Riverview Updated - Part 16 - My "To Do" list

It's been several months since I was in the Riverview neighborhood, so I went back and reviewed the previous episode. At the end of the episode I had a list of things I wanted to do. They centered around Brianna Jacobs, a recent addition to the neighborhood. 

I was trying to find her a mate because she's a nurturing soul and she has a cute little kid's room in her house. 

In the past episode she met up with Jebidiah Thacker one of the local police officers. I thought they were hitting it off pretty well, but Jebidiah, who knows he's a great kisser but is also inappropriate, took some liberties with Brianna, which were not received well.

In the end, Jebidiah blamed Brianna for giving him mixed messaged. 

Brianna poured out her woes to little Stevie Stockton who was running the lemonade stand. 

Steve suggested she take up a new hobby, painting for instance, and not stress over the dating scene so much. Brianna took his advice and went over to the art studio to get started. 

It was there that she met a couple elderly women dressed to the nines. One of them, Venus Lum, was wearing face paint. 

She intrigued me. Lum is a familiar name, but I didn't remember her or where she fits into the Lum family.

So here are the goals: 

1. Find out who Venus Lum is and how she fits into the Lum family.

2.Find Steve Stockton's family and drop in to see what's going on in their lives.

3. Help Brianna find a mate or at least get a child. 

Venus is apparently young at heart. She is a firefighter and married into the Lum family. Her husband is Hassan, and they gave a child named Marcus. I think Venus' maiden name is Lenz because they have  pets with that last name. Venus is brave, neat, a hopeless romantic, childish, and nurturing. 

Hassan doesn't seem like a good guy. I have some old screenshots of him slapping a woman at the elixir store. I just don't remember the story behind that. 

He and Venus are rather distant. Venus has about 10 people in her relationships panel that she likes more than Hassan, and Hassan has 27 people he likes more that Venus! (I gave them separate bedrooms.) Hassan wants to be a rock star, but for some reason took the symphonic branch of the music career. Maybe he's bitter over his choice. 

Little Marcus is a couch potato, grumpy, and artistic. He has no friends his own age and is friends with his mother but had only a so-so relationship with his father. 

It's a good thing Venus is a brave firefighter. She attempted to fix the dishwasher, was electrified, and had a fire on her hands. 

Hassan was not impressed and was contemplating moving out to the treehouse so he doesn't die in a fire in his sleep. 

On to the Stocktons.

It turns out Steve is the son of Eric and Ada (Lu) Stockton. Eric is a gene therapist and Ada is an international super spy. 

Eric had similar problems with his dishwasher. 

In addition to being a doctor, Eric is also a pretty good musician. 

He likes to play his drums in the park. It looks like Venus decided to work on her athletic skills before getting herself cleaned up from the dishwasher incident. 

Steve is brave, good, and never nude. He likes digitunes, French toast, and the color blue. He also had no friends his own age, which I think is because he just aged up. Perhaps that was the same situation with Marcus. I had him make friends when he went to school. 

Unlike Hassan and Venus, Eric and Ada have a good relationship. They have the same friends and are friends with their son. Eric has an interesting animosity for a certain cat, Fah-Zhai Stockton, who doesn't live with them. I think it might be his parents' or sibling's cat. He and the cat are enemies. 

Now on to Brianna. Brianna is in the education career, which seems to suit her nurturing personality. Her other traits are disciplined, coward, clumsy, and mooch. She has taken little Stevie Stockton's advice and continued with her painting and focusing on her job and co-workers. 

 

That creepy Jebidiah Thacker showed up at the art studio once, which made Brianna uncomfortable, so now she mostly paints at home. 

I had her throw a house party for all her co-workers because I wanted to see if there were any eligible men at work and see if she had a preference for any of them. They mostly paired up and danced, so it was difficult to get to know them. 

I think she did manage to have a word or two with each party guest and her party was epic. She managed to mooch some money from her boss Justine (in the purple pant suit). There were one and a half party crashers. The one was Johnnie Rowe, a journalist.

The half was Damaris Walton. She said she was a playground monitor, but she didn't show up on the co-worker panel when Brianna sent out the invitations. 

Maybe she's a new hire fresh out of college. 

I decided to take the pressure off Brianna's ticking biological clock and had her adopt a little boy. 

This is Harlow. He's a virtuoso and friendly (and cute as a button.)

So that checks off my list. There was another family I wanted to investigate. This elderly woman hangs out at the festival grounds. Sometimes she plays the guitar and other times the drums. 

Her name is Kirsten Bartley; she's a 96 day old elder, level 4 busker, a great kisser, virtuoso, daredevil, mooch and artistic. She's married to Weston Bartley, a 105 day old elder and toddler coach who has the traits star quality, unlucky, party animal, vegetarian, and dog person. He moved here awhile ago with his two elderly sisters, one of which had a couple grandsons she was raising - Malik and Dean Womack. 

Weston found love late in life, married, and moved out of the house the three siblings had purchased together. He and Kirsten had two late-in-life children: Ahmad and Malissa. Oddly enough, Weston's nephew Dean also lives with them despite having a good relationship with his mother and brother. I assume that because both parents work late, he has moved in to serve as a nanny and looks after the kids after school until the parents get home.

None of them seem too thrilled about doing homework, so it's good that Dean's here to keep them on task. The problem was there weren't enough beds/bedrooms to accommodate Dean, so I built him a little outbuilding in the back yard. 

The decor and furniture already existed in the second bedroom in the house so I just moved it out here and converted the second bedroom into the kids' room. 

Dean fixes dinner and tucks the kids in at night. 

He must think Malissa is brains of the outfit as he reads her a handiness skill book, while he reads a toddler book to Ahmad.

The family also has two dogs - Brooks and Duchess, and two cats - Tigger and Alex. I guess I should say they HAD two cats. Grim came to take Tigger, traumatizing Dean's friend Jesse Funke who came over after school. 

That hideous beast under the table is the other cat Alex. I had to look at his simology to determine whether he was a cat or a dog because he's so ugly. Poor guy. 

I guess life goes on and homework waits for no man. 

Meanwhile, poor Weston was out at the park where he ran across tourist Aleef Zayat. Weston was using a charming greeting, telling Aleef about points of interest in the area: the martial arts academy, theater, and spa, all within walking distance of where they were, but Aleef was being so rude! You just can't help some people. 

More later . . .