The Tanakas (C) - Round 7

Starring:

Kimi Tanaka, Adult Romance Sim, LTW Become Celebrity Chef

Takeru Tanaka, Child Fortune Sim, LTW Grow Up Well

~*~*~*~*~

Last season at the Tanaka house, Takeru aged well from a toddler into a child. He got into private school, and he and his mother, Kimi, moved out of their apartment and into a new house in Rosebud. Let's see how the two of them get on this round.

Summer struck with bad luck as Kimi came down with a bad case of food poisoning. She was experimenting in the kitchen with some new recipes, and one of the more questionable ones she was trying ended up making her sick - an important lesson to her. So she was laid up on the couch, running back and forth to the bathroom while Takeru continued adjusting to life in the new house.



As he got older, Take found that he really craved a male role model in his life, though he didn't think of it in quite those terms. He knew that his dad was an old, dear friend of his mother's, and he wanted to get to know the man who had sired him better. Kimi had no problems with that. Take began having weekly conversations with his dad, Donte.



Kimi continued to suffer through her food poisoning, waiting not-so-patiently for the time when she could eat and drink and actually keep the stuff down.


Despite her illness, however, nothing could keep her from having a rousing conversation about grilled cheese: her newest and most favorite passion in life. Any time she could get into a good conversation about the best types of bread and cheese, along with proper grilling time, she was in seventh heaven.



Takeru was doing well in his new school, bringing home friends frequently to spend time with. Kimi wasn't particularly strict about visitors because Takeru knew how to behave himself, so the other children in the neighborhood often rode home with him on the bus to play in the afternoons.


Conor Vinci was a red hands champion, and Take was determined to beat him someday, but in the meantime, he simply enjoyed the boy's companionship.



One evening, after she was feeling better, Kimi brought a friend home from work herself, and to her surprise, the woman offered to set Kimi up on a blind date. Having not been on a date for quite some time, Kimi decided that there was no harm in it and readily agreed.




Ash Thayer must have been extremely excited to make Kimi's acquaintence because it only took him about five minutes to get to the house after Kimi agreed to go on a blind date with him.



While Kimi found him to be mentally stimulating, she couldn't get over the way he looked, as shallow as it may have seemed. She enjoyed the evening with him but then suggested that she thought they might not be a perfect match, and Ash despondently left. At least Kimi had made a new friend out of the deal.




Soon, it was time for Takeru's birthday. Kimi bought him the most sugar-filled cake she could find and filled it with fourteen candles for his birthday. Take could hardly believe he was finally going to be a teenager instead of being stuck in the limbo of being a "pre-teen."



Kimi could hardly believe how handsome her boy was when he grew up. He seemed to have the best features of each parent and was so charming that Kimi knew she'd be beating the girls off with sticks once he went to school and they caught sight of his new rugged good looks.



Take decided that he wanted to continue being as successful as his mother had been in her lifetime. He wanted to have as much money as she'd made...no, double...or triple! He knew money didn't buy happiness, but he liked the idea of the financial security of having a fat bank account. He couldn't wait to get his first job and buy his first mp3 player.




He wasn't overly concerned with being popular, but like all teenagers, he wanted to at least look cool, so after a quick trip with his mom to the store, he managed to outfit himself as he thought befitting the man he wanted to be - and the man he already was becoming, with his inherited musical ability.




Kimi knew that she was getting older and that the time for her retirement was soon upon her, so she splurged and bought herself a flower arranging bench. The older she got, the more she appreciated the natural beauty in the world, so she decided that she would teach herself a new hobby. In no time at all, she'd earned her bronze flower arranging badge.


As she knew, Kimi's birthday was rapidly approaching, and one night, Takeru baked her a cake from scratch so the two of them could celebrate her birthday. Kimi hated the idea of getting old and wrinkled and out-of-date, but then again, she'd lived a very full life and felt like it was simply her time.


She blew out the candles on her cake, and before she knew it...



...she aged into an elder in a very bad velvet jacket. Well, she thought, she might be old, but that didn't mean she had to be frumpy.



A shopping trip to the Rosebud General Store solved that problem, however, and Kimi felt happy to be settling in to this calmer, more settled period in her life.



She got some new skills with age, she found, and it also wasn't so bad because she wasn't alone:



Donte, too, was an elder now. They'd truly grown up together, even though they had never been married or even engaged. Kimi couldn't imagine what her life would have been without him, and she was grateful that they were still such a good pair with such agreeable ideas about how life should be, even now.



Deciding to go "whole hog" with this aging thing, Kimi called and retired from her position as celebrity chef. The revenues from her various cookbooks and DVDs would provide plenty of income for her to maintain the house and herself for the rest of her life, so she wasn't worried. It was nice to know that she had nothing but time stretching out before her to explore whatever interests she hadn't had time to explore during her working life.



Takeru, on the other hand, was just beginning his working life, and he was already showing his mother's keen sense for making good decisions.



It only took him a few weeks to reach the top of his teen career in science, and he was able to buy that mp3 player he so desperately wanted.



Kimi, thoroughly enjoying her new flower arranging hobby, decided that a logical counterpart to this interest was to begin flower gardening. The front of the house was too bare anyway, and so she went to the local flower shop, bought up whatever struck her fancy, and spent a few weeks of the summer digging beds in the front yard to plant her new babies.



Of course, she didn't plant the sorts of flowers she could use in her arrangements, but surrounding herself with all those pretty colored petals did her well, and she quickly earned her silver flower arranging badge.



Takeru continued to make good decisions at work, satisfying his desire for fat paychecks and bonuses, but he found that he was a bit distracted lately with other things....


Namely, the pretty girls he now noticed seemed to be all over Rosebud. Aurélie Beaumont was only one of them, but her mutual love for science and the pretty way she filled out her bathing suit did not escape Takeru by any stretch of the imagination.



Donte became a more frequent visitor to the house as well. Take liked talking to his mellow old pops, and Kimi enjoyed seeing him for different reasons.



The fact was, the spark between she and Donte was as strong as ever, and the two could hardly get enough of one another's conversation, company, or cuddles.



Takeru was as good a student as ever, not letting his after-school job interfere with his studies one bit. He knew that Kimi would lay down the law if he let that happen, and besides, he had inherited more than a little of her perfectionist attitude.



He only hoped that one day he could be as successful or even more successful than his mom, who had accomplished more in her lifetime, all on her own, than anyone he'd ever known.



And the achievements didn't stop for Kimi...she kept right on trucking into her golden years. She might not have had a lifetime left on the earth, but her legacy would no doubt last for generations to come.


[[Author's Notes: Omg, Take turned out to be SO adorable. I love how he really looks like a mix of his parents...with primarily Donte's facial structure only with Kimi's eye shape influencing it. He couldn't be a more perfect black/asian mix in terms of genetics, I don't think, which is really awesome for variety in the neighborhood. I didn't want to see Kimi turn elder, as it's hard this round to see all my CAS teens get old! Plus, she's always been such hell on wheels that it seems wrong for her to get old, somehow. But I'm determined (and I'm sure she is too) to take elderhood in stride and keep kicking ass and taking names until the very last. Not sure if anything will happen with her new talent...basically, she's just bored and needs something to do. When you don't need your elders for child care, I'm not sure what to do with them! Not too much else notable in this round, they're just a very dear, very close two sims.

Bloopers:
Kimi takes time finally to smell the flowers. Not really a blooper, I just think this animation is kind of hilarious. // Vindictive former landlord needs a hobby. ]]