I really must have been born under a lucky star or something because life was just going on so smoothly and happily for me. Laurent is the most romantic, tolerant, loving and giving man ever. After we got our basic shell of a house done, he didn't even blink an eye when I told him that now we were going off to the piney woods to camp out! I think he was a city boy at heart but he was game to try new things. Here we are with our first real meal together, roast potatoes! It was all we could afford at the time but he didn't seem to mind at all.
Like I said, lucky star because the usual swarms of mosquitos didn't even come around. However, when I mentioned we might wind up having to try a couple of plates of toasted beetles he got this really funny look on his face.
Laurent: B...b...beetles? You're joking, right?
Ima: Nope. They actually are quite good you know. Crunchy with a bit of a tang to them. Not slimy at all.
City boys! Haha. We explored base camp a bit, bought our tent, and after gathering what could be gathered and fishing for a few minutes, we went off to the Deep Woods. No time to hang there really. Laurent tried his hand at fishing while I searched for the entrance to the Hermit's home. Found it almost right away so off we went.
It was pretty late at night when we got there. The hermit allowed us to pitch our tent on her lot near her house and we toddled off to catch a few fish. I figured I'd spare him from having to eat beetles his first night there.
We caught quite a few lovely fish, enough to eat, sell and mount so it was a very satisfactory time spent together fishing. Back at the hermits, we found she really had missed having some meals cooked by someone other than herself, so I set to work and whipped up some fish tacos for us all. She really seemed friendly and not at all as insane as I'd been told. I was pretty happy about this as it meant I could spend some of my time building up my cooking skills. After all, when you're going to be a chef being able to cook is rather important, right? She was perfectly willing to be my culinary guinea pig.
The only strange thing was she insisted on sleeping in our tent! We didn't mind at all because it gave us a chance to finally.......
Well.....you know, and yes, I'm wearing a really big smile right now~~!
The next few days and nights seemed to go by both too slow and too fast. Too slow as we slogged away trying to catch a shower from the lake, and too slow as poor Laurent got tons of blisters making things to sell and use in our house. Too fast as we spent time together getting to know one another and realizing we weren't really meeting our goal. Finally, one morning over breakfast, we decided we just had to give it up. Five days and no shower to bring home and things we still wanted to do and things we had to buy at the kiosk with the money we had earned selling off our fish, produce and sculptures. We had come there with barely any money left and were going to be going back to base camp with over a thousand simoleons. It was a scary decision but our time was almost up. Our friend, the hermit, took this picture of us on our last day in her house.
Back at base camp I tried to convince Laurent that maybe we should spend a bit more time there. We were doing ok with fishing and gathering and maybe we should just hang in and see how much more we could do. However, my city boy was feeling very deprived and homesick. He was starting to get sad and I just couldn't have that.
Of course, our camping out wasn't quite done. First of all we REALLY needed a shower so off we went to the gym. We showered up and decided since we were there, why not take advantage of the equipment. Laurent did very well. He is so strong!
I, on the other hand.....not so much! Laurent about fell over laughing at this.
Now, about that camping not being done. Laurent had decided to keep the tent in his personal inventory. He figured if we were really busy getting our skills up we might wind up really exhausted and no place to sleep comfortably. With the tent, we could set it up and snooze anywhere pretty much. He was right! Our efforts at the gym did wear us out so he set our tent up and we crawled in to go to sleep.
Ok, so now you are wondering about that young lady asleep on the bench. It so happened that while we were at the gym we had made friends with Eliza Pancake. We had formed a club while in the woods, (by the way, clubs do NOT work in the woods!), so when we met Liz, we invited her to join our club. Before we went to bed I set "sleep" as one of the club activities, and since we were in a gathering, Liz wound up sleeping as well! Poor thing! This led me to thinking about what else club members might wind up doing. Hmmmm......
The next morning we all headed over to the Pancakes' house. I fixed breakfast in a really nice kitchen while Liz explained things to Bob. (We invited him into the club too!)
Meanwhile Laurent too advantage of Bob's work bench.
I think we're going to wind up spending a LOT of time at their house for sure! A real kitchen! Showers! A workbench! And best of all, good friends.
We still needed a lot of things to make our house live able and we both needed a job. It was time to get connected with a "skill reward" known as Connections. It was gold date and Soul Mate time for sure. No problem, the things we loved to do best was go on dates with each other. Like this......
Laurent: Ma cheri, amour, you are lovely as a summer's day..
Ima: Oh, Laurent......, I love it when you go all French! Tell me more.....
Laurent: Oh, mon ange, there are so many ways to say je t'adore that I would spend all day talking when I'd rather spend all day kissing!
And so we did.
Later that day, after a lovely, steamy,....well, sauna's are good for more than just relaxing you know.....anyway, it was time for some spa treatments. Who knew mud could feel this good?
Later that night we celebrated our newly acquired items, (by using the Connections ploy we had LOTS of furnishings and cash left over), with a backyard cookout. I wasn't due for my work for several days but Laurent would start his career as a Scientist tomorrow. It was fun having the gang over to eat and with plenty of facilities, (love those bushes!), they could even spend the night in relative comfort.
I've got to go now friends. Here's one last picture of Laurent proudly working away at his new job! See ya soon!
