Hello, and welcome to the delayed release of Already in Progress! As you may or may not know, I will be moving Any Minute Now, just as soon as my landlord says it’s okay and gives me the keys to the upstairs apartment. (The wait is driving me crazy!) I’ll be moving myself instead of hiring someone, which means that most of my time is spent decluttering, packing, cleaning, or attempting to do all three things at once. But I did want to get this update out for you before I went poof with no warning, and hooray hoorah: here it is! The next update on this – and indeed, on all my stories – will be delayed an indefinite amount of time, though. I apologize. And now, we return to our story: Already in Progress…

At the Tsvirkunov household, Anastasia and Rebecca seem to be involved in some sort of friend-making competition. At least one of them brings a friend home from school every day, and they are generally platinum or high gold from either making a new friend or becoming best friends with one they already have.

And the girls have inherited the Awesome – they can even convince their mother to play catch in the house!

Admittedly, they don’t have any gardening badges yet, but they have successfully grown their own tomatoes. And they aren’t Bland, either! The silver badge belongs to Abbey.

Descartes has become an International Sim Of Mystery, which I believe is one promotion away from his LTW of Dread Pirate. Because he is Awesome, he has been promoted well above where the numbers say he should be via chance cards. Apparently, International Sims of Mystery maintain their Mystery by dressing like Mafiosi instead.

Descartes’ opinion of his work uniform seems to be about as low as my own, since he constantly rolls Wants for the skill points he needs to be promoted, and is never happier than when he is working on gaining them… somehow. He occasionally rolls the Want to Make A Friend when he is low for promotion, but his daughters are taking care of that end of things very nicely, so Descartes rerolls that fairly frequently. The other Wants are autonomously perma-locked. Descartes is Awesome at skilling (of course), and as it turns out, there’s only one challenge he’s not ready for.

Parenting teenaged daughters. That’s Anastasia in blue; she’s a Popularity Sim. Rebecca is in pink; she’s a Romance Sim. I decided to keep their same color schemes going, as they seem to fit. And I actually chose their aspirations randomly! I closed my eyes and waved the mouse around for a count of ten and then did “Eenie meenie miney moe” (with a “my mother” chaser) beginning on the aspiration closest to where the mouse was when I opened my eyes. Not that you care about my methodology, but it wasn’t the usual one so I thought I’d say.

Now, Amy Littledragon and Sally Couderc went to college at the same time and graduated at the same time, but they were not the same age. Sally is the younger by two days. To preserve that difference, I played the Coudercs for two days before moving Sally back in. They all had the flu, so this is about as exciting as it got.

Of course, Sally didn’t just sit in the Sim Bin. She spent her time backpacking in the mountains – with Troy.

Let’s face it: since Bon Voyage came out three years ago, we’ve all seen the same basic things a million times. “Oh, look! Tom and Janet are throwing axes! And they had a log rolling competition! And they learned to slap dance! Oh, and they went to a lot of trouble to meet Bigfoot!” Instead of making this time number one million and one, I’ll just point out a few things I didn’t know about vacationing in Three Lakes.

For instance, did you know that “Talk” is an option when you have two Sims in a tent? Or that if you choose it, you can see their silhouettes on the tent?

Another new-to-me feature was that Sims in a log-rolling competition can splash their opponent.

Generally speaking, though, you can assume that Sally and Troy between them acquired every Three Lakes vacation memory except “Met Bigfoot.” Sally and Troy both autonomously perma-locked a Fear of Bigfoot, and I didn’t feel like fulfilling the Fear.

Besides, anyone who can manage three bull’s-eyes the first time she ever tries throwing an axe is not someone you want to mess with.

SALLY: Hi, Mom! (hugs Lucy) LUCY: Welcome home, honey. (wrinkles her nose) Would you like to, ah, freshen up? SALLY: Oh, I’d love to! We both would. Three Lakes only has these cold showers and you have to put in a quarter for every minute of water. I can’t tell you how much I’ve been looking forward to a good long soak in a real bathtub! LUCY: “We”? SALLY: We. I told you about Troy, you remember? He’ll be living with us now because (whispers inaudibly) LUCY (shocked): Sally! SALLY: Oh, pooh! Don’t be such a stick-in-the-mud. (waves Troy over) Troy, come meet my mother!

TROY: Wow, is it good to be back in civilization again! Flush toilets, real clothes, and refrigerators! (takes a big drink) That’s a pretty dress – it looks good on you. SALLY (demurely): Thank you. I thought it was the nicest maternity dress in the whole store. TROY: (spits half his drink across the table and shoots the rest out his nose)

I may as well mention at this point that I have started making sure that my Sims have pictures of their relatives in their houses. I think it’s a nice touch, and it fills in blank walls well. Some Sims will have more pictures, or more recent pictures, than others, of course. As you can probably tell from the plants at the edges of the shot, this is Buttercup’s house, since that was the first house where I put this new plan into action.

Let’s begin with the morning of a typical day. JOSEPHINE: Ugh, Daddy, what are these supposed to be? ALBERT: They’re pancakes. JOSEPHINE: They taste like charcoal. (gags) They’re horrible. Where did you learn to cook? ALBERT: If you don’t like them, you know where the cereal is. JOSEPHINE (quickly): No, I think they’ll be great if I put some more syrup on them. Can you please pass me the syrup? ALBERT: No. You already had enough.

Buttercup makes friends while the kids are at school and Albert is at work. (She works from home, for understandable reasons.) Although Oliver is Buttercup’s brother-in-law and has been her brother Oakapple’s best friend since they were so high, she didn’t get to know him much prior to the wedding. This is mostly because she didn’t (and still doesn’t) get along with Oakapple. As it turns out, she gets along fine with Oliver.

Cecil is making new friends, too. Frederic is his first non-female friend. I’m not sure what that says about him, but there it is. Don’t recognize Frederic? That’s the problem with the way I play – everyone ends up at the same point, but I don’t play in order. Don’t worry: all will be cleared up soon!

After dinner and homework, Jo and Cecil play until bedtime. Sometime they play alone and sometimes they play with each other, but either way, their Fun meter is nice and full before they put on their pajamas. And the reason for the Walls Down? (For it is indeed deliberate.) To show you just how small and awkwardly shaped Jo and Cecil’s room is. I don’t know how they’re going to be able to keep sharing as Teens but I don’t have space on the lot to give them their own rooms.

Whatever it is I’m going to do, though, I need to figure it out soon. They Grew Up in perfect sync once again this rotation.

And privacy is important once you get to be this old. And speaking of houses that really don’t have enough room for everybody…

Trixie’s house is so full that Dmitri is actually sleeping in the hall. The family has a cubic ton of money and plenty of space on the lot; I am just made of fail when it comes to rebuilding, and I don’t want to split Tirtha and Trixie up.

I mean, just look at how close everybody is! It’s almost like there’s no difference between the two families. ARIADENE: (covering her face with her hands): Where’s Dmitri? Where’d he go? (flipping her hands open) There he is! DMITRI: (crows with delight) ARIADENE: (repeats gestures) Where’s Dmitri? Where is he? There he is! DMITRI: (laughs delightedly) ARIADENE: Daddy, when am I going to get another little brother or sister? ABHIJEET: Probably never, honey. Mommy and Aunt Trixie are too old to have any more babies. ARIADENE: Aw…

So, in an attempt to relieve some of the congestion, Abhijeet spent some of that cubic ton of money on a surprise for Tirtha. TIRTHA: What’s this? ABHIJEET: It’s for you. So we can get the flower bench out of the upstairs hall. TIRTHA: What, you’ve got an extension to the house in that little box?

ABHIJEET (V.O.): Not exactly, no. But the deed to a flower shop is almost as good, right? At least it’s somewhere to keep the flower bench and all the arrangements Tirtha makes. And I don’t even care if the business makes a profit. Which is probably just as well, given how QND routinely hemorrhages money. But I do want to have somewhere for my Sims to be able to buy a nice wildflower bouquet without having to spend hours and hours real time watching them gain the necessary badges.

Now is probably as good a time as any to mention that Ariadene has had a makeover.

So has Dmitri, and for the best of reasons: he’s now an adorabubble Toddler!

And now that Dmitri is old enough to have a personality, his father is starting to think about his future. LEONID (V.O.): Zaika, I have met very nice man today, with daughter almost same age as Dmitri. I am thinkink to arrange marriage with his daughter for our son. TRIXIE (V.O.): You can’t just arrange a marriage for your kids like that! What is this, the middle ages? Nobody does that anymore! And what if they don’t like each other? LEONID (V.O.) (mildly): My parents arranged marriage for me. TRIXIE (V.O.): You were married before? Why didn’t you tell me this?

LEONID: No, no. She is meetink me, this girl, and she is calling it off. She did not like my eyeliner. And I did not lose too much sleep because she looks like south end of northbound hippo, with smell to match. TRIXIE (trying not to laugh): The phrase is “south end of a northbound horse.” LEONID: Da, I know. But hippo is larger. And smellier. I have much better wife now. (kisses Trixie) If children do not like each other when they grow up, is not problem. This arrangement is, is insurance. Did I mention that Trixie is an Elder now? No? Trixie is an Elder now.

And speaking of Elders… When I entered the Mifune Sanders lot, Mifune was just standing there, unmoving, like this while Eileen used the facilities. Eventually, she finished and he got out of the tub, spun into his clothes, and went about his business. Then, with a good chunk of time left on his life bar, Mifune apparently died. I knew nothing about his death until I got the popup about his life insurance beneficiaries. Nobody else in the house paused what they were doing to so much as sniffle at his passing, so I figured it was a glitch, and quit without saving.

When I reentered the lot, this is the position Mifune was in. Just as awkward, if completely different. Because it was completely different, and because Mifune’s life bar still had a good amount of space on it, I decided he was probably fine.

Alas, I was wrong. MIFUNE: Hey, has anybody seen the timer? GRIM REAPER: Ri… .ere, M.. San…s. MIFUNE: No, not that one. It only does what, a couple minutes? I need to time twenty. GRIM REAPER: Thi. ti… .oes a .i..ti.., M.. San…s. .nd i.’. ou. o. .an.. MIFUNE: Aw, nuts. My best guess is that Mifune’s life bar was slaved to Eileen’s in the UI. That happens sometimes when a couple was made in CAS – or at least, it does in my game.

At least this time, people noticed he was gone. Eileen took it pretty hard, and Venus howled all night.

Grief takes everybody differently, and in the case of Louise and Charlotte, it took the form of dueling sponge mops. Seriously, you have no idea how many pictures I have of them mopping up the same puddles. Let’s leave them to work out their feelings in private, shall we?

Mifune Sanders, 70 years old. Named after a Japanese actor known for his work with director Akira Kurosawa, Mifune was the only one of his family to have children. (His friendly squabbles with Eileen Tang in college eventually led to true love and an unexpected set of twins.) Mifune was a fan of the work of designer Goopy GilsCarbo, although his devotion to the entire GilsCarbo line led to a business that routinely hemorrhaged money. Due to some sort of glitch, he died twice. Rest in peace, Mifune.

Here we see another one of those fun family snapshots. As you can probably tell, this is the home of nine-Nice-points Dante. As you can also tell, the middle-of-nowhere handicap is making it quite hard to decorate. Between the wall and the mirror, you can see every piece of wall covering in the whole room.

This will probably be the snapshot that other people have of this family. Dante likes to spend lots of time with his girls.

Although sometimes he has to compete with Amy for time with Cathrynne. Amy moved back in after college, as per my usual keep-the-population-low policy, but there’s no room in the house for her college sweetheart. (Remind me again why I thought breeding cats was a good idea?) Since she keeps rolling Wants for him, she’ll probably move out again next rotation.

There’s not as much competition for Cathrynne as you might think, though, since Dante is a Horoscope Writer. He’s been a Horoscope Writer since before he got married, and he’ll probably be a Horoscope Writer for the rest of his life. I don’t know what’s going on with him: I’ve gotten the same chance card for him practically every other time he goes to work, and I always choose the “Tell them to propose” option, which comes with a promotion if it works. And it always does work, and then the next time I check to see what level Dante’s at, he’s a Horoscope Writer again. Either my game is glitchy or I’m repressing the demotions. And can someone please explain why a Horoscope Writer needs to wear a camera to work?

On the last day of the rotation, Cathrynne Grew Up. I think she looks more like her father now, especially around the chin and mouth. Cathrynne loves dancing, and will dance with anyone and everyone. Her relatives are only too happy to oblige.

At the home of Oliver and Oakapple, the girls are making good use of their time. Saigon applied for Garden Club membership, and was accepted. The judges did not provide a wishing well, and in fact barely provided any money. This means that I have only two more chances at a wishing well, unless someone else moves into the house. I really don’t know what they don’t like, since every single plant on the lot was Thriving and there are no flamingos. They’re just picky, I guess.

Saigon and Fantine do not have a plant light to get them through the night, since plant lights cost $2,000 Simoleons each, and even with the Garden Club award the family bank balance was at less than $1, 000. However, that was enough to open an extremely basic (and ugly) farm stand, selling the produce from the garden, the orchard, and the pond. The farm stand not only broke even, it actually made a small profit in the first play session.

Although Oakapple proved to be something of a liability. OPINIONATED GARDEN CLUB LADY: How can you have a zombie working here? That can’t possibly be hygienic! What if bits fall off in the food? And he smells something awful! THE DAUGHTER WHO IS THE OWNER OF THE FARM STAND: That’s my father you’re talking about. If you don’t like the smell, you can leave. THE DAUGHTER WHO ISN’T THE OWNER: Yeah – nobody insults my father. (grabbing the Opinionated Garden Club Lady’s collar) Let me help you find the edge of the lot.

Oliver and Oakapple haven’t really contributed much to the stock of the farm stand, either. Although Oakapple planted most of the vegetable plots, it’s the girls who have tended most of them, who have talked the plants into Thriving even when they are crawling with aphids and Japanese beetles, and caught most of the fish.

Oliver and Oakapple do try to help with that, but they just aren’t all that good at it.

The girls have a silver and a gold Fishing badge, respectively. You may have noticed that Saigon and Fantine seem to do a lot of their outdoor things at night, and that is quite true. Since they don’t have a plant light, they’re going to go into motive distress no matter what. I figure they may as well make themselves useful while they’re about it. Besides, they keep rolling Wants to gain another Fishing badge or catch a particular type of fish. I do try to keep my Sims happy. Well, I do the interesting ones, anyway.

Our last stop this round is the home of Eddie, Celeste, and Frederic, where something very strange has happened. This is Frederic: a happy, normal child. He likes playing on the swings and being read to by Mommy and Daddy, and he doesn’t care that he has an unflattering haircut and the exact same outfit as Cecil. He doesn’t care, but I do, so I bought him new clothes and sent him to the mirror to change his look. At this point, please take a good look at Frederic’s eyes. They have whites, yes? And even if you can’t tell the color exactly in this shot, they are brown.

This is what happened after I went to fix his hair. Alien eyes! His eyes changed as soon as I clicked on the mirror, and no matter what I did after that, they stayed changed. I am not necessarily objecting to the change – I was feeling cheated that he didn’t get any alien features from Eddie – but I admit to being just a tiny bit concerned that they spontaneously changed like that.

He doesn’t seem to have suffered any ill effects, and his parents aren’t particularly concerned about it, so I’m not going to initiate another rebuild or anything. But I’m still baffled as to what happened.

The other exciting thing to happen at Frederic’s house was that a burglar broke in. Now, Edgar may be Nice, but he is not Stupid, and the alarm system went off right away.

The police showed up in a timely manner, and a rousing fight ensued. Two out of the three people in the household found it rousing, anyway. I’ll give you three guesses as to who did not. (The first two don’t count.)

EDGAR: Well! That was certainly exciting, wasn’t it? FREDERIC (enthusiastically): Uh-huh! EDGAR: Are you going to be okay to go to bed? FREDERIC: Sure. Why wouldn’t I? EDGAR: Well, you know… Sometimes people don’t feel safe after a break-in. (quickly) Not that there’s any reason for that! We are perfectly safe. But I just wanted to check and see that you don’t need someone to hold your hand or stay with you while you go to sleep. FREDERIC: I’ll be fine, Daddy. But if you need a hug to make you feel better, I can give you one. On which heartwarming note, I will wrap up.

For those of you who didn’t recognize the blonde man in the awesome mustache-and-sideburns combo, he is Old Adam, the current head of household in my (un)Officially Wacky Boolprop Challenge. You should absolutely go check it out. [/shameless self-promotion] Any clothing or hairstyles you haven’t seen before are Sims Store items snagged from More Awesome Than You. Except the sideburns-and-mustache combo; I made that myself.

On a related note, the reason Trixie looks so good even as an Elder is that I downloaded a hack from Mod The Sims that allows Elders to wear Adult clothing. Plus, she works out a lot. I also downloaded some recolors of the ceiling tiles I had previously added, but that should do it. I can’t think of anything else I want that I can’t make for myself. Until next time – whenever that is – Happy Simming! ********** The Grim Reaper’s lines, in order: Right here, Mr. Sanders. This timer does a lifetime, Mr. Sanders. And it’s out of sand.