I'm about to hold Wayne Swanson's funeral, and hope it goes off without too many hitches. Kristen may even behave herself and not make out with her stepson John if she's wise, and I hope there won't be too many fights.
It's such a pain to sort out all the messes after such an event. It's the first of the Founders passing, and it's sure to be well attended.

Afterward:
For all the qualms I had about this, everyone attended, and Kristen was on her best behavior during it, even when her stepson gave his speech. Not any fights, or make outs at all, and even the Mayor attended, as he promised. She was very grateful to him for taking time out of his busy schedule to do this.
After she came home, Kristen greeted her friends who stopped by and even called her grandson to talk to him about his plans to go to college. She's not been that great a grandma for any of the grandchildren, but she supposes that she has time now.

Of course she had to call out sick from work-being a brand new Intern at TT hospital she didn't want to skip work without a good reason-but she'll be going back tomorrow, because what else is she going to do? She wants to become the Chief of Staff for the hospital, and she's well on her way right now.

Hal Grunt had been having an on-again, off-again affair with the witch Liana Curious for some time. But it gradually became clear to him that she was never going to leave her husband, Connor, and that other than woohoo, she would always keep him at arm’s length. On a whim, he asked out the waitress at the local diner, and she accepted. She started coming over to hang out, they got closer, and on another whim, he proposed, and she accepted. Sierra was the town busybody, and being a waitress for so long, she had collected dirt on a lot of people around town, which she liked to hold over their heads. She got in a fight with Priya Ramaswami about one such secret, which made her furious, and she wanted to see Priya’s ghost. Sierra knew that Liana was the one to see about that sort of thing; what she didn’t know was that Liana believed Hal was hers and was unhappy about Sierra stepping in. Sierra made a big mistake going over to the Specter house, because instead of Priya’s ghost haunting the garden, it would be hers. Sierra’s disappearance was a mystery to the Grunt boys. Had she been kidnapped? Run away? Hal even asked Liana about it, thinking that Connor--who is a werewolf--may have had something to do with it, but Liana kept her mouth shut. What was clear after that, though, was that Hal belonged to her alone again.

Sometimes they just 'know': Goneril Capp drew a want to leave her job (business tycoon) at 66 days old, so I had her retire instead. After one day of retirement the Grim Reaper came for her.

If newspapers had updated headlines in the game, the main headline the next day would be "Capp Industries Founder Goneril Capp Dies", with information that CEO Regan Capp would now lead the company. Unrelated, Regan recently had a child with her new husband Victor Capp (formerly townie Victor Lillard), so her hands are going to be very full.

Piccolo Manor is no longer the only building sitting on the many acres of Piccolo Ridge! The Piccolo's have hired architect Julius Romana to build a country club. The club's grand opening will be for the celebration of Henry Piccolo's birthday. The country club is on a golf course and features a restaurant, ballroom, garden, and pool.

I've finally discovered the joys of recolouring, so I spend a lot of time in my test hood (aptly named 'testicles' ) testing out new recolours. On the side, I work on building up my main hood!

Melody Tinker and Nextdoor Neighbour had their second child. Since their first child, Macchiato, was named theme-wise after his uncle Cappuchino and great grandpa Espresso, I thought grandma Modesty should get a tribute as well, and so this one was named Temperance.

Melody started looking for a job to work towards her lifetime want of becoming a mad scientist, and once she found an opening, Nextdoor, who had a job that was neither here nor there for him, quit his to be a stay-at-home-dad. Temperance was an infant during Macchiato's last days in the toddler-stage so those were a couple of tired days for Nextdoor. One afternoon all three of them took a nap at the same time - and then Temperance needed something and started screaming, which woke up Macchiato who also started screaming to get out of his crib, and in the midst of all that, the phone started ringing. Ah, the joys of having multiple small kids at the same time. Nevertheless, as soon as Macchiato aged up to a child and Temperance to a toddler, Nextdoor started wishing for yet another child, but he'll have to wait.
Uncle Cappuchino being the guy he is, bonded with his nephew Macchiato by telling him a joke about the stock market. Apparently it worked, because Macchiato has been calling him several times since. At least it wasn't a dirty joke, which Capps loves telling to adults and his teen peers, but who knows, perhaps that would have impressed the kid even more.


Brothers Monsoon and Batty Neighbour were about to celebrate their respective birthdays on the same day. Their mother Roadnight went with Monsoon to Café Petite the day before, and Batty's second mother Violin in turn went with him to 88 Road to nowhere. Monsoon got promoted in his job in the athletic career. Batty grew up to a knowledge teen. He's the first male knowledge sim I've had in a while who's not related to aliens in some way, so I'm having some hopes he'll want to become an alien dad in the future.


Zelda Larsen asked her love interest Jenny Olofsson to move in with her, but got rejected. Perhaps she thought she was moving to quickly. They went on a date the next day, in any case, and then Jenny invited Zelda to an outing. Zelda also spent some time with her family - she invited her oldest little brother Broadway to a pancake breakfast, to which he asked to bring a friend, who turned out to be their uncle Espresso. Some day later she invited her youngest little brother Link. He was the only one of her three siblings she wasn't friends with, and she had already moved out back when he was born, so she wanted to get to know him better. At one point she tried to hug him, but was rejected, but later on he came on his own accord to give her a hug which I thought was sweet. In the evening, Zelda was invited to yet another outing so she brought Link with her to Club Caliente.


Brahe Neighbour has continued success in her two businesses. Her small store reached level two, and her stylist home business level three.

Young Freddie Smith just had the worst day of his life. First, his grandfather, Johnny, passed away in the bathroom. (His grandmother, Ophelia, had passed a few days earlier.) Then, his younger sister, Delma, grew up and took the Romance aspiration, which means Freddie's going to have to waste time chasing away the hordes of teen boys in Strangetown, who have very few teen girls available for them to date. And then, his dad, Shayne, brought home Lonnie Curious from work, and they started just making out in the living room in front of everyone. (Lonnie is Liana Curious's oldest, the apprentice witch, and a known troublemaker.) Shayne must be having a midlife crisis because he had never done anything like this before. Freddie's mom, Monica, stormed out, yelling something about divorce papers being in the mail. The only bright spot is that maybe Freddie won't have to share a bedroom with his little sister now.

Here's a picture of Freddie having a nice breakfast with his mom before all of this went down.



I definitely did not see this coming, although it's perfectly in character for Lonnie to destroy a family this way. Monica, now in middle age, will likely want to make a drastic change. I think she will be the founder of the Strangetown Home for Unmarried Mothers. That seems like a good cause for her to throw her energies into.

Meanwhile, Shayne's oldest son, Arlie, graduated from college and immediately got Renee Johnson pregnant via risky woohoo. They weren't even dating seriously. Although Arlie is still very young and would have liked the chance to date other women, he decided to do the right thing by Renee and married her. They have a son, Norris--and thus begins my third generation of born-in-game Sims in Strangetown.

The Curious kids and their girlfriends are doing well at college, just starting their junior year. I only make them research/write papers if they roll wants to do so, so their grades are fairly sporadic, but everyone's passing. The house is usually coated in a fine layer of dirty dishes, old newspapers, and abandoned books, and Ixo Curious having zero neatness points means the bathroom is always full of puddles. Ophelia frequently rolls wants to influence others to clean, which I imagine involves taking a look around and going "man, this place is a pigsty... i wish someone else would clean up..." Tina Roennigke keeps rolling wants to influence others to write her term papers, too; every cheerleader and mascot who has the gall to enter the house is immediately put to work coasting Tina through her literature degree.

The Dowling family's cats had kittens - Deornoth and Derra - who are both hyper and aggressive (though also friendly) and spend all their time running around the house at high speed. Since four cats is rather too many for one household, I need to work out which families need a kitten and can cope with all the energy. I might have given both of them to Erin Grunt if they'd been calmer (she wants a kitten), but I think both of them are a bit much for her so Derra needs another home. She might fit in at the Romance sims' commune...

Julien Cooke won third prize in the Gypsy Lamp Lottery. It was about time somebody won who needed the money - first prize of $60,000 went to Checo Ramirez, who was already very comfortably off, and and the second prize went to Malcolm Landgraab, who really didn't it at all! Julien, with his wife, daughter and five dogs, has moved out of his shack into a modified Sedona Original - the blue one with the odd-shaped rooms. He had the original deck enclosed as a room for Elise, and built a new deck at the side of the house. The big prizes are gone now, so any future Sim who gets a Gypsy Lamp will have to sell it for the consolation prize of $1000 - still a lot of money for many Sedonians.

Several more teenagers have headed off to university. Alexander Picaso wants to earn $100,000 over his lifetime, so will probably return to Respite as the Landgraabs' lawyer. Townie BJ Butler is being played in as a future husband for Zoe Johnson, daughter of Landgraab Gentleman Clarence Johnson. The Ramaswamis just barely scraped together enough money to send their only child, Ajay, and Maria Gavigan only got to go because Isaiah's girlfriend, Marylena Cox, brought $6000 to the household the day Maria turned 18. Maria wants to be a police officer, marry Damion Tinker and stay in Sedona; she will probably take over from Carol Ottomas when Carol moves either to Respite or Downtown.

Isaiah Gavigan is, of course, very happy that his youngest siblings are no longer toddlers so don't need to take up the big double room on the middle floor anymore. Dennis has taken his room on the top floor and Eve has taken Maria's, so Isaiah has finally been able to invite Marylena to move in with him. His mother, Mary, is hoping there will soon be more toddlers needing space!

With so many young Sims reaching adulthood and needing affordable housing, construction is having a hard time keeping up. Tommy Ottomas, now a draftsman, has drawn up plans for some two-bedroom apartments (the Tech Centre Flats), as the townhouse-style Crossroads Apartments are beyond the reach of many families. Sedona is starting to look quite crowded now.

Monica Smith did start the Strangetown Home for Unmarried Mothers, funded by a generous donation from the Grunt family. She enlisted Sarah Love, who is in the Medicine career, as her live-in nurse. Sarah is a bit of a sad case. A long time ago, she had a fling with Jasmine Rai, and they ran off to the city together, but that did not last. Jasmine is happily settled with DJ now and has no interest in Sarah, but Sarah is obsessed with Jasmine and can't stop thinking about her. She's been rebuffed so many times, but she won't give it up, and she's frequently found standing alone in a room crying softly to herself. Perhaps having babies to take care of will distract her from her heartbreak.

Already there are two residents of the home, both Grunt girls who were too independent to go back to their wealthy families once they found themselves with child: Mabel (daughter of Ripp and Jill) and Ashlee (adopted daughter of Buck and Guy). However, they may not stay unmarried for long. The father of Mabel's child is Juan Harris, who wants to propose, and so far, Mabel has not voiced any objections to marrying him so she may go along with it. The father of Ashlee's child is a townie she barely has a relationship with and who hasn't shown any further interest in her or their baby.

However, there is Ellsworth Curious (son of Lazlo and Stella). Ellsworth is my favorite Sim at the moment. He has spent his entire adult life in the pursuit of women (those he's not related to, at least), and he has built up quite a fan club. He must have had his eye on Ashlee because he went after her the second she got into college. They have had an up-and-down relationship, as Ashlee has seen him out with other women and was not happy about that. Ellsworth has spent a lot of time getting back into her good graces. Lately, Ellsworth has been showing signs that he's taking stock of his life. For the first time ever, he wanted to get a job. (He doesn't need one--the Curiouses are also quite wealthy.) Then, when he was out on a date with Camellia Beaker (who is very married, btw), he suddenly realized that Ashlee was the one for him--had been all along. And he wanted to marry her, as soon as possible. It remains to be seen how Ashlee will react to his proposal.

Stella Roth has been running her salon at a loss for some time, as her employees have accumulated enough badges that their wages need to be pretty high, but people in Riverblossom can only be expected to pay so much for a haircut. (Also, the code makes Trisha, who ought to be a whiz at it, a really bad manager, constantly changing assignments on Chloe the stylist, turning off people on the verge of buying by butting in to hard sell them, etc.) This is fine, since the Roths have money, Morty's job has never been in danger, and Stella and Gabriella have Riverblossom Dry Goods running at a tidy profit margin. The salon has been more of a community service/personal project for awhile. But now she's turned it over to Sandra, who - having just married Hugh Knowe and moved into a house "worthy of her" that he had to scrape to buy - has no cushion for running a nine-star business in the red. She and Hugh, who is not only unemployed but who didn't roll a want for a job even immediately on graduation, gave Trisha and Chloe the day off and went in to see how they did on their own.

Sandra had a bronze badge from working for her mom as a teen and giving free makeovers at college, so she settled in at Chloe's stations and Hugh worked sales. They anticipated him having difficulty with this since he's so shy, but he did great, and due to the business's high rank he had a steady stream of customers to practice on. He also had a lot of people just hanging around having a good time (Stella having established the salon as a social hub), but some of them turned into customers once they'd hung around enough. Sandra got some large tips, one of them after botching a job! Hugh was able to salvage a couple of botched jobs by stepping in quickly to offer a free makeover on the second chair, and did a great job despite never holding the scissors before. They ended the day with a tidy profit, a bronze sales badge for him, and a silver badge for her.

And they are going to need it, because they then went home and got Sandra pregnant. Trisha is planning to quit the job in order to stay home and look after Trent's alien baby, which may or may not improve the salon's functioning overall but means she'll either have to promote Chloe to manager or Hugh needs to get a stylist badge real fast. Fortunately, they're not entirely dependent on the salon yet, as Hugh's sister Ida Juana is living with them and she found a night job reading tarot cards. (Don't tell Stella; she'd be horrified.) Ida Juana's old college buddy, Andy Bellum, took the same job to make ends meet while he waited for a slot at the police academy to open up, and even though she lives in Riverblossom and he lives Downtown I can just see them working together like this and having a great time.

Vidcund Curious has passed away. On his last day, I invited his son Ixo home from college to visit with him one last time. They spent a few hours hanging out in the yard, reminiscing about this and that, but after a while Ixo got up and left to dig around in the trash. And then he ate something out of the trash, gave himself food poisoning, threw up, and went home. I knew I should have encouraged his personality beyond 1 neatness. About an hour after Ixo went home, Vidcund left this world at 77, outliving his older brother Pascal in both time and age. Both of the Curious children will return from college without their fathers to greet them; the only surviving member of the previous generation is good old uncle Lazlo, though his time is starting to draw short as well.

Vidcund is also survived by his wife Crystal Vu, who was quite torn up about his death. She had a want floating around to be best friends with Circe Beaker, so I invited her over in the hopes of improving Crystal's mood a bit. I've always had to keep an eye on Circe when she visits because she likes to aim heart eyes at Vidcund, but I figured that particular problem doesn't apply anymore. Instead she started eyeing up Crystal, which I thought was interesting (first time I've seen autonomous same-sex attraction from a premade in this run), but didn't really pay any attention to it beyond that.

So Circe and Crystal chat for a while, they become best friends, and Crystal rolls two new wants: she wants to be BFFs with Circe... and she wants to fall in love. Vidcund hasn't been dead for more than six hours and his widow is making out with a married woman in their old bedroom. Everyone deals with grief in their own way, I suppose.

I had to have a little extra playtime today because I really wanted to have Ellsworth propose to Ashlee. Maybe this is the dumbest thing either of them have ever done, or maybe it is the best decision of their lives, but his proposal and her reaction were just so adorable.



Ashlee grew up in a very nice home, but she gave all that up when she moved out and became estranged from her family. So I think she got over any misgivings she had about getting married when she figured out just how much money Ellworth's family has (it's a lot). You can kind of see that realization dawning on her face when she gets her first look at the ring.

And while I was at it, I got her little brother (they're still enemies) married too. Odis married Gunnar Roque who is twice his age and was in a long-term relationship with Mickey Dosser. But Gunnar is besotted with Odis, and who can blame him?

My newly grown up Popularity/Family teen went to the teen club to meet people, and bumped into his BFF who it turns out he had two bolts with after growing up. Unfortunately she is a Romance sim, five minutes after they flirted and fell in love with each other one of her other boyfriends show up and kissed her and then woohooed with her in the photobooth and my poor family sim felt utterly betrayed and they hate each other now, lmao. I never see this kind of stuff because I've restricted it to family sims and people in committed relationships, usually I set things up to trigger jealousy if I want it, but this time it happened completely on its own.

Nervous and Irving Curious are so into each other that they don't even notice their adopted daughter, Alyse, sneaking her boyfriend, Sol Grunt, into the house for some woohoo. But when Sol tries to make polite chitchat with his girlfriend's dads--

Irving: "Who the eff even are you, kid?"
Nervous: "I don't like him. Maybe I should flick him."

Which just goes to show how perfect they are for each other.

I'm playing Pleasantview agakn after taking quite the long break from the sims. I wanna try out some new things, maybe incorporate something like lilsimsie's wheel of doom where I spin a wheel with dramatic and pontentially life-ruining events to carry out. For example, I had Alexander move in with Mortimer and Dina when she married him, though I feel like I kinda wasted an opportunity when I didn't throw them a wedding, but let's be real, his wife went missing and she's been married before, a big wedding might make the town talk about them...

My biggest issue is with Cassandra, though. I'm really not a fan of either of her suitors: I've paired her up with Don once, produced 3,5 kids and like 4 affairs, so I kinda got all I wanted of that union, save for some cheating drama but I had that covered with their genderbent AU selves. And Darren, well... they're cute and all, but he never really rolls a want to get married, so it's kinda forced, and with him having a teenage son already it doesn't seem like he'd want 3 more kids with her.

This time, I'm thinking of giving them 3 dream dates for him to make the move. After that, Ask To Just Be Friends, and Cass goes back to being a painting model (although judging by her reaction in my game it might not be the most comfortable thing for her)

Though I'm still feeling like Cass should get married to someone, just no idea who, considering she has like no other options apart from Affairs McGee and Pain(t), so I'm thinking of doing the unthinkable and having one of the matchmakers get her a date. It's not like she doesn't have the money, but marrying one of my fave sims to just Some Guy feels... off.

Vidcund Curious invited his alien daughter Cassie around to meet her little half-sister Selina. Vidcund asked Cassie to talk to Selina, and she promptly spent the rest of the evening hugging, tickling, tossing in the air, and feeding her sister. They were soon firm friends.

Back at the university dorms, Cassie invited Vidcund to visit and he wandered around investigating everything though rather ignoring his daughter. Monica Bratford stopped by, so Cassie introduced them. Now Vidcund's been widowed, I might try setting him up with Monica - if she can cope with having a step daughter two years older than she is...

Walter Atkins, Garrett Vaughan (was briefly Newson) and Michelle Kearney all graduated from university.

Walter wants to be a Game Designer. He's taken an apartment downtown, and a stopgap job as a Playground Monitor until he finds the job he wants. He was shocked, though, when he got his first bills - his paycheck doesn't come close to covering them, let alone saving up for next week's rent and Emerald Collensworth's air fare from Sedona! He's well over-qualified for his job, though, so is hoping for a string of quick promotions.

Former Young Gentleman Garrett moved back to Respite, where he continues his quest to become a Criminal Mastermind. He has moved back in with his former guardian, Cyd Roseland, and Cyd's wife, Ivy. To his great delight, he found that Porthos, though old, was still around and clearly remembered him. Ivy is already too old to have children, so she and Cyd have now officially adopted Garrett as their heir, and he has changed his last name accordingly. He had in excess of $9000 when he graduated, so he sent some money to his biological sister, Georgia, and to the other orphanage kids who had traveled with them from Bluewater to Sedona.

Michelle Kearney is another one who wants to be a Game Designer, so she has moved downtown. She could easily have afforded an apartment of her own, but decided to move in with her bestie, Joanna Tinker, instead. Neither has a boyfriend anywhere on the horizon, so perhaps they will turn out to be more than just friends. Like Walter, Michelle has had to take alternative employment for now; Game Designer may be a popular career choice with the current generation, but actual vacancies are few and far between.

Some loves endure the twists and turns of life. One such love is that between Cedric Smith (son of Johnny and Ophelia) and Nery Beaker (adopted son of Erin Beaker and Lola Curious). They were best friends as kids, best buds in high school, and fell in love as young adults when Cedric drunkenly hit on Nery at a party. But Nery denied his feelings and instead married Mathilde Curious and had a son with her. Cedric tried to move on. He married Armando Cox, who later sacrificed himself to resurrect Cedric after Cedric died in a fire.

After his resurrection, Cedric threw himself into his work and gave up on love. But he and Nery couldn't stay away from each other. At parties and weddings, they often stole a kiss or even had a closeted makeout session. Then Mickey Dosser started aggressively pursuing Cedric. Truthfully, Mickey was jealous that his longtime partner had run off with and married a younger man, and he wanted to show Gunnar that he could do the same. Cedric was flattered and lonely. He moved in with Mickey, and they got engaged. But his thoughts were always about Nery. Finally, he called Nery over one night and asked him to leave Mathilde and be with him, for real, out in the open. But Nery said no. Cedric's heart was just about broken. He thought about it all night and decided he had to be true to himself, so he broke things off with Mickey and moved back into the Singles motel. Then, he figured it was worth a shot to try one last time, and he again asked Nery to leave Mathilde. This time, Nery said yes. Apparently, seeing how committed Cedric was to them was what it took to get him to finally be true to his feelings as well.

Of course, Mathilde is the innocent victim in all this, but she will likely be better off once she is no longer in a sham marriage. Still, she was feeling down about the whole thing and wanted to see a ghost, so to cheer her up, I took her to the cemetery. There, she rolled the wants to see the ghosts of both her father and mother (Lazlo and Stella Terrano), which I found very moving. In times of trouble, we look to those who meant the most to us. She didn't get to see them that night, but she did see a couple of other ghosts, which helped her feel better.

From the Respite-Sedona "Hatches and Matches" column:

Clarence and Joanne Johnson of Respite are pleased to announce the birth of their third child, Terence ("Terry"), a brother for Zoe and William.

Mr. Ethan Vijayakar and Miss Gabriella Sutton (aka Newson) were married in a small private ceremony at Mr. Vijayakar's home in Respite.

I want to talk a little about my crazy Beaker clan. Their story has developed over a lot of play sessions. There's not a whole lot of drama there, but they are fun to play.

Destro Beaker is the alien son of Loki. After Loki died, he pooled his life insurance inheritance with Loki's widow, Blossom Moonbeam Beaker, to buy the old Beaker castle and refurbish it. They moved in with Destro's wife, Klara Vonderstein, their daughter, Natasha, and Blossom's son with Loki, Porfirio. It didn't take long for Destro and Blossom to fall in love; they'd had an attraction to each other for a while that they didn't act on while Loki was alive. Destro divorced Klara, who moved out and went on to have other adventures, and he married Blossom. They are a very devoted couple, affectionate and with eyes only for each other. Porfirio and Natasha were raised pretty much as siblings and are still very close, even though they are both adults now with their own families. Destro is extremely chill; he loves hanging out doing pretty much nothing, and he absolutely dotes on Blossom.

Now, Foster Beaker is the son of Circe and Vidcund Curious, so he is not related to Destro by blood, and they didn't even grow up in the same house. But they were very close as kids and do consider themselves to pretty much be brothers. So when Vidcund and Circe both died, and Foster was left alone, it was only natural that he move in with Destro since it's a big house with an extra bedroom. Foster brought a lot of money in with him from life insurance and the sale of Circe's house, and as a Fortune Sim, he really wanted to fix the place up nice. They turned the old laboratory into a huge party room with a pool table, pinball machine, bar, nice stereo, darts and chess, the works, and put a hot tub on the patio out back. The Beaker house is probably the nicest house in Strangetown now, rescued from being a crumbling old ruin.

Foster was engaged to Camellia Grunt (adopted daughter of Tank and Frances), but she was hospitalized for a long time, during which he was having an affair with her sister, Michelle. When Camellia got out of the hospital, she and Foster got married. They had one child, Sanford, but then preferred to focus on their careers. Camellia is now an astronaut, and although Foster lost his job, he's become quite a good artist. Foster did run into Michelle on a community lot after some time, which led to them resuming their affair, but Camellia was also carrying on with Ellsworth Curious, so she's no victim. Just recently, though, Camellia caught Foster and Michelle together. She also confessed her affair, and they promised to be true to each other from then on. So far, they've kept to that.

The Beakers enjoy throwing family dinners and parties. Sanford is a teen now, who takes after his parents (and is a bit of a jerk like them, but you need that quality to get ahead in life, Camellia would say). He's getting quite close to Porfirio's daughter, Lelah, with Mirella Grunt (daughter of Ripp and Jill). Both Beakers, but not actually related (or maybe only very distantly?), so I guess it's all good.

I love the Beaker clan, but my Strangetown families are getting so complicated, it is hard to keep up with who's related to who. I can't even go by last name anymore.

The Curious kids came back from college no worse for wear, though Ixo and Uza miss their fathers. Uza and Tina Roennigke had a private wedding as soon as they landed in the front yard; they'd waited long enough! Surprisingly, Ixo and Ophelia didn't want to get married right away. I thought they'd want to get that sorted out as soon as possible, considering they're both family sims... and then Ophelia got pregnant and rolled a want to get married even before her belly popped. Pregnancy's hitting her hard, but she'll pull through.

Ixo's hard at work at his new architecture job, pursuing his dreams. Tina the wealth sim saw a financial opportunity in the household's indoor garden plots and has started a home business selling their produce, but she hasn't managed to actually sell anything as yet. Her only profit so far is from charging sims to loiter around in the yard gawking at the merchandise. Always contemplating, never buying... but hey, money is money.

Lazlo's stagnated again as he reaches his final days, but he seems more at peace this time, like he's enjoying lounging around with what time he has left. As for Crystal's tryst with Circe Beaker, they had one date. Circe was rolling wants to make out and woohoo, but Crystal's wants never left the casual entertain/play/talk circuit. The date went well, Circe left flowers... and they haven't seen each other since. Circe hasn't even called. I guess she wanted more excitement and thrills out of this fling than a grieving old widow has to offer.

The Roselands spent Sunday preparing for winter. Finishing out their attic during the summer made life much less awkward, but whittled down their cash in hand to the point that, if they have to buy groceries, they're going to have a problem, and the Cyd's plan to earn his gold toy badge over the winter could come a cropper on lack of material. The only adult-aged dog they have left is male, so there's no prospect of another set of puppies to sell. Cyd is trying to squeeze out one last crop and is learning to paint, hoping to support one craft with another. LaShawn, who normally sews only for her family, made some curtains to sell. Little Gordon fished so much he got a bronze badge and a jumbo catfish that he sold for $60. Baby Isabel's economic contribution to the household was to crawl around the house getting most of her attention from the dogs.

LaShawn and Cyd went for the poor couple's aspiration boost, took themselves upstairs upstairs to their almost-private room, and had a home date. Now LaShawn's feeling a little queasy...

I gave Cyd way too many things to do with this household - a wife who wants six children, a dog breeding line, a farm, a pond, and the ambition to open a toy store. The house and yard are always filthy and so is someone in it. The bathtub is in the kids' room, set apart by a Great Divide; the sidewalk out front is always covered in dog mess and the verge is always weedy; and I doubt very much that Gordon or, in her turn, Isabel will be able to keep up with their homework to my usual standard. Thanks to the catfish they have over $600, which should cover their bills, and thanks to Gordon keeping all his other fish, and conscientious putting back of leftovers, they may not have to buy groceries till spring. They should, just barely, have enough space for the new baby, assuming they can afford a bunkbed when Isabel grows to child. But I'm never bored playing it, I've got to give it that.

My favorite couple right now--after Nervous and Irving, who are getting older and Nervous is reaching the end of his days, sorry to say--are Ellsworth and Ashlee Curious. For two Romance Sims, they have a very solid marriage. They are constantly swooning over each other, flirting, and kissing. And Ellsworth started thinking, "When you have someone as beautiful as Ashlee and someone as great as me, well, you need to pass those genes on." So they started trying to have a baby. They really put their hearts into it. The hot tub, the sofa, the bed...they worked hard. But nothing. Finally, they opted for artificial insemination. So I'm very happy that they are now expecting.

They are living with Ellsworth's sister, Mathilde, who since her divorce, has been rather grumpy. She and Ashlee have had a big falling out and are now enemies. However, Mathilde has made fast friends with Ashlee's daughter, Hyo, from a one-night stand premarriage. Ashlee gives Hyo lots of attention when she thinks about it, which isn't much, but Mathilde is always around to help with homework or make some spaghetti. Hyo really looks up to her step-aunt and wants to follow in her footsteps when she grows up.