge flames appeared all over the stove!
I was really, really scared! Luckily, there was a smoke alarm in the kitchen, near the stove. The smoke alarm is so high-tech that it can detect smoke and contact the local fire department right away when smoke has been detected.
A fire truck soon stopped on the street outside of my house. A fireman came inside, and found me panicking in front of the burning stove. He sprayed the hose with a stove.
“There, the fire’s been put out,” the fireman said. “Please be more careful next time.”
“I’ll try to be more careful,” I said.
After the fireman had gone away, I got the lobster thermidor. It was very burnt, but I did not want to waste it, so I just went ahead and ate it anyway. I felt sad that I’d burned it, but I resolved to cook less dangerous foods until I felt I was really ready to have a crack at making lobster thermidor again.
On one of my days off, the phone rang.
“Hello, Bananamouth here,” I said.
“Hi, Bananamouth, it’s Not a blue woman.”
“Hi, Not a blue woman!” I said. “It’s nice to hear from you. How are things going?”
“Quite good,” said Not a blue woman. “I wanted to tell you that Valerie and I are thinking of getting married tonight, and I’d like to invite you over.”
“Oh, good!” I said. “I’ll be there tonight. Will anyone else be there?”
“I’m planning to ask Satellite Ears over too,” said Not a blue woman. “Regina’s going to be having her baby relatively soon, so she has to stay home, but she’s okay with that.”
“Okay,” I said. “What time should I come over tonight?”
“About 8 o’clock would be good,” said Not a blue woman.
“Okay, see you then,” I said. “Goodbye.”
I arrived at Not a blue woman’s house at a few minutes before 8 that night. Not a blue woman answered the door, and invited me in.
“Hi, Bananamouth!” said Not a blue woman. “Welcome!”
I walked into the living room. Valerie was sitting on the couch. “Is Satellite Ears here?” I asked.
“He’s out in the backyard playing with Reuil,” said Not a blue woman. “I’ll go out there and ask him to come over here.” Not a blue woman went outside, and returned soon after with Satellite Ears. Satellite Ears was holding Reuil. He put Reuil down on the living room floor.
“Is everybody ready now?” asked Valerie.
“Yes!” said me and Satellite Ears.
“I sure am!” said Not a blue woman. He went over to Valerie, and put a ring on her finger, and they hugged and kissed. Satellite Ears and I cheered.
“So, I guess your name will be Valerie Goodman now,” said Satellite Ears.
“Yes indeed,” said Valerie.
Not a blue woman ordered some pizza, and when it came, we each took a slice (except for Reuil, who was perfectly content with his bottle of milk.) We sat at the dinner table and talked about all sorts of things. I told everyone about my lobster thermidor incident. Not a blue woman reassured me, and said that it was a very difficult thing to make, and that he hasn’t even tried to make it yet even though he’s very good at cooking. I felt a bit better. Satellite Ears talked a bit about the beach that he and Regina had gone to for their honeymoon, and the fancy hotel that they’d stayed at. We were all saying that we wondered when Satellite Ears and Regina’s baby would be born, and whether it would be a boy or a girl.
After we finished supper, we danced to the radio for a while, and then we went home.
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The next morning before I left for work, I got a phone call. “This is unusual,” I thought. “I don’t get phone calls at this time of day very often. I wonder who it could be.”
I picked up the phone. “Hello,” I said.
“Bananamouth!” It was Satellite Ears’s voice on the other end of the line. “I have some great news! Regina had her baby last night after I got home from Not a blue woman’s house!”
“Wow!” I said. “Is it a boy or a girl?”
“It’s a girl,” said Satellite Ears. “We decided to name her Nora. She was born at 11:47 last night.”
“Congratulations!” I said. “If you ever need any help with the baby, just let me know.”
“Okay, we will,” said Satellite Ears. “Thanks.”