STACEY:
I had my newest experiment ready to send online. I had the laptop hooked up to the image-mailer and was ready to go that sunny Saturday in May of 2027. If this worked, it could change the voltage direction of electricity. I'd been doing a lot of experimenting with different substances. My main career is an engineer, but this is sort of my side career. I got the signal and hit the "send" button on my laptop, which was cradled in my lap as I slouched on the floor of my bedroom beside the generator. *Mail Received!* flashed up on the screen. *Yyyes!* I mouthed. I heard the *brrrip* of the phone in the hall, but let my nine-year-old daughter Syrie get it.
"Mom..." A second later, she was heading into my room. "It's Kristy...should I tell her you're busy or can you pick up?"
"It's all right, I can pick up, dear," I stood up, put my laptop on my desk and took the phone.
"Hard at work on this spring Saturday already!" Kristy crowed. "Suspected that!" We both laughed as I sat on the bed.
"You guessed it," I told her a little about the latest experiment I'm working on. "So...how're the wedding plans coming along?" I asked. Kristy, who lives in Two Skies, Minnesota is getting married to a Shane Arrington in July. It'll be a second for both of them, since they'd been through the married route before. So have I. I was married to a Jon Metrick and had a son, Larry. But sadly, four years ago, Larry died in an accident in the lake behind my house. He fell through ice and drowned. Jon and I by that time were having marital troubles and Larry's death blew apart the remains of our marriage. Thank the stars Jon and I aren't bitter towards each other. We both live close by here in Vermont. And I'm grateful I have Syrie.
"...and I have the traditional snail mail invitations on my desk, so I'll get them mailed out this week, I promise," Kristy put in. She'd already sent all of us in the original BSC invitations by e-mail.
"Hey, that's great," I put on my glasses and looked over the news of the day on my laptop as I listened to Kristy rattle on more details of the wedding and of how Claudia, one of our other BSC friends was doing. Claudia also lives in Two Skies, right in Kristy's neighborhood. They're both businesswomen...Kristy's the CEO of KAT Furniture and Appliances while Claudia owns an advertising firm.
"Hey, Tamara's supposed to graduate from eighth grade this month, right?" Kristy asked.
"Yeah, that's right," I nodded. "Hard to believe some of our kids are teenagers. Mary Anne says it brings back memories of when we were that age." We both chuckled. "Speaking of teenagers and independence and all...what do you think of Puerto Rico wanting independence from the States?" I'd just seen the latest news clip of Puerto Ricans gathering in San Juan for a conference on drafting a formal declaration of independence from the United States.
"Hey, they should go for it," Kristy said and I could just picture her raising her fist into the air. "And speaking of which...you think Stoneybrook's going to be its own city soon?"
"I hope so." I flipped off my laptop. "I guess it'll be up to the people in the old town next fall."
"Including some of our parents and old neighbors," Kristy put in. We talked more, then eventually hung up. We grew up there, so we affectionately refer to Stoneybrook, Connecticut as the "old town." My mom still lives there as well as Dawn's mom, Claudia's parents, Abby and Anna Stevenson's mom and some of our old baby-sitting clients from our teen years. In addition, the fifteenth generation of the BSC is in full swing there. The Baby-Sitters Club, or BSC started out a long time ago, way back when we were in seventh grade in the 1990's with just four of us. Then it grew to seven, then by the time we were in eleventh grade, we had ten members. By the time we got to be seniors in high school, we wanted the BSC to continue, but knew we'd be leaving Stoneybrook for college. So, Kristy, who's full of great ideas, decided to train our former BSC charges, who were then middle-school age, to take over the club after we graduated. It worked and over the years, as the then large town of Stoneybrook grew, more branches of the BSC formed around there. Now, Stoneybrook has grown so large that it is being considered for cityhood. The Stoneybrook voters would decide that in November. That was six months away, but it seemed longer.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
KRISTY:
"Sooo, Mom, are Lauren and Jennifer coming tonight?" my youngest, Elizabeth asked me as she pulled out forks to put on the table.
"They sure are," I told her. "In fact, Shane is bringing them for dinner, so go ahead and put out three extra places for them."
"Good." She grinned, her brown eyes lighting up as she pulled out more silverware as I slid the burner toward the back of the stove and put the automatic shut-off on an hour. Jennifer and Lauren are Shane's twin daughters and are almost eighteen, the same age as my second-to-oldest, Karen. Hard to believe in the fall, Karen will be ready for college and my oldest, David, will be twenty next year. He was here for the weekend and was here for dinner as well. Two more years and he'll graduate from Hoboken U. Karen's headed to Hartford U. in Connecticut in the fall, which is about two hours from the old town, Stoneybrook. Yep, our old town where my friends in the original BSC grew up. It was all so long ago, back in the twentieth century. I'd gone to college in New York City along with two of my friends, Mona and Mary Anne. That was also where I met Shane Arrington at first. At that time, it was when the Taliban War was raging in the Middle East and we were mapping out our careers. Shane and I had hit it off, then by our second year at Fellowdean, where Shane and I had been students, we were going steady and having sex. Mary Anne and Mona along with two of their current neighbors, Greta and Wiser, had gone to Staten U. We'd often gone out together and in NYC, there's always so much to do and see. But when we all graduated from college, Shane got a job offer in Illinois as a lab technician while I stayed in New York and did internet programming while I started my business, KAT furniture and appliances. Our relationship had lapsed slowly. I smiled as I remembered how back then, there were few appliances made for left-handers like Mary Anne, Shane, and me. The business took off and by the time I was twenty-two, it had expanded and that year, I moved out here to Two Skies, Minnesota. A year later, I'd met Carl Bineware and a year after that, we'd married and I'd had my five kids...David, Karen, Micheal, Michelle, then Liz. Carl and I had been happy when the kids were small, but gradually, we'd drifted apart and split up. Thank the stars it wasn't a bitter divorce and we were mostly cordial. The kids see their dad regularly. Then last year, I ran into Shane again at a sports fair. It turned out he was divorced also and is a veterinarian like Mona. He and I talked and we got to know one another again. I found out he lives in Two Skies, Minnesota and that he had twin daughters. We started going out and I met his daughters and even his ex-wife, Claire a couple of times. She's an architect. She and her daughters are nice. Shane and Claire now share custody of Lauren and Jenny.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
MICHELLE:
"...so everyone cracked up when Beri told the class that the Taliban soldiers had their tents stolen and that was why they went on that rampage and ended up losing the war," I told everyone at dinner that night. We've been studying the Taliban War in modern U.S. history these past few weeks. If you call the early 2000's modern. But then again, most of our parents had lived through that, so it probably was.
"Dad, you remember that war, right?" Lauren asked Shane.
"Yes, I do," Shane and Mom looked across the table at each other. Their college years, I thought.
"Is that true that some soldiers were so shocked that they fainted when they saw what was going on in the purging homes?" I asked.
"It was," Mom told me. "We knew that women were being persecuted there, but none of us really knew the extent or how far it had gone." I'd read about the Mysoginocide in history. Women were accused on trumped-up charges of false things and were taken to these houses without windows and one locked door and beaten, sometimes starved, sometimes raped, and often had body parts mutilated. It had been really awful for women in Afghanistan of the late 1990's to 2000's. It was too bad that it took a war to free them which started in the fall of 2001 and lasted a few years, but thank the stars Afghanistan is a free country now. It's odd to think that that happened in my mom's lifetime, some of these backward, awful things happened.
I had my newest experiment ready to send online. I had the laptop hooked up to the image-mailer and was ready to go that sunny Saturday in May of 2027. If this worked, it could change the voltage direction of electricity. I'd been doing a lot of experimenting with different substances. My main career is an engineer, but this is sort of my side career. I got the signal and hit the "send" button on my laptop, which was cradled in my lap as I slouched on the floor of my bedroom beside the generator. *Mail Received!* flashed up on the screen. *Yyyes!* I mouthed. I heard the *brrrip* of the phone in the hall, but let my nine-year-old daughter Syrie get it.
"Mom..." A second later, she was heading into my room. "It's Kristy...should I tell her you're busy or can you pick up?"
"It's all right, I can pick up, dear," I stood up, put my laptop on my desk and took the phone.
"Hard at work on this spring Saturday already!" Kristy crowed. "Suspected that!" We both laughed as I sat on the bed.
"You guessed it," I told her a little about the latest experiment I'm working on. "So...how're the wedding plans coming along?" I asked. Kristy, who lives in Two Skies, Minnesota is getting married to a Shane Arrington in July. It'll be a second for both of them, since they'd been through the married route before. So have I. I was married to a Jon Metrick and had a son, Larry. But sadly, four years ago, Larry died in an accident in the lake behind my house. He fell through ice and drowned. Jon and I by that time were having marital troubles and Larry's death blew apart the remains of our marriage. Thank the stars Jon and I aren't bitter towards each other. We both live close by here in Vermont. And I'm grateful I have Syrie.
"...and I have the traditional snail mail invitations on my desk, so I'll get them mailed out this week, I promise," Kristy put in. She'd already sent all of us in the original BSC invitations by e-mail.
"Hey, that's great," I put on my glasses and looked over the news of the day on my laptop as I listened to Kristy rattle on more details of the wedding and of how Claudia, one of our other BSC friends was doing. Claudia also lives in Two Skies, right in Kristy's neighborhood. They're both businesswomen...Kristy's the CEO of KAT Furniture and Appliances while Claudia owns an advertising firm.
"Hey, Tamara's supposed to graduate from eighth grade this month, right?" Kristy asked.
"Yeah, that's right," I nodded. "Hard to believe some of our kids are teenagers. Mary Anne says it brings back memories of when we were that age." We both chuckled. "Speaking of teenagers and independence and all...what do you think of Puerto Rico wanting independence from the States?" I'd just seen the latest news clip of Puerto Ricans gathering in San Juan for a conference on drafting a formal declaration of independence from the United States.
"Hey, they should go for it," Kristy said and I could just picture her raising her fist into the air. "And speaking of which...you think Stoneybrook's going to be its own city soon?"
"I hope so." I flipped off my laptop. "I guess it'll be up to the people in the old town next fall."
"Including some of our parents and old neighbors," Kristy put in. We talked more, then eventually hung up. We grew up there, so we affectionately refer to Stoneybrook, Connecticut as the "old town." My mom still lives there as well as Dawn's mom, Claudia's parents, Abby and Anna Stevenson's mom and some of our old baby-sitting clients from our teen years. In addition, the fifteenth generation of the BSC is in full swing there. The Baby-Sitters Club, or BSC started out a long time ago, way back when we were in seventh grade in the 1990's with just four of us. Then it grew to seven, then by the time we were in eleventh grade, we had ten members. By the time we got to be seniors in high school, we wanted the BSC to continue, but knew we'd be leaving Stoneybrook for college. So, Kristy, who's full of great ideas, decided to train our former BSC charges, who were then middle-school age, to take over the club after we graduated. It worked and over the years, as the then large town of Stoneybrook grew, more branches of the BSC formed around there. Now, Stoneybrook has grown so large that it is being considered for cityhood. The Stoneybrook voters would decide that in November. That was six months away, but it seemed longer.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
KRISTY:
"Sooo, Mom, are Lauren and Jennifer coming tonight?" my youngest, Elizabeth asked me as she pulled out forks to put on the table.
"They sure are," I told her. "In fact, Shane is bringing them for dinner, so go ahead and put out three extra places for them."
"Good." She grinned, her brown eyes lighting up as she pulled out more silverware as I slid the burner toward the back of the stove and put the automatic shut-off on an hour. Jennifer and Lauren are Shane's twin daughters and are almost eighteen, the same age as my second-to-oldest, Karen. Hard to believe in the fall, Karen will be ready for college and my oldest, David, will be twenty next year. He was here for the weekend and was here for dinner as well. Two more years and he'll graduate from Hoboken U. Karen's headed to Hartford U. in Connecticut in the fall, which is about two hours from the old town, Stoneybrook. Yep, our old town where my friends in the original BSC grew up. It was all so long ago, back in the twentieth century. I'd gone to college in New York City along with two of my friends, Mona and Mary Anne. That was also where I met Shane Arrington at first. At that time, it was when the Taliban War was raging in the Middle East and we were mapping out our careers. Shane and I had hit it off, then by our second year at Fellowdean, where Shane and I had been students, we were going steady and having sex. Mary Anne and Mona along with two of their current neighbors, Greta and Wiser, had gone to Staten U. We'd often gone out together and in NYC, there's always so much to do and see. But when we all graduated from college, Shane got a job offer in Illinois as a lab technician while I stayed in New York and did internet programming while I started my business, KAT furniture and appliances. Our relationship had lapsed slowly. I smiled as I remembered how back then, there were few appliances made for left-handers like Mary Anne, Shane, and me. The business took off and by the time I was twenty-two, it had expanded and that year, I moved out here to Two Skies, Minnesota. A year later, I'd met Carl Bineware and a year after that, we'd married and I'd had my five kids...David, Karen, Micheal, Michelle, then Liz. Carl and I had been happy when the kids were small, but gradually, we'd drifted apart and split up. Thank the stars it wasn't a bitter divorce and we were mostly cordial. The kids see their dad regularly. Then last year, I ran into Shane again at a sports fair. It turned out he was divorced also and is a veterinarian like Mona. He and I talked and we got to know one another again. I found out he lives in Two Skies, Minnesota and that he had twin daughters. We started going out and I met his daughters and even his ex-wife, Claire a couple of times. She's an architect. She and her daughters are nice. Shane and Claire now share custody of Lauren and Jenny.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
MICHELLE:
"...so everyone cracked up when Beri told the class that the Taliban soldiers had their tents stolen and that was why they went on that rampage and ended up losing the war," I told everyone at dinner that night. We've been studying the Taliban War in modern U.S. history these past few weeks. If you call the early 2000's modern. But then again, most of our parents had lived through that, so it probably was.
"Dad, you remember that war, right?" Lauren asked Shane.
"Yes, I do," Shane and Mom looked across the table at each other. Their college years, I thought.
"Is that true that some soldiers were so shocked that they fainted when they saw what was going on in the purging homes?" I asked.
"It was," Mom told me. "We knew that women were being persecuted there, but none of us really knew the extent or how far it had gone." I'd read about the Mysoginocide in history. Women were accused on trumped-up charges of false things and were taken to these houses without windows and one locked door and beaten, sometimes starved, sometimes raped, and often had body parts mutilated. It had been really awful for women in Afghanistan of the late 1990's to 2000's. It was too bad that it took a war to free them which started in the fall of 2001 and lasted a few years, but thank the stars Afghanistan is a free country now. It's odd to think that that happened in my mom's lifetime, some of these backward, awful things happened.
