We're All Mad Here

With my personal life all tidied up, I was ready to get back on the job. Out astride my vacuum, flying Mock 2 with the wind in my hair. I felt like a real woman again.

Digging through the trash of my suspect.

I had my guy. Sicko ghost impersonator. I raced by to the graveyard to complete my case.

With that complete, I had one more task to complete at the graveyard.

Ari Wong was finally laid to rest.

It felt so good to have the dead guy out of my house.

Back home, the older kids were at school, and William was back to being housedad.

He does cut quite a figure holding a baby, I must say. It almost makes me want to make another one. ALMOST.

While I’m out bringing in the big bucks, William keeps Justin engaged with an endless stream of age-appropriate educational activities.

The devotion he shows to that kid amazes me.

He also still finds some time to paint. His work has started to bring in some much-needed extra income. I have to say that I’m impressed. I could never put paint to canvass the way he does. Then again, my canvass is the human mind.

Caitlin’s second honeymoon with Peanut is over. At least that’s what I hear.

City Hall called. They wanted me to appear at the courthouse as soon as possible.

Who was I to refuse? I didn’t even stop to take a shower.

It turned out that they wanted to honor me with a medal for my great service to the city. Now I wish I’d cleaned up a little bit.

I did take a bit of time to fix my hair, though. I thought it looked better down for my photograph with the mayor.

After the award ceremony, I hoofed it to the gym.

I was a famous gumshoe now, and famous gumshoes should have bulging muscles. I wanted to look the part for my next big picture in the papers.

Meanwhile, the older kids got home from school. I can’t believe how responsible and studious they are these days.

Clearly my work ethic has rubbed off on them.

I’ve gotten some reports of the cats causing trouble around town.

They really ticked off somebody’s toddler.

While I was finishing up at the gym, I got a call from my brother Christof.

He was throwing a party to celebrate his new promotion! He was now in the major league of… some sport.

Of course we were going to go celebrate with him. In fact, we were going to make a joint party to celebrate our life events too. I got baby Justin ready to go. I couldn’t wait to introduce him to his uncle.

We all piled into a cab. Maybe the Motive Mobile was out for repairs or something.

I got a little confused about where the door was. Apparently some people have doors in their house just for cars! Who knew?

The smaller door was for people. I’d keep that in mind for next time.

I took a look around Christof’s place and headed upstairs.

To set my screaming baby Christof’s crib. His kid was much too old for it anyway.

Downstairs, Christof wasted no time getting his groove on.

Christof’s immediate family was gathering: his husband Randolph and teenage daughter Kari. Kari is the spitting image of Mama. She’d be proud.

Another guest was Christof’s friend Loki Beaker. “Come on and dance!” Christof shouted at him. “I’m alone over here!”

Loki got to dancing around the time we were ready to celebrate Helen’s birthday!

My little girl was becoming a teenager.

She looked just like me! And I mean JUST like me.

Randolph Wonderland-Holton was pretty impressed by the find food at this party. My, he’s really showing his age these days.

Imogen preferred to eat in front of the television.

Then I went upstairs to get the baby and put him on the floor.

One more birthday!

Little Justin had a lot of his father in him, but he has Mama’s gray eyes.

Then Helen and Imogen helped to clean up. Such responsible girls!

Imogen even did the dishes.

Meanwhile, Christof freaked out. “Augh! I can’t believe I’m a major-leaguer!”

William laughed at him.

Randolph grabbed his husband.”Come here,” he said. “Let me calm you down.”

“Oh, baby,” Christof murmured. “You really know how to turn me on.”

“Is it just me, or is it getting hot in here?” William asked. “I think we ought to do something about it.”

I gave William the naughty eye. “Great minds think alike,” I said. “Come on upstairs. I know the perfect place.”

As soon as things started to get interesting, Christof showed up. “You are NOT going to woohoo in my bed!” he cried.

Too late!

“You better clean those sheets, you hear me!”

“Mmm,” I said. “Whatever you say, brother.”

But we got out of cleaning because Randolph kicked us out.

Some folks just don’t know how to be good hosts.

———-

Honor Roll: 2 + 1 = 3

Woo. WordPress has many wonderful features, but its WYSIWYG editor is not one of them. I’m still figuring out how NOT to insert unwanted empty paragraphs all over the place. It doesn’t seem to handle the Enter key around images well at all. Advice is welcome.

This was my first Late Night party invitation since I took out GoHere. It worked great. It’s nice to have those things working properly again.

However, it turns out you actually can’t bring a birthday cake to someone else’s house and then activate it. I used DebugEnabler to open buy mode for their house and buy the cake from there. Just in the interest of full disclosure.

And hey, I didn’t make them woohoo in Christof and Randolph’s bed. That was entirely autonomous by William. In fact, Christof was actually trying to get into the bed to woohoo with Randolph. I couldn’t stop laughing.

Helen is an exact clone of Erin, but with William’s colors. She’s disqualified as heir. Bah.

Justin is both a Vampire and a Witch. He looks to have William’s skin and hair, but Hetal’s gray eyes. He’s not a clone of Erin, but that’s the best I can tell. We’ll see what he looks like when he ages. up.