Post by Sour Grapes on May 16, 2010 10:22:18 GMT -5
This is seven pages on Microsoft Word! I had an unexpected amount of free time on a rainy night.
Disclaimers: I own nothing related to Arthur. Most of the characters and some of the settings mentioned are copyrighted to Marc Brown and PBS, respectively. The others are from my imagination. Adults are referred to by first names in this profile because Sophia herself is an adult. As I could not make mention of the 1990s due to the Arthur time loop, one part of Sophia's history is less detailed than the other parts. No, I did not get the idea for the name "Joy" from Charlotte's Web. I was trying to think of a parallel for my daughter Jubilee's name.
Edit: I don't know why the link to an outfit is not working. It worked yesterday. The website might be members only.
Without further ado...
Name:
Sophia Lenore Ratburn (given name); Sophia Lenore Ratburn-Haney (married name)
Aliases:
None
Gender:
Female
Species:
Anthropomorphic Rat
Place of Birth:
London Borough of Lambeth, Greater London, England, UK
Age Range:
Early Midlife
Alignment:
Lawful Good
Build:
Tall and of a generally slender physique, albeit with a midsection on the chubby side. She is the heaviest of her siblings as a result of having four kids and a house filled with junk food, but she is in fair shape.
Other Physical Traits:
Sophia has light dusty blonde hair that she leaves wavy and natural. Her skin tone is slightly lighter than that of her siblings, taking after her mother in regards to skin tone and hair color. She clips her whiskers, and the result is that she can appear to have six freckles near her nose. She looks to be slightly younger than her years, although how much of this is indeed her facial appearance and how much is in the way she dresses and behaves is up for debate. Her clothing style is a blend of bohemian, casual, and professional, depending on situations. For example, her clothes are similar to the clothes in this link if you ignore the blue jean shorts in said link.
History:
By two years, Sophia, named for her grandmother, is actually the eldest Ratburn sibling. This can be a bit hard to believe as she looks and acts as though she is the youngest more often than not. (That said, she does act more maturely than her sister Rodentia does when teaching. It is not hard to act more maturely than that.)
Sophia was born in England, fifth generation of a family of teachers. Her parents were well-off, financially speaking, but they were not the type to spoil as they had strong beliefs in the values of hard work. Sophia was quirky from the start. She was somewhat late to speak, though when she did speak at the age of two, she spoke like she had swallowed manuals and a dictionary. This was attributed to her coming from a highly intellectual family. Also, when she was two, her brother Nigel was born. The next door neighbors had children of the same ages, and the older sibling was very jealous of the new baby. In contrast, Sophia was not in the least bit jealous of Nigel. She loved having a little brother. Two more years passed and Rodentia, another sister, was born.
Now four years of age, Sophia was already starting her first year of elementary school. During her childhood, kindergarten was not required by law, but of course the Ratburn children attended. Unfortunately, while Sophia was a good student, she was harshly misjudged in the social world of her kindergarten classroom. To make matters crazier, she was a kindergarten student at the very uptight and very prestigious Glenbrook Academy. This academy strove for perfection in all respects, and Sophia was consequently often in the headmaster’s office. The Glenbrook headmaster was an unlikable man who created over-the-top punishments for the slightest misdemeanors. He seemed to have completely forgotten about whatever his own childhood was, for he certainly could not understand children. Sophia would always remember this.
No one told Sophia exactly why she was often in trouble at school. She was born with a brain not wired for regular social behavior, so her “misbehavior” was a mixture of simple unknowing and a lot of tense nerves. This was unknown at the time, so the girl thought she was just a bad kid. Oddly enough, while this did sadden her, she remained optimistic as a whole. After all, she did well in school, she had a few friends who thought of her as creative and entertaining, her school trips took her to interesting places, and she had a vivid imagination that gave her the ability to write. Writing, in turn, helped Sophia to figure out social rules, especially since a writer must also be an observer.
At the age of thirteen, Sophia moved with her family to the United States of America as a result of her father receiving a job transfer. The family’s new hometown was a friendly place called Elwood City, then something between a country town and a suburb (and now definitely a suburb). Lakewood High School was the name of her new school. For the first time, she and her siblings all attended different schools, as Glenbrook encompassed kindergarten through the twelfth grade. With her brother in middle school and her sister in elementary school, and her friends back in England, Sophia felt rather lost. New kids are the subjects of rumors, especially new kids from other countries. Sophia made even less friends in high school than she had in her younger years. She joined an unofficial group of girls, but these girls could not be counted as true friends. They did not really know her, and their friendship was sadly fake as those girls abandoned her.
When Nigel – who was by this time two grades advanced – attended Lakewood High School in the following year, Sophia was relieved to have someone to talk to in school, and rumors continued to fly about what weird folks those Ratburn people were. Nigel was very smart, but he was also something of a class clown in high school. Top that off with his being on the football team for the next four years, and he quickly became well-known and liked. This resulted in Sophia being liked well enough by association.
While Sophia failed to make female friends in high school, she did become friends with some boys who were all rather quirky themselves. Herbert Haney was one of these boys. He was definitely an interesting friend. He understood people’s feelings, yet he was more naïve than Sophia herself and he had a real knack for being in the wrong places at the wrong times. Because of all this, he was a non-judgmental friend who was in fact the first person outside of Sophia’s family that she felt really liked her for who she was.
Sophia acquired a job as an after-school English tutor in a community center classroom setting at sixteen, when other sixteen year olds were working at grocery stores, diners, and car washes. To her surprise, one of her pupils was her friend Herb. Her friend was equally surprised to see who his teacher was, not to mention embarrassed. As dyslexia was not very known about at the time, Herb had told no one of his lack of writing skills and struggles with written work. He certainly had not told Sophia, not after learning that she wrote essays for the fun of it. The benefit of being Sophia for Sophia was that awkwardness did not exist to her if she was not aware of it. When her friend told her that he was glad she did not think he was stupid, she said that she noticed lots of people were smarter than her in other ways and that she never thought of others as stupid because of this. The two remained friends, and Sophia continued as Herb’s tutor into college.
College was where Sophia’s academic streak ended. After receiving her associate’s degree, she realized that she had no idea what she wanted to do with her life. Family members tried to convince her to become an English professor or a history professor, but they could not make up her mind for her. Meanwhile, Herb, who had heard Sophia’s stories about the Glenbrook headmaster, had decided to go on to earning a master’s degree so he could become an elementary school principal. As the job entailed a lot of writing, Sophia had never been prouder of anyone before.
At the same time, Sophia’s parents had never been more disappointed in her. She was leaving college after two years. That was unthinkable to her parents. They made their disappointment clear, to such an extent that Sophia left state altogether to avoid complete depression and get a brand new start.
Sophia then worked odd jobs while traveling from state to state. She was frequently low on money and her car became her home. Optimism mixed with cynicism. On the bright side, she could drive a car. It took her longer to learn than it had taken her peers, because she was terrified of the whole idea of driving. On the other hand, living in a car was not where she wanted to be in life, not in her twenties. Her friends and siblings still had comfortable lives. While she was living in a car, both of her siblings became teachers. And on the other hand yet again, she was seeing the world and living in her own way. That was priceless.
For over fifteen years, Sophia was a wandering traveler. She met all sorts of different people along the way. Throughout this time frame, she was looking for both a place to call home and a place in the world for herself. She was certainly entertained and educated as a result, but the overall conclusion she came to was that she was no more at home in the world than she had ever been. She was only more comfortable in the world. A genuine place of her own was still an elusive dream concept.
Her experiences on the road lead her to eventually decide to work at a preschool day care. At points in her travels, she would room and board in the homes of locals in return for watching their children (and grandchildren and the random children that ran inside). She decided that she liked working with kids, and as teaching was indeed in her blood, day care certification appealed to her.
Sophia moved back to state, into her sister’s house while working toward certification. Perhaps Rodentia, an elementary and middle school substitute, was overly influenced by Sophia’s studies of educating toddlers and preschoolers. But then again, Rodentia had always had unusual teaching methods. During this time, Sophia reconciled with her parents.
Sophia then moved back to Elwood City itself, as being back in state had caused her to miss Elwood. She rented an apartment and spent her days teaching alongside five other instructors in a rather big day care facility. One little boy in particular stood out from the crowd. His name was Carl, and he was clearly different from the other toddlers. The other teachers did not understand his behaviors, but Sophia’s mind was transported back to childhood memories she had long tried to bury. The boy reminded her of herself as a small child. She had spoken in a monotone, talked as though she had swallowed books of information, talked for long amounts of time on favorite subjects, missed social cues, avoided eye contact, had panic attacks from overstimulation... and, to an extent, she was still like that, though she had learned a lot since childhood.
Concerned, Sophia spoke to the boy’s mother. Carl’s mother explained that her son was being tested for Asperger’s syndrome. Sophia read about Asperger’s syndrome and decided to be evaluated herself. As it turned out, she was diagnosed with “very mild” Asperger’s syndrome. She wondered how she would have tested at a younger age. Her childhood was finally making sense to her, and not only to her, but also to those who knew her.
For fun, Sophia bought a bike and rode through Elwood City as exercise. She then made a daily habit of bike riding, and she occasionally dropped by the elementary school where her old friend was principal and her brother was a 3rd grade teacher. She had missed both greatly and was very glad to be back.
Herb, Sophia’s old friend, became her boyfriend. Both having a spontaneous nature, they married in the following December. After all, they had been away from each other for a long time. Wasting more time was not on either of their agendas, further proven when they became parents in the next year.
Their oldest child was named Amy, short for Amira, which means speech. She was the splitting image of her mother and grandmother. Her personality, however, was all her own. Amy was “normal” except for being very book savvy and socially savvy both.
Sophia became good friends with her in-laws, too. Finally, as a wife and mother, she felt at home in the world. She had a great, silly, wonderful home life. Still, there lay the question of what to do with her talent for writing and her desire to teach so that she could help kids. She knew the answer to the question, too, but one must have a doctorate to become a life-skills therapist for kids who have autism spectrum disorders like Asperger’s syndrome. Working toward a doctorate would have to wait, with a baby at home. Sophia was a stay-at-home mother and enjoying every minute of it, though not a day went by that she did not look forward to her future career.
The summer that Amy was four, almost five (because of a mid-September birthday), the little girl was promoted to big sister of triplets. Amy is still not quite sure what babies do, not quite seeing the point of excitement because babies can’t play like kindergartners can. The triplets are named Herbert Junior (who looks like his father with his mother’s skin tone and eyes), Joy (who looks basically like a blonde haired female version of her father, if you can imagine that correctly), and Jewel (who looks more like a mixture of a polar bear and a rat than her siblings, with a rat’s face shape, ears that look like either, and her father’s colorings, and she is a brunette like her aunt).
During this same summer, Rodentia followed in her older sister’s footsteps and married a childhood friend. She kept her maiden surname and the title of Miss. Less than a year later, Rodentia gave birth to a son named Nigel after his uncle.
Currently, Sophia remains a stay-at-home mother. She also takes on some teaching jobs at times. Amy is a happy first grade student at Lakewood Elementary.
As to the boy that Sophia met years ago, Carl, things are coming full circle. Carl is now eight years old. He recently met and befriended a student of Nigel Ratburn’s, a boy named George who had become friends with Hebert Haney after his (George’s) own diagnosis of dyslexia.
Sophia still plans on attaining a doctoral degree when her children are all in school. For now, she is having one of the best years of her life. For some reason, this year seems to be caught in a time warped loop of sorts that nobody can explain, but that’s another story...
Personality:
While her life has had its share of seriousness, Sophia is, for the most part, actually a silly and mellow person. She also thinks deeply and thinks out of the box, sometimes with the effect of annoying others, but most people that meet her like her. She is usually introduced to other adults as being “Herb’s Wife” and greeted with, “Oh, so you’re Herb’s wife! Nice to finally meet you!” to which she has mixed feelings as she is her own person.
She is a warm, fun-loving wife and a doting mother. Her house is on the disorganized side, inevitable with four young kids, but she likes it that way because she never really understood why her own mother had insisted that her own childhood homes had to be absolutely spotless every day. Sophia would like a day without someone tripping over something on the carpeted rooms, although that’s probably caused more by the kind of people that live in the house instead of by the slightly disorganized nature of the house.
Sophia is, like her husband, prone to clumsy moments and spacey moments. She jokes about herself because of this, and she wonders why she doesn’t hear blonde jokes. The reason that she doesn’t hear blonde jokes is because the way she speaks reveals that she is definitely intelligent.
The way she speaks also reveals that she is more insecure than most people of her age. Sophia makes fun of herself and only herself, and that is not flattering on anyone. People are left to wonder why she belittles herself over small things on a daily basis, though it is not so much belittling herself as it is having a dry sense of humor. She has two types of humor: childish and dry.
Occasionally, Sophia is told that she, to quote, “says random negative things.” She is a positive person, but she is also a realistic person. Her seeming negativity is usually just realism mixed with the bluntness she was born with, or her dry sense of humor mixing with all of the above.
Sophia will never be as socially skilled as her siblings, yet she is considered “very interesting” to talk to. Most of her time is spent at her house, running errands, or taking her kids to fun places. This includes trips to the library. The triplets are surprisingly quiet at the library, more often than not, although Sophia is a little nervous about taking them to the library because they are babies and babies are apt to cry out instead of to listen to books read aloud.
Overall, Sophia is a fun mother and a fun mother-figure to Amy’s friends, and to her husband’s niece and nephew, and to any kid that visits her. It is not unusual to see her with finger-paint in her hair and cake batter on her face. She will probably not have noticed the finger-paint in her hair and cake batter on her face, not unless you point them out.
Sophia shares her brother’s fondness for cake. The joke at family reunions is that Nigel and Sophia eat all the cake, which is an exaggeration, but very much based in truth. Like her brother, Sophia will be quite flattered if you bake a cake for her.
She also shares her brother’s liking of classic cartoons, though her personal favorite cartoon is the adventures of Cranberry Cupcake. Cranberry Cupcake is a sugary sweet character that originated from greeting cards. Interestingly, Sophia identifies with the harmless reoccurring villainess in the show’s modern remake who is actually a very complex character for Cranberry Cupcake’s genre.
On most evenings, Sophia has large suppers ready for her husband whom she knows is hungry. She is probably not the world’s greatest cook, but neither is she a bad cook, and over half the stuff in her kitchen is prepackaged so that cooking large meals is a pretty easy job. With an apron around her waist for a daily dinner routine, Sophia jokes about being a 1950s housewife. She actually really likes cooking the meals, because she isn’t exactly sure if she is always showing thankfulness by giving. She shouldn’t be worried about that, although she could stand to answer the telephone more often. Sophia hates telephones, which can be a big inconvenience when parents of Lakewood Elementary students try to reach her husband at his home phone number.
Free days are very playful, inside the house and outside. Hers is the type of family to make a giant ice cream sundae for a picnic, then realize too late that the giant ice cream sundae did not fare well in the picnic basket under the hot sun. Hers is also the type of family to take on big fun project ideas and make the results even stranger than others had predicted.
Sophia often volunteers to help plant gardens or help preserve old houses or, yes, help kids as an unofficial counselor. She does a better job with the latter than with planting gardens and preserving houses. She is a free spirit, if a focused free spirit.
Disclaimers: I own nothing related to Arthur. Most of the characters and some of the settings mentioned are copyrighted to Marc Brown and PBS, respectively. The others are from my imagination. Adults are referred to by first names in this profile because Sophia herself is an adult. As I could not make mention of the 1990s due to the Arthur time loop, one part of Sophia's history is less detailed than the other parts. No, I did not get the idea for the name "Joy" from Charlotte's Web. I was trying to think of a parallel for my daughter Jubilee's name.
Edit: I don't know why the link to an outfit is not working. It worked yesterday. The website might be members only.
Without further ado...
Sophia
General Information:
General Information:
Name:
Sophia Lenore Ratburn (given name); Sophia Lenore Ratburn-Haney (married name)
Aliases:
None
Gender:
Female
Species:
Anthropomorphic Rat
Place of Birth:
London Borough of Lambeth, Greater London, England, UK
Age Range:
Early Midlife
Alignment:
Lawful Good
Build:
Tall and of a generally slender physique, albeit with a midsection on the chubby side. She is the heaviest of her siblings as a result of having four kids and a house filled with junk food, but she is in fair shape.
Other Physical Traits:
Sophia has light dusty blonde hair that she leaves wavy and natural. Her skin tone is slightly lighter than that of her siblings, taking after her mother in regards to skin tone and hair color. She clips her whiskers, and the result is that she can appear to have six freckles near her nose. She looks to be slightly younger than her years, although how much of this is indeed her facial appearance and how much is in the way she dresses and behaves is up for debate. Her clothing style is a blend of bohemian, casual, and professional, depending on situations. For example, her clothes are similar to the clothes in this link if you ignore the blue jean shorts in said link.
History:
By two years, Sophia, named for her grandmother, is actually the eldest Ratburn sibling. This can be a bit hard to believe as she looks and acts as though she is the youngest more often than not. (That said, she does act more maturely than her sister Rodentia does when teaching. It is not hard to act more maturely than that.)
Sophia was born in England, fifth generation of a family of teachers. Her parents were well-off, financially speaking, but they were not the type to spoil as they had strong beliefs in the values of hard work. Sophia was quirky from the start. She was somewhat late to speak, though when she did speak at the age of two, she spoke like she had swallowed manuals and a dictionary. This was attributed to her coming from a highly intellectual family. Also, when she was two, her brother Nigel was born. The next door neighbors had children of the same ages, and the older sibling was very jealous of the new baby. In contrast, Sophia was not in the least bit jealous of Nigel. She loved having a little brother. Two more years passed and Rodentia, another sister, was born.
Now four years of age, Sophia was already starting her first year of elementary school. During her childhood, kindergarten was not required by law, but of course the Ratburn children attended. Unfortunately, while Sophia was a good student, she was harshly misjudged in the social world of her kindergarten classroom. To make matters crazier, she was a kindergarten student at the very uptight and very prestigious Glenbrook Academy. This academy strove for perfection in all respects, and Sophia was consequently often in the headmaster’s office. The Glenbrook headmaster was an unlikable man who created over-the-top punishments for the slightest misdemeanors. He seemed to have completely forgotten about whatever his own childhood was, for he certainly could not understand children. Sophia would always remember this.
No one told Sophia exactly why she was often in trouble at school. She was born with a brain not wired for regular social behavior, so her “misbehavior” was a mixture of simple unknowing and a lot of tense nerves. This was unknown at the time, so the girl thought she was just a bad kid. Oddly enough, while this did sadden her, she remained optimistic as a whole. After all, she did well in school, she had a few friends who thought of her as creative and entertaining, her school trips took her to interesting places, and she had a vivid imagination that gave her the ability to write. Writing, in turn, helped Sophia to figure out social rules, especially since a writer must also be an observer.
At the age of thirteen, Sophia moved with her family to the United States of America as a result of her father receiving a job transfer. The family’s new hometown was a friendly place called Elwood City, then something between a country town and a suburb (and now definitely a suburb). Lakewood High School was the name of her new school. For the first time, she and her siblings all attended different schools, as Glenbrook encompassed kindergarten through the twelfth grade. With her brother in middle school and her sister in elementary school, and her friends back in England, Sophia felt rather lost. New kids are the subjects of rumors, especially new kids from other countries. Sophia made even less friends in high school than she had in her younger years. She joined an unofficial group of girls, but these girls could not be counted as true friends. They did not really know her, and their friendship was sadly fake as those girls abandoned her.
When Nigel – who was by this time two grades advanced – attended Lakewood High School in the following year, Sophia was relieved to have someone to talk to in school, and rumors continued to fly about what weird folks those Ratburn people were. Nigel was very smart, but he was also something of a class clown in high school. Top that off with his being on the football team for the next four years, and he quickly became well-known and liked. This resulted in Sophia being liked well enough by association.
While Sophia failed to make female friends in high school, she did become friends with some boys who were all rather quirky themselves. Herbert Haney was one of these boys. He was definitely an interesting friend. He understood people’s feelings, yet he was more naïve than Sophia herself and he had a real knack for being in the wrong places at the wrong times. Because of all this, he was a non-judgmental friend who was in fact the first person outside of Sophia’s family that she felt really liked her for who she was.
Sophia acquired a job as an after-school English tutor in a community center classroom setting at sixteen, when other sixteen year olds were working at grocery stores, diners, and car washes. To her surprise, one of her pupils was her friend Herb. Her friend was equally surprised to see who his teacher was, not to mention embarrassed. As dyslexia was not very known about at the time, Herb had told no one of his lack of writing skills and struggles with written work. He certainly had not told Sophia, not after learning that she wrote essays for the fun of it. The benefit of being Sophia for Sophia was that awkwardness did not exist to her if she was not aware of it. When her friend told her that he was glad she did not think he was stupid, she said that she noticed lots of people were smarter than her in other ways and that she never thought of others as stupid because of this. The two remained friends, and Sophia continued as Herb’s tutor into college.
College was where Sophia’s academic streak ended. After receiving her associate’s degree, she realized that she had no idea what she wanted to do with her life. Family members tried to convince her to become an English professor or a history professor, but they could not make up her mind for her. Meanwhile, Herb, who had heard Sophia’s stories about the Glenbrook headmaster, had decided to go on to earning a master’s degree so he could become an elementary school principal. As the job entailed a lot of writing, Sophia had never been prouder of anyone before.
At the same time, Sophia’s parents had never been more disappointed in her. She was leaving college after two years. That was unthinkable to her parents. They made their disappointment clear, to such an extent that Sophia left state altogether to avoid complete depression and get a brand new start.
Sophia then worked odd jobs while traveling from state to state. She was frequently low on money and her car became her home. Optimism mixed with cynicism. On the bright side, she could drive a car. It took her longer to learn than it had taken her peers, because she was terrified of the whole idea of driving. On the other hand, living in a car was not where she wanted to be in life, not in her twenties. Her friends and siblings still had comfortable lives. While she was living in a car, both of her siblings became teachers. And on the other hand yet again, she was seeing the world and living in her own way. That was priceless.
For over fifteen years, Sophia was a wandering traveler. She met all sorts of different people along the way. Throughout this time frame, she was looking for both a place to call home and a place in the world for herself. She was certainly entertained and educated as a result, but the overall conclusion she came to was that she was no more at home in the world than she had ever been. She was only more comfortable in the world. A genuine place of her own was still an elusive dream concept.
Her experiences on the road lead her to eventually decide to work at a preschool day care. At points in her travels, she would room and board in the homes of locals in return for watching their children (and grandchildren and the random children that ran inside). She decided that she liked working with kids, and as teaching was indeed in her blood, day care certification appealed to her.
Sophia moved back to state, into her sister’s house while working toward certification. Perhaps Rodentia, an elementary and middle school substitute, was overly influenced by Sophia’s studies of educating toddlers and preschoolers. But then again, Rodentia had always had unusual teaching methods. During this time, Sophia reconciled with her parents.
Sophia then moved back to Elwood City itself, as being back in state had caused her to miss Elwood. She rented an apartment and spent her days teaching alongside five other instructors in a rather big day care facility. One little boy in particular stood out from the crowd. His name was Carl, and he was clearly different from the other toddlers. The other teachers did not understand his behaviors, but Sophia’s mind was transported back to childhood memories she had long tried to bury. The boy reminded her of herself as a small child. She had spoken in a monotone, talked as though she had swallowed books of information, talked for long amounts of time on favorite subjects, missed social cues, avoided eye contact, had panic attacks from overstimulation... and, to an extent, she was still like that, though she had learned a lot since childhood.
Concerned, Sophia spoke to the boy’s mother. Carl’s mother explained that her son was being tested for Asperger’s syndrome. Sophia read about Asperger’s syndrome and decided to be evaluated herself. As it turned out, she was diagnosed with “very mild” Asperger’s syndrome. She wondered how she would have tested at a younger age. Her childhood was finally making sense to her, and not only to her, but also to those who knew her.
For fun, Sophia bought a bike and rode through Elwood City as exercise. She then made a daily habit of bike riding, and she occasionally dropped by the elementary school where her old friend was principal and her brother was a 3rd grade teacher. She had missed both greatly and was very glad to be back.
Herb, Sophia’s old friend, became her boyfriend. Both having a spontaneous nature, they married in the following December. After all, they had been away from each other for a long time. Wasting more time was not on either of their agendas, further proven when they became parents in the next year.
Their oldest child was named Amy, short for Amira, which means speech. She was the splitting image of her mother and grandmother. Her personality, however, was all her own. Amy was “normal” except for being very book savvy and socially savvy both.
Sophia became good friends with her in-laws, too. Finally, as a wife and mother, she felt at home in the world. She had a great, silly, wonderful home life. Still, there lay the question of what to do with her talent for writing and her desire to teach so that she could help kids. She knew the answer to the question, too, but one must have a doctorate to become a life-skills therapist for kids who have autism spectrum disorders like Asperger’s syndrome. Working toward a doctorate would have to wait, with a baby at home. Sophia was a stay-at-home mother and enjoying every minute of it, though not a day went by that she did not look forward to her future career.
The summer that Amy was four, almost five (because of a mid-September birthday), the little girl was promoted to big sister of triplets. Amy is still not quite sure what babies do, not quite seeing the point of excitement because babies can’t play like kindergartners can. The triplets are named Herbert Junior (who looks like his father with his mother’s skin tone and eyes), Joy (who looks basically like a blonde haired female version of her father, if you can imagine that correctly), and Jewel (who looks more like a mixture of a polar bear and a rat than her siblings, with a rat’s face shape, ears that look like either, and her father’s colorings, and she is a brunette like her aunt).
During this same summer, Rodentia followed in her older sister’s footsteps and married a childhood friend. She kept her maiden surname and the title of Miss. Less than a year later, Rodentia gave birth to a son named Nigel after his uncle.
Currently, Sophia remains a stay-at-home mother. She also takes on some teaching jobs at times. Amy is a happy first grade student at Lakewood Elementary.
As to the boy that Sophia met years ago, Carl, things are coming full circle. Carl is now eight years old. He recently met and befriended a student of Nigel Ratburn’s, a boy named George who had become friends with Hebert Haney after his (George’s) own diagnosis of dyslexia.
Sophia still plans on attaining a doctoral degree when her children are all in school. For now, she is having one of the best years of her life. For some reason, this year seems to be caught in a time warped loop of sorts that nobody can explain, but that’s another story...
Personality:
While her life has had its share of seriousness, Sophia is, for the most part, actually a silly and mellow person. She also thinks deeply and thinks out of the box, sometimes with the effect of annoying others, but most people that meet her like her. She is usually introduced to other adults as being “Herb’s Wife” and greeted with, “Oh, so you’re Herb’s wife! Nice to finally meet you!” to which she has mixed feelings as she is her own person.
She is a warm, fun-loving wife and a doting mother. Her house is on the disorganized side, inevitable with four young kids, but she likes it that way because she never really understood why her own mother had insisted that her own childhood homes had to be absolutely spotless every day. Sophia would like a day without someone tripping over something on the carpeted rooms, although that’s probably caused more by the kind of people that live in the house instead of by the slightly disorganized nature of the house.
Sophia is, like her husband, prone to clumsy moments and spacey moments. She jokes about herself because of this, and she wonders why she doesn’t hear blonde jokes. The reason that she doesn’t hear blonde jokes is because the way she speaks reveals that she is definitely intelligent.
The way she speaks also reveals that she is more insecure than most people of her age. Sophia makes fun of herself and only herself, and that is not flattering on anyone. People are left to wonder why she belittles herself over small things on a daily basis, though it is not so much belittling herself as it is having a dry sense of humor. She has two types of humor: childish and dry.
Occasionally, Sophia is told that she, to quote, “says random negative things.” She is a positive person, but she is also a realistic person. Her seeming negativity is usually just realism mixed with the bluntness she was born with, or her dry sense of humor mixing with all of the above.
Sophia will never be as socially skilled as her siblings, yet she is considered “very interesting” to talk to. Most of her time is spent at her house, running errands, or taking her kids to fun places. This includes trips to the library. The triplets are surprisingly quiet at the library, more often than not, although Sophia is a little nervous about taking them to the library because they are babies and babies are apt to cry out instead of to listen to books read aloud.
Overall, Sophia is a fun mother and a fun mother-figure to Amy’s friends, and to her husband’s niece and nephew, and to any kid that visits her. It is not unusual to see her with finger-paint in her hair and cake batter on her face. She will probably not have noticed the finger-paint in her hair and cake batter on her face, not unless you point them out.
Sophia shares her brother’s fondness for cake. The joke at family reunions is that Nigel and Sophia eat all the cake, which is an exaggeration, but very much based in truth. Like her brother, Sophia will be quite flattered if you bake a cake for her.
She also shares her brother’s liking of classic cartoons, though her personal favorite cartoon is the adventures of Cranberry Cupcake. Cranberry Cupcake is a sugary sweet character that originated from greeting cards. Interestingly, Sophia identifies with the harmless reoccurring villainess in the show’s modern remake who is actually a very complex character for Cranberry Cupcake’s genre.
On most evenings, Sophia has large suppers ready for her husband whom she knows is hungry. She is probably not the world’s greatest cook, but neither is she a bad cook, and over half the stuff in her kitchen is prepackaged so that cooking large meals is a pretty easy job. With an apron around her waist for a daily dinner routine, Sophia jokes about being a 1950s housewife. She actually really likes cooking the meals, because she isn’t exactly sure if she is always showing thankfulness by giving. She shouldn’t be worried about that, although she could stand to answer the telephone more often. Sophia hates telephones, which can be a big inconvenience when parents of Lakewood Elementary students try to reach her husband at his home phone number.
Free days are very playful, inside the house and outside. Hers is the type of family to make a giant ice cream sundae for a picnic, then realize too late that the giant ice cream sundae did not fare well in the picnic basket under the hot sun. Hers is also the type of family to take on big fun project ideas and make the results even stranger than others had predicted.
Sophia often volunteers to help plant gardens or help preserve old houses or, yes, help kids as an unofficial counselor. She does a better job with the latter than with planting gardens and preserving houses. She is a free spirit, if a focused free spirit.