"Base Camp One"

Dear Diary,

Following the loss of the house in Somersley (end of March), I talked a great deal to my Aunt Vivienne about the whole situation. I have an alt, who runs a store, and she had some land that was 'on the way out'.. an old store that she'd long since outgrown. Our original plan (I say "our", but it's just me) was to put up a little skybox on that land for me to live in while I waited for Mommy to come back to SL.

I was worried that if Mommy did come back, and found me living comfortably in a fancy house someplace.. she might shy away from trying to rebuild our family.. that she might feel she was "taking me away from the happiness I had". I was determined to keep things as spartan and basic as possible.

Aunt Vivienne had other ideas. Not only did she push the money into my pockets, but she all but forced me to rent a plot of land next to Mari's house!

I rented the parcel there for 7 weeks in advance. Figuring that I'd keep my finger on it that way, if Mommy didn't come back by the end of April, I could decide then if I wanted to buy the land.

"Base Camp One"

Well as should be obvious by now, April came and went, and Mommy didn't return.

So I contacted the guy who was renting me the land, and together we hatched a plan. I gave him my old parcel where the store had once been, and he gave me a discount on the new land. Since I was planning to abandon the land, it was amazing to get any value at all for it. Ended up shaving about 3500L$ off his asking price for the land. (to be fair, the land is special, as it's sort of in the "Suburbs" of Bay City.)

It was still an expensive purchase. There's no denying that. But I'd planned to spend about two weeks hemming and hawing, and dragging my feet still hoping that Mommy would return. But within half an hour of contacting the land owner, I'd become the new owner of the land.

My original plans for Beltane had been to log in, do some of the unpleasant tasks like removing the "family" tab from my blog, cleaning up my profile, reverting my username, etc.. nothing I was looking forward to, but work that really did need to happen. Then to round out the day with new clothes shopping, and some rethinking of my avatar's shape.

Instead, my fun money was all drained away (and then some!), and I was left basically broke, but holding land I rilly wanted to have.

So my retail therapy will have to be postponed a week or two (or three).

Still, I now have the very best neighbors in all of SL. Faced with that, waiting a couple of weeks to buy new clothes doesn't seem all that bad.