Grief is the Back End of Love

Before we could get our Zooby son, My One and I needed to tie up all the loose ends, both in Second and "real" life. That did NOT really mean bushwhacking. In fact, my One Who Thinks She Knows had totally lost her taste for it. We did, however, explore which is how we found Hope 4 Satobs. The name and color scheme on the sim looked familiar. There is a smaller version of this sim-wide exhibit at the Aloft Nonprofit Commons, and it is still there, but this was here, big, bright, and baffling.

It took us forever to figure out that Hope 4 Satobs stood for hope for those who are sick and tired of being sick and tired. It's a sim about chronic pain. It's a kind of in-joke, with lots of exhibits complaining about those with chornic pain fighting off accusatinos of malingering, and lack of respect from doctors, and medicines not being good enough. I don't understand it all, and neither does my One. "People suffer. People complain. People who are chronically sick, shouldn't get jealous when others take the sick role, or make sure that what those others have is only transient, and curable. There's room in the world for as many as get sick and hurt, though those who hurt should take something for it."

"We have to go somewhere important," My One said to me. "It needs to be somewhere to make us think." We considered going to PAL Play & Learn Park, the quintessentially baby friendly spot, for some Zooby tourism, but my One said "No." This was the weekend for our Zooby son. We'd have all the Zooby we could stand. Instead, let's look backwards. "Let's see if Jeep's Turtle Palace is still around. My One wanted to remember our Petable Turtles. My One wanted to remember the loss and our love. My One wanted to remember what it feels like when trust breaks, even under the best of circumstances, and how even the smoothest planned exit HURTS!

Jeep's Turtle Palace was still standing. And there were even some turtles. These could not move. They are statues, just as our turtles are. We still love them. I wish Jeep had displayed some ordinary turtle statues. There are no more turtle egg dispensers on the wall at Jeep's but there are signs about turtles. It was wonderful to know that in Second Life someone besides my One and I still missed Petable Turtles. In a day or so we were going to put ourselves into the hands of Carrie Tatsu and her server just like we had put ourselves into the hands of Andy and Grim Hathor, and the hands of Dragoness Rage. We were going to make a committment that could end just the same way.

Of course we could not visit Jeep's Turtle Palace without getting all ripped up inside. My One Who Thinks She Knows called this kind of ripping catharsis. Jeep's Turtle Palace was no longer a cautionary tale. We needed to mourn. We needed to remember.

We also needed to take a walk with one of our turtles. I can only wear one at a time. We chose Road Not Taken's daughter, Yael for the job. Here I sit by the river with Yael on my back. What was I thinking about? I was thinking how after crossing acres of wonderful, abandoned land we had reached a familiar sopt....

We were at White's Workshop, home of amazing trains, but there was a problem with White's Workshop. Long ago, while riding the trains on White's Workshop, we had seen a dead Sion Chicken. One's can be very cruel to their breedables. One's are ruthless. My One has a good heart most days and we both agreed NEVER to tell the turtles about the dead chicken. Now we might find a dead chicken and have a lot of explaining to do to Yael. She might be a turtle statue now, but we never let her die and lie out in the open like that bird.

Still my One insisted that we ride the trains at White's Workshop. We'd hope for the best, she said. "Besides, we need to see what happens to breedables because we are going to be taking on a new breeable/interactive. We need to remember how in the end they are disposible at least to some people. We need to rub our noses in it and if it really bothers us, the time to bail is now." You can't really argue with that, but my heart was in my throat as we left the station.

One thing, I did NOT worry about, however, was falling out of the trains, even when they climbed both of the new loop-d-loops. Yes, White's Workshop has been expanding and improving. That is always a good and hopeful sign. Yale held on. I held on. Our train defied gravity, and my One Who Thinks She Knows took a picture.

Then we saw it. It was not dead and unressurectable. It was alive. The Sion Chicken looked like a crow as he strutted beside the railroad tracks. I realize now he was the same color as our Zwicky, Protea. That made me feel good. I had nothing to explain to Yael. Maybe Hyacinth Resident who runs White's Workshop has learned to become less ruthless to her breedables. Maybe all I had to do was trust, but I don't think so. There is more. If grief is the end of love, hope is its beginning.

Iyoba BatOni -- September 6, 2015

Are We Ready for Committment?

No, neither my One Who Thinks She Knows nor I are having cold feet. There is no point of no return. Maybe there is one after September 6, but we're not there yet. It's just we are going to need time and mental space. My One says our son has already staked out way too much emotional territory in her brain. And we don't even have the kit to make him clothes yet! We're not sure the kit will work without the baby. We know what everything will cost. We have the land. We have the furniture. The supplies (diapers, baby wash, and either vitamins or bottles) will be a minimal investment.

And every obstacle, my One and I encounter on the way to becoming Zooby parents has crumbled to dust. Early Sunday morning/late Saturday night, my One Who Thinks She Knows arrived in the Kroger parking lot pulling her amazing grocery cart, the Hope Saphire behind her. She was ready to buy and bring home a bag of kitty litter. She has suspended PetFlow so she can put the savings toward a Developer Kit, a Zooby Baby, and brain booster stars and scripts for resale and building.

My One's apartment is cleaner than it has been in months. "I've got to stick with it," she tells me. "I've got to stick with it." As of Monday, we skipped doing housework for the first time in over a week. My One is supposed to do housework for thirty minutes a day six days a week. If she does more, she can subtract it from another day. This way, she doesn't torture herself, because my One hates housework, but we need a clean apartment to spend time on Maggie Mae with our Zooby son.

There are times when my One Who Thinks She Knows seems totally committed to our Zooby dream. She made sure we made four sets of bedding for each of the four bedding box scripts that came with our crib developer kit. This set of bedding is called 7 at 1 Blow and is in honor of the story by the same name. Now there is a hero for a child to emulate!

And this was our first attempt at bedding. This is a seamless caladium background with dark green cording to accentuate the double mattress design. The Bird's Nest Crib looks much better in knotty pine. I wish I could make a refinishing kit, and just might do it.

Our third creation had a pika theme. Pika are tiny, omnivorous, rodents that love to dig and dig. And yes, they are cute, and yes most of us live at altitudes too low to appreciate them. This bedding set does the two-tone thing with the blankets and mattresses.

Here is a closer look at the pikas. Notice their bright eyes and the star bursts behind them. The muted jewel tones make this bedding suitible for a room that both children and adults share. The pikas are cute enough for kids without setting adult teeth on edge.

Our last set of bedding (We're out of scripts for making bedding packets)is dedicated to Nivea et famille; for it was this white tree frog that scaird and repelled them. My One always thought he was beautiful because his skin looked like human skin. She even thinks of him as a sort of frog prince in transition. The paisley and rope give him the royal treatment.

In fact, my One and I so loved the Frog Prince Bedding that we decided to use it for our son's crib. It goes very well with the crib's pickled, green, wood finish. Yes, the Bird's Nest Crib really does need a good finish. Why shouldn't our son have the finest bedding and most luxurious woods to surround him. This is after all Second Life, and the second time one may get things right one can't do the first time around.

This includes riding the train on SJSU sLIS. The tracks have been there for ages. I've even walked on them. Walking on railroad tracks is too dangerous in "real life" but in Second Life it is fun!!!! Riding trains though is better, even if this one gets stuck and turns around spontaneously from time to time. It doesn't fall off the tracks or make my One Who Thinks She Knows motion sick.

 

There are times though, when my One seems to totally forget we need to be in a maternal frame of mind if we are going to bring a baby into the world. I chalk some of this up to Ones Who Think They Knows' general callusness and hardness of heart, but yesterday I went deep into the isolation ward on HKPolyU Campus. Unlike VBIsland, I at least had protective gear, but the hallway reminded both my One and me of a prison. Worse yet, we visited Twin Pearl, the island that replaced MK009 Nagisa Land. The new landlord made his presence known with a huge, statue.

And the HKPolyU Campus Isolation Ward not only required a mask and scrubs, but also gown, gloves, and a face shield. "I think I know what's in here," my One began her story. "Clostridium difficile, a very nasty bacteria related to botulism and that causes terrible diarreah and spreads through nursing homes and hospitals like wildfire. Part of the cure is putting patients into isolation. It's like putting them in prison and they sometimes go crazy, especially the old people."

Our patient in Room Number Three, however, did not act particularly crazy. She just lay there, poor bot. I wondered if she might have been dead. She made me think of some patients on ECU IV that have been in their hospital beds for years. Yes, they are bots, but we are going to have a prim baby, remember?

After visiting HKPolyU's Isolation/Torture Ward my One felt dirty, sick, and fearful. I felt a bit squicky too. Fortunately Black Sand Beach in mk009 Sazanami Land had a nice bath tub complete with wheels and lights. "You'll feel better if I take a bath," I told my One. The water was nice and warm. It's only a day or two more until we start working with the clothing development kit and in two weeks, after obtaining our second bag of litter from Kroger, we'll have our son. It's really going to happen. I hope....

Iyoba BatOni and Eileen H. Kramer -- August 18,. 2015

The Long, Open, Highway

"And I will make all My mountains a way, And My highways shall be raised on high" (Isaiah 49:11). I am not pregnant in the usual way of Second Life, with a changed shape and a tummy talker. In some ways my One and I both want a more private pregnancy. My One Who Thinks She Knows is now no longer able to conceive or bear children, and I would be almost too old to do so if I lived in the "real world." Besides, a virtual child means a trip to the Uncanny Valley. Still, this is a time of waiting and preparation, and part of that preparation is my One Who Thinks She Knows showing that she can use her time in Second Life responsibly and making the apartment where Maggie Mae lives a hospitable place to spend time online.

It also means not being reckless with funds, which is why there is a picture of Fresh Step Cat Litter on this blog. This WAS the LAST delivered bag of cat litter. Saturday night or Sunday morning, my One goes out and gets her own litter. She does not drive a car, so she uses the Hope Saphire. That's the grocery cart in the picture. What you DON'T see in this picture is clutter, no Petflow boxes, no strewn papers, no kitty fort debris. My One swept and mopped the Maggie Mae House' living room floor on Sunday.

My One also baked bread last weekend. Having enough bread is VERY IMPORTANT. My One keeps kosher, so home made bread is a must-have. Baking bread is easy, she says. It just takes time and a good recipe. My One says her own mother taught her to kneed dough. Some skills just come in handy.

Of course, given that I feel my One's emotions, I'm VERY GLAD I am not undergoing a conventional Second Life pregnancy. My part of the preparation is settling accounts in Second Life. We have twice written to an experienced user who is cluttering a sim that is an accidental sandbox. We also needed to get in touch with the avie/One team who put up the poster that claimed malaria is a virus. It's not! Unfortunately, we made a wrong turn on VBIsland and ended up in the hospital that had an isolation ward.

There was info on drugs on one counter, and then there were the patients. They had Ebola! There was no fencing to separate me from bodily contact. There was no protective clothing available. There was not even a place for me to wash hands. All at once, I could feel my One’s stomach churn and skin crawl. She also explained how the disease had spent a year cutting a swath through new territory in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea. These countries were NOT on the map of the virus because the info for this exhibit was ten years old, and was not about the current outbreak. "It’s a good thing you’re not really, physically, pregnant" was all my One could say to me. Now my One, who is petrified of hospitals, was never so scaird and disgusted as she was by this outdated and inadequate ebola exhibition.

And thankfully, there was no baby on board when I flew through the Areeva Nuclear Power Plant on Science School II. The hovercar ride was fun, but those power lines over the transformer emit low level energy waves, and then there was the plant itself.

I got to get up close and personal with the cooling rods in the core. I did not have a geiger counter or dosimeter with me, but virtual radiation does not hurt virtual avies. It is poison to pregnant Ones Who Think They Knows' fetuses. My One felt her skin crawl, which made my skin crawl too.

Fortunately, my One has a good heart much of the time. "Iyoba," she told me. "We must not neglect our Zwickies just because we have a Zooby Baby coming. The Zwickies are after all family. They were here first." We are making frequent trips home to check in on our self sufficient and loveable creatures from another universe. Here is Subira, my scarlet, starter, zwicky giving me a kiss in the Not a Handsome Home at Stinky Stinky. No, we are not changing its name.

And my One even bought our Zwickies a Zelly Flower to keep them healthy and strong. The Zelly Flower was of course free, but it comes with Zwicky Nip, which had the unintended effect of getting all the boy zwickies pregnant several days ahead of schedule. My One named the resulting offspring: Lois (Nimrod + Bishara), Guinevere (Throckmorton + Fortunata), and Sybille (Geronimo + Protea). The babies are now in inventory because we don't have room to hatch out what we get, and there is no market for Zwickies that we have figured out. We don't care. Zwickies are family!

At this point, Zoobys are just furniture. That will change. The highway is long and straight. Obstacles vanish like mirages. We have furnished the nursery, created two bedding boxes, even though my One thinks that nobody makes money selling Zooby items. Zooby gets too big a cut on licensing and the landlord for the store space takes the rest. Still, we have a beautiful custom nursery.

This is our crib. We have the kit so we can sell bedding. The crib has better bedding. One set has a weird glitch, but it is one my One can fix easily. She wants to make more bedding. She wants to make more clothes. She also wants to do a lot with our son (It will be a boy) that does not cost money but which has a spiritual significance. My One has enough depth of soul to know that avatarim, breedables, and bots have a spiritual aspect. This is the only child my One Who Thinks She Knows will ever have. He will have a piece of both of us inside him. That is the best way I can describe it.

Meanwhile, my One wants to put the economics of Zoobyville out of her mind for a couple of more weeks and share in the romance of expecting something powerfully good and important. She is grateful to the Zooby crew for making cribs modifiable. She guesses that Zoobies appeal to all three types of Second Life resident: the competitive, the explorers/understanders, and the relationship people. Making Zooby products modifiable appeals to the understanders, and that is our group. My One inserted a prim parameter change script with a switch into the front panel of this Birds Nest crib. If you touch the panel, it shrinks and drops. Touch it again, it raises and expands. If you leave the panel down, the crib becomes a day bed for a toddler. How do you say "game changer?"

You don't say game changer. We're going to play the game and spend money. The payments front load to protect the company. If we sell items, there won't be any profit because Zooby charges per script, and demands we have a store to be an affiliate. On the other hand, Zooby feels stable, but so too did Petable Turtles in their day. My One and I have a bunch of tasks left before we can spend 3000L for the child and 3500L for a developer kit to make clothes:

1. Purchase and bring home ("hump") two twenty pound bags of cat litter (not on the same trip).
2. Purchase a carrier for wearing our baby.
3. Purchase supplies for washing, feeding, and diapering our baby. This is not a huge expense and pay as you go, even if you want tokens or more interactivity.
4. Learn about travelling with a Zooby baby. There is not much on the web site about this and it is VERY IMPORTANT
5. Make two more sets of bedding.
6. My One needs to do thirty minutes of housework six days a week in the Maggie Mae apartment. She wants it to become a habit.

Since we pulvarize obstacles, my One and I both have confidence that we'll meet our September 6 due date for our son. In a way it is good to see my One's trust in others return. Purchasing and caring for a Zooby Baby is after all, all about trust.

Iyoba BatOni and Eileen H. Kramer -- August 14, 2015

Under a New, Blue Sky in the Uncanny Valley

No, we do not yet have our Zooby Baby, but we have a tentative date for his arrival, September 6, 2015. We have enough prims to support him (Yes, I am going to have a son... I know what he will look like. I know his name. I'm not telling you!). We have a way to get the large investment in both baby and development kit for making clothes. In case you are curious and even if you're not, the outlay for all of this is 6,500 L or $26.00.

According to my One Who Thinks She Knows, $26.00 is a lot of money to spend on "entertainment" or virtual goods. It needs to come out of her cat litter budget. If she hauls two bags of cat litter to the apartment instead of having them delivered she will save $28.00. Since my One has a complete bag of litter in the apartment right now, the first haul is scheduled for the week after next and then two weeks after that for haul number two.

According to my One, the very act of buying a Zooby (a development kit is more expensive and less controversial as is paying for the baby's upkeep and development) Baby is weird, freaky, and in another word transgressive. Some things ought not to be duplicated. Some virtual duplicates never measure up. People who pretend to have babies and who buy virtual ones are deluded. Are you tired of this? My One is. If you ever wondered where one buys a virtual baby it is at the main store on Zoobyville. This is what it really looks like.

My One and I visited the store last night to get prim counts on babies and furniture, and also prices. We met a Spanish speaking couple with a Stage 11 (Zooby babies grow though sixty some stages. How many actually make it to approximately age five is unknown. My One condsiders herself an expert in Zooby economics.)female baby named Africa. Costs for a Zooby are front loaded, which is a very sound way of dealing with attrition. Chatting with the couple was fun, but my One wondered if they were scared we were scamming them. We were just trying to learn. Now on to those costs. Put simply, Zooby's require three pieces of furniture: a dressing table, a bath tub, and a crib. This is the two prim model of the playpen/crib. It's the economy crib, but it would go with our home.

Here is the dressing table and tub, both highly improved and modified in our home at Stinky Stinky. We put the finishing touches on these beauties in the sandbox at Sheridan College. We're still bushwhacking and my One wants to take a break from Zooby-ism and make me a dress.

And here is a closeup of the customized Zooby bathtub. It does not shine. The texture on the heart shaped tub provides an illusion of depth. The cilendars are possibly home prims and faucets. My One was afraid to mess with those. There is also a suction cup mat that is more absorbant and prettier than the original. The plants are horsetails and the birds are tropical, kingfishers. The tub is gender neutral, which my One thinks is only right.

And this is a close up, top down view of the modified Modernesque Zooby Dressing Table. It's low prim (only seven instead of thirty) and yes, that is a design of beans on the changing pad. My One says that in "real life" changing pads come in all sorts of colors and patterns. The dancing fava beans reflect a ruthless One's sense of humor. After all, a changing pad is where one would encounter.... in "real life" My One doubts that Zooby Babies make virtual turds and farts. The Zwickies do fart, but that is another story. Still, the changing pad is kind of where virtual beans go to virtually die, and besides, those dancing beans are rather cute.

Of course there is a missing piece of furniture. While all the new stuff, goes with the Not a Handsome Home at Stinky Stinky, my old hair curl bed stuck out like a sore thumb and it took three prims. My One wanted to make me a canopy bed that went with the new house and which used fewer prims.

My One's idea was to put my current bed inside a ring shaped sculpty and texture it to form both legs and a canopy. We would get rid of the night table and thus gain three prims on my furniture. Remember every prim counts. The wheel we tried first for the bed frame turned out to have too small a hole.

A ring with partial closure worked better. This is a sculpty that comes out of the box sized for a finger. Fortunately, a good stretch fixed everything. By now of course we had textures. Yes, those are five frogs on my mattress. Cartoon prints are not just for kids.

As for the canopy, I was not thrilled with the texture, but my One and I tweaked it, slid it around and sure enough.... it makes a credible canopy, and it goes with the Not a Handsome Home's decor. Our little Zooby boy is going to live in the world's most beautiful one room shack. He will be a prince who bathes in a heart shaped tub and has dancing beans entertain him when I change his diapers which are never full of virtual.....

I also plan to take the baby skiing. This carrier is really quite reasonable at 150L (.60) and will make it possible. Of course our little one will need a snow suit. I guess that is where our development kit will come in. My One reminds herself that like Petable Turtles, Lily Frogs, and even Zwickies, no one makes money on Zooby babies, except of course Zooby.

And no, our Zooby boy still needs a crib. A bedding kit is a lot less expensive than a Developer Kit for clothes. Buying individual clothes is pricey too. All Zooby clothes are scripted, and the scripts are 90L a piece. Merchants must pass the script price along as well as their rent. This prevents the bottom from dropping out of the market, though it probably puts a drag on demand. My One finds the business model fascinating, but she too longs for our son. I wonder if setting a due date/birthday for our Zooby boy makes me pregnant? My One thinks we are adopting. I don't want to walk around with a tummy talker. I do want to breast feed. Zooby makes a vitamin pill for that. And if you hate Zoobys, well too bad, because as you now know, there is more to come.

Iyoba BatOni with Eileen H. Kramer -- August 6, 2015

KLUNK! Boom! Kerpow!

That is the sound obstacles to our Zooby dream make when my One smashes them. It is hard to believe that a month ago, my One and I did not have a name picked out for our child. We did not even know it's sex. A newborn baby has a sex. I don't think he even knows what gender is. I've been asked to keep both a secret. We even know which model of Zooby we will purchase. My One has asked me to keep all of this a secret.

My One has even gotten rid of her phobia of taking Zooby-related photos. This is a communal crib at Play n' Learn Park. This is where Zooby parents can bring their offspring, rez them, and take care of them. It is slow to rezz on Maggie Mae, but if we are patient, it does not usually crash. Play n' Learn Park serves a VERY IMPORTAN T function. Zooby babies take One avatar teams deep into a place called the Uncanny Valley. This is where you commit the taboo act of faking life that shouldn't be faked, faking it imperfectly, and getting into your fakeness as if it were real. The Uncanny Valley is a scarey place to venture alone. Play n' Learn Park helps Zooby owners make the journey together. Prospective parents are welcome as well.

My One is curious what sort of avie-One teams have Zooby offspring. Everyone seems nice enough so far. The Zoobys are too young to say much. That's not unusual. The parents say how much they like their offspring. That is not unusual. My One is surprised with how many families have multiple adult members and multiple Zooby offsping. By the way, my One does not think Zoobys can use much of the equipment. She thinks that is for child avatarim who are also often parts of such families. We haven't seen any child avatarim yet, but it would be a shame for all this nice play equipment to go to waste.

And yes, I still like to test out playground equipment in my spare time. Here I am trying gymnastics on the jungle gym. My One says it keeps me from getting a little round, and I like that it increases my strength or at least feels that way.

And my One's tweaks to Maggie Mae are partially successful. It has been months since I danced at a club using that computer, but the music played and we didn't crash when I went to Mojo Haven on Terra Delta. I could dance. I could talk. People used scripts responsibly so I had an enjoyable evening.

True Mojo Haven plays oldies. They call them blues, but my One thinks the music while fun is ancient. I would love to hear some Portuguese/Brazilian funk or some techno. Deepmix.ru has disappeared from Shoutcast. My One worries about Dima who runs it, but there is not much she can do. If Maggie Mae works well enough for me to dance in some clubs again, it also works well enough for us to tend a Zooby child!

And my One is even growing more maternal and responsible. She found this zwicklet in stasis by my outdoor bed at Stinky Stinky. He is a genuine tricolor, and my One even named him on the spot. She was going to use one of our baby names, Euclid, but this beautiful and very rare, male, giant size, zwicklet was Goliath.

Goliath is in stasis waiting for his sisters to be born. There is just one problem with this cozy family scene. Goliath has stirred ruthless thoughts in my One's heart. She wants to retire (kill!) Geronimo and replace him with Goliath. She says he will birth more easily due to his size. I have told my One Who Thinks She Knows "NO!"

Just saying "NO!" to a One Who Thinks She Knows is of course not a very efffective strategy. Telling her to go bushwack works much better, and is even enjoyable. Here I am playing bongo drums on the top floor of the Nasquali Art Museum on Evergreen Island 2.

And I got to dance with meteors at the Mars Meteor Crater exhibit on Exploratorium. There are seats, but who wants to take an exhibit like this sitting down, and yes night photography (NOT MIDNIGHT) settings are best.

Of course all this bushwhacking inspired my One to create great sky settings. I've had a brown, light polluted night before, but this one is elegant. It also made a fantastic backdrop for the rockets at Spaceport Alpha. There are rockets from all over the world there, including Russian and Chinese. Usually my eyes glaze over when walking through fields of this kind of thing. This time, I really enjoyed myself.

Of course my One always wonders how educational sims stay in business. Some like the SploLand have deep pockets or else, are so famous that Linden Labs subsidizes them. They geton official, must-see tourguides. Actually the Splo is a lot of fun with plenty to see and do though the Pi exhibits and some of the illusions are duplicates with the Exploratorium. The sliding rope in the main exhibit building works especially well.

Then on Monday afternoon, Pretty Orli returned. That doesn't leave very many obstacles between our Zooby child and us. Here you can see our heart shaped, kingfisher, bath tub. Our little one will bathe like royalty! We need a better changing pad on the changing table and better mats for both tub and table. We have a crib to customize and reverse engineer, and then there's the clothing development kits. They cost more than the baby. Zooby front loads its licenses. To free up the money for this most expensive (by Second Life Standards) purchase, my One plans to postpone kitty litter delivery and haul a twenty pound bag of litter to the house. She says this will save her the cost of the developer kit. When she wants more expensive Zooby items, she will haul more litter. We've still got a few weeks before all the obstacles are gone. I wait...patiently...well maybe not too patiently.

Iyoba BatOni and Eileen H. Kramer -- August 4, 2015

Come Back Soon Pretty Orli

For a person who is somewhat conflicted and probably only half-interested in acquiring a Zooby Baby, my One Who Thinks She Knows keeps smashing obstacles to our Zooby dreams. She has solved the money issue, the land issue. Our child will be male. She is down to two choices for a name, and has good reasons for one choice. She has asked me to keep the name a secret. Now she has laid to rest the biggest obstacle yet. Pretty Orli, our 64 bit and very new computer is going away due to construction. "No problem," my One says. She has made some adjustments to Maggie Mae, and Pretty Orli will return in two weeks. We, of course can wait.

Ironically, one thing we never did, even at the height of my One's Zooby mania was take a lot of photos of Zoobys or their acoutrements. We just didn't. I think my One felt shame at her craving which at times was an obsession. I finally told her to take some photos. In fact, I insisted.

Well, we got one picture anyway, one good enough for the blog that is. This is a nonmesh, Zooby, bath tub. My One and I both think it is ugly and the brown base model is not much better. It is dull. It uses too many prims. It is modifiable into something grand or at least with personality and imagination. We'll have an unmodified copy in inventory in case we trash it. It's our next project but we will not have a Zooby to bathe for two weeks....remember what is happening to Pretty Orli.

So what have we been doing? My One has started to bushwhack her way out of her grief and anger at Nivea et famille as well as the impending loss of Pretty Orli. Here I am putting out a fire in the pathology lab on HKU Medicine Island. The last time we visited, several years ago, there were just empty buildings. This tutorial is relatively new and we learned about it in a group of links at the Yamato Memorial.

The link board on Yamato Memorial was a game changer, and that was an understatement. Suddenly our bushwhacking spilled bagfuls of beans. It still will do it, though I'll have to move more slowly when my One logs in through Maggie Mae. Where have I gone? Where have I not gone? I've been to the bottom of the sea at the recently moved, Abyss Observatory.

I've been to the fantastic, Otovan Opisto Space Station on EduFinland II, a space station with its own, rainforest and vermin control officer.

Yes, here is the Vermin Control Officer hard at work. She keeps those little pesky alien rats in line and disposes of stowaways. You can see she enjoys her work, and my One enjoyed seeing her. My One just plain enjoys animals, even sculpty animals in zoo cages.

And speaking of zoos, here are some orangutans at the Cascade Zoo. For some reason, Second Life zoos made my One happier than she has been in weeks. She said she was not sure why she felt so good. She knew the sculpty animals were not "real," but they were realistic enough that they reminded her of the real thing. Also where she lives zoo admission is $29 (multipy that by 250 to get the cost in Lindens) and other Ones who don't have avatarim say that Second Life is a waste of money.

Of course Second Life's zoo animals are also bots, which means they work and unlike breedables don't reproduce. This pands is on duty collecting donations at the Parktown Zoo. Neither my One nor I knew Second Life had two zoos!

Of course my favorite part of any bushwhacking is the rides. This is kind of ironic because usually my One Who Thinks She Knows insists I get down to work, and we are too busy... Still my One was in a good enough mood to let me take rides at both the Parktown and Oasis Zoos.

Of course sometimes my One has no choice. To get the most out of University of Hawaii HHS' Plaque Attack I had to ride a red blood cell through a clogged artery where it got stuck and bounced around quite a bit. For some reason this kind of ride did not make my One motion sick. She gets that way when rockets vibrate, like the one that took me to the Otovan Opisto Space Station.

Of course my One wanted to miss nothing, especially when exhibits were sim size like the Yamato Memorial. We walked all over the island, explored ships, looked at airplanes, climbed to and in the light house, and rode the amazing train under the sea. It was how I got my new dress wet. I always have to get my new dress wet.

As I write this blog, it is now only hours until my One loses Pretty Orli. She is coming back. We don't have to worry. The name my One wants to use for our Zooby (Sorry it's a secret because she could still change her mind) has to do with our powerlessness in the face of bigger forces. "We just kind of have to roll with it," and enjoy the ride, my One explained. I guess she kind of sees herself like the sea turtle I rode on this merry go round at the Parktown Zoo. There's a stick through her back, and she and I are both going to have to go round in circles quite a few times before we even think we're getting anywhere. That's just the way it is...for now.

Iyoba BatOni with Eileen H. Kramer and written on Pretty Orli -- July 24, 2015

Eileen and Iyoba's Do It Better 2014 Roster
Name of Place	Why it Qualifies
TOV Korea	Ride the Witch Coaster. "Shop" in Korean stores. Visit a Korean museum and memorial. This sim vanished in March, 2015.
The Grand Canyon	So much to do in a great setting. Climb ropes, rapell, canoe, or just relax. Who knew the great outdoors could be this great, and Mt. Everest is right next door (no kidding!)
The Adventure of Ruin	Indiana Jones meets a Japanese, Second Life, orientation course, but somehow it all works and it is gorgeous, scarey, and simply great fun.
Plusia Ars Island	Music, sculpture, architecture, furniture, and romance, all on one island. Give newbies what they want...and more.
Hokkaido Japan	Where retail and entertainment meet art and stay just inches clear of kitsch. Fly it. Ride it. Walk it. Puzzle it. Enjoy this authentic introduction to a different culture on an island that welcomes visitors.
SL Israel	Israel's "official presence" in Second Life. Learn about Middle Eastern and Jewish culture and religion while visiting, museums, the sea shore, the souk, and two synagogues.
The 109 Prim Circus	High above the Drill Factory is a fantasy realm where it is always steel, grey night. You can ride the carousels, walk under crystal trees, shop, or just explore the puzzles at the bottom of the moon. This sim vanished in January, 2015.
Momo Pet Land	One sweet, peach, of a classic, Japanese amusement park. There is an onsen, an art museum, pig races, a haunted house and more.
Africa Live	Celebrate African music, culture, and textiles in a club and shopping mall. Learn about African ecology on a beach next to a mangrove forest. Swim, wind surf, or ride a flying machine.