Morning Deliberations

The next morning, you get up more eagerly than ever before. You spring out of bed and fly through your morning ritual, despite still getting acquainted to the new place. With a pep in your step, and the biggest grin on your face, you head towards the kitchen area to get something for breakfast before the big day.

As quick as you were to get ready, you are surprised to see your Mom already sitting at the kitchen counter, sipping a cup of coffee and finishing up her breakfast. She looks up from her phone as she hears your footsteps approaching. "Oh look who's finally up," she says in a playful, teasing voice. "I couldn't sleep, so I got up and did some reconnaissance!" Her voice changes as she is visibly excited over the information she has found and is about to divulge.

You can't help but smile and giggle a little seeing your Mom acting like a little kid on Christmas. You haven't seen her this happy in a while. "Oh ya? Just how long HAVE you been up, Mom?"

Her eyes dropped and her head tilted downward in momentary shame before slowly looking back up. She appeared to almost wince as she quietly said "I'm not sure that i ever really went to sleep...." Her voice trailed off at the end as she looked at you, anticipating your reaction.

"Mom!" You said with some sternness in your voice, but ultimately you both knew that you weren't serious.

"I know! I know!" She threw up both hands as if to surrender. "I laid there for a while trying to sleep before I finally gave up and got up. It was after 2 or so. I don't really remember exactly."

You walk up and take a seat next to her, shaking your head side to side, but with a smile on your face. "I get it. I had trouble sleeping too, to be honest." You reach out and grab a piece of toast off her plate and take a quick bite out of it, as if you're trying to stake claim to it before she has time to protest. With the food still in your mouth you ask, "So what did you find during your reconnaissance?"

Your Mom pushes the plate over to you, willingly giving you her leftovers, which were quite a bit to be fair. She must not be very hungry either. "So one of the first things we need to figure out is what all are we going to want them to do. For instance, people like us..... like we USED to be, are lucky if they can afford 1, let alone more than 1. So many of them choose to get 1 that can do everything. This limits their options as not every character can do everything well, or sometimes even at all."

You nod intently as you continue to listen and eat her leftover breakfast. She continues, "But that's not really a problem we currently have. So while I'm not saying we shouldn't get some just for "fun," but i was thinking we could kill two birds with one stone and staff our new mansion with characters in various positions that they are both good at, plus we would LIKE to see them in those positions, if you know what i mean..." your Mom winks as she says that last part.

You can't help but laugh at this, thinking about how far she's come out of her shell just recently. "Yeah that makes sense. Do we know what positions all need filled?"

"Well i have a short list I've come up with so far, but i figured we could ultimately go over it together." Your Mom hands you a piece of paper that has a few different lists on it. She points to 1 in particular, "this one here."

You glance at the list as you continue chewing your food. Most of it looks pretty standard as far as you can tell. You notice a couple with question marks on them and a few have been crossed out, but the list is pretty extensive, and of course can be ever-evolving. "Ya, that makes sense. Fill the roles and then maybe get 1 or 2 for ourselves just for fun. Or 3 or 4, you know. We can see how it goes"

Your Mom giggles at your indecisiveness. "Ya, we can play it all by ear. Who knows, we may not know we have a position that needs filled until we find someone to fill it." She chuckles at her own cleverness. "But anyways, the next big thing really is where to go. Everything else really has to be kinda picked out as we go. I read about it, but it's some whole process they call an "experience." Every place is a little different, but ultimately the end results all come out the same, more or less."

"Okay, well sounds like we better decide where to go. You didn't happen to look up where we need to go, did you?" You ask this as a question, but after seeing how thorough she has already been, you kinda figure that you already know the answer.

She rustles around with some other papers she has in front of her until she finds the 1 she was looking for. "So basically at this point, these places are like car lots; just about every town has one. Each one can acquire anyone or anything you want, but if they don't have it in stock, there's a wait and delivery delay." She continued, "There's even a lively "used" market that of course will vary by location"

"Well that doesn't narrow it down very well," you say as you finish the leftover food you were eating.

"No, not really. However, we can narrow it down to a few options, but honestly, with the money we have now, the options of where to go are endless." She says with a little amazement still in her voice. "We can go to our local dealer here in town and see what they've got. It'll be quickest, but will probably have the least options available on hand, so we may be waiting anyway..... Then there's one of the towns nearby. They all have larger dealers, but not necessarily by a lot. A couple are decent size."

You are in awe at the level of detail in this report she is giving you. She carries on without missing a beat, seemingly excited and impassioned by the topic at hand. "Then we could go to the nearest corporate store location, but that's about 2 hours away. However, all corporate stores have Warehouses on site with the majority of all goods avaliable on hand at anytime."

"Or we could go to the Nation's largest in California. Hell we could go to World's largest in, well i don't where yet cause i actually didn't think about International." She turned from excited to thoughtful as the realization of their actual options are still processing in her head. "I mean we could go literally wherever we want. It's up to you though, i don't really care where we go so long as i get to pick out a couple for myself...." She started to blush a little as she was still getting used to actually being able to be selfish after being selfless for so long raising me on her own.

She shook her head a little as if to shake the embarrassment out of her thoughts. It seemed to work as she straightened back up and looked at you as she said, "Well? Which is it? Where do you want to go?