Here’s where I ran out of yarn for this pair of socks.

Of all the rotten luck.

Tags: Fancy Image Yarn, Sock Fail

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Jerboa is such a studious child. She does her homework every day after school, without any help or prompting.

If you’ve ever wondered what it means to be a Sim with the “Light Sleeper” trait, it is this: even if you’re sleeping in a completely separate building, you still wake up when the baby starts crying.

Amidst all this juggling, Isabeau found time to teach Jack how to talk.

Long after Jack had learned how to talk, I happened to sweep past that room and notice that they were still locked in those positions. And Jack was getting hungry! I had a flashback to the nasty incident when toddler Connor got stuck in the dog bed. With Sims 2, your only option was to exit the game without saving.

Sims 3 has a new cheat code which can fix this “stuck” behavior. Just type CTRL + Shift + C to open the cheat window. Then type in resetSim Firstname Lastname and hit Enter.

I opened the cheat window, typed in resetSim Isabeau Alphabetti and magically she was jostled free. That’s some nice code progress! Thanks, unknown Sims developer!

Jack accidentally grew into a child before I could have a proper birthday for him. He looks as surprised as I did!

Fortunately I remembered in time to have a party for Janis. Poor Janis! The game assigned her the trait of “Inappropriate,” in addition to her existing traits Loves The Outdoors, Angler, and Insane.

I gave Janis some nice Crazy Hair.

Sims who are both Insane and Inappropriate do some seriously weird things. Like sponge bathe in the kitchen sink.

Meanwhile Jerboa grew into a Young Adult (I missed her birthday, too). I decided that the main house was getting too crowded. For one thing, if I want Jerboa to have three children, there isn’t enough room on the lot (the game has a limit of eight Sims per lot).

I had her move into a pre-designed property called The Granary, because she could afford it, and it looked really funny.

“I can’t believe there’s a bale of hay in my living room!”

On the down side, the Granary has a very small footprint, and five floors, two of which are just landings. The very top floor has an eerie little collection of toys.

One of the many things I miss from Sims 2 is the gypsy. If you wanted a date, you just called the gypsy, and she’d set you up. In Sims 3 you have to wander around striking up conversations with strangers in the park.

This is Marco Natcher. They got along pretty well. I thought he might be The One, until Jerboa met Kory Wilson at the gym.

The instant she met him, she started queuing up Kory-related wishes. “Learn 2 more of Kory’s traits.” “Chat with Kory.” “Prepare Kory’s favorite meal.” It was pretty nauseating.

She invited him home. Things were a little awkward at first.

But they turned around quickly.

After springing out of bed, Jerboa proposed, and Kory accepted.

Then she had to run down three flights of stairs to vomit from “unknown causes.” Tee hee!

And later that afternoon, they were wed in a private ceremony.

Tags: Sims Sunday

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Back when I blogged about the desk shelving I built, Ayla said “I want another blog-honest picture in exactly one month.” Your wish is my command!

Not bad, right?

I want to make it clear that I’m not posting this to point out what an awesome and capable person I am. We’ve all run across those Martha Stewart wannabe blogs, and how tiresome they can be.

This is actually a lesson about clutter. Take a clump of clutter and give it some high-level analysis. Why is it there? What makes it “clutter”? That will give you your long-term answer.

A lot of my clutter is “stuff that didn’t have a proper place to live.” The test for this is if you ask yourself where it belongs, the answer is “Um… I dunno.” Or in the case of the desktop clutter, “Right there, but yuck.”

(Another kind of clutter is “stuff that belongs somewhere else, but it’s never there, because that’s an inconvenient place.” This kind of clutter can also benefit from a bit of reorganization.

Say your knitting needles belong in the pretty basket on the shelf across the room, but they’re always cluttering up your coffee table. Maybe the solution is to keep them in a pretty box beside your coffee table.)

The long-term solution to clutter like this is to know yourself. I know that if something has a proper home, I’m pretty good about putting it there. I also know that it drives me crazy to reach for one thing on a shelf, and have ten other things come tumbling out, so I’m pretty good at keeping shelves tidy.

(Don’t worry, I have plenty of faults. You should see the always-refreshing pile of dirty dishes in the kitchen sink.)

Tags: Carpentry, decluttering

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As I’m sure you’ve noticed, the eggs are starting to be laid on a regular basis. I get at least two a day, sometimes three. However, they are all still quite small – about half the size of a regular egg. It’s kind of annoying to have to crack five or six eggs just to make breakfast for one person, but they’re awfully cute!

The first week of egg-laying, I started wondering if I had made a mistake. The chickens cackled loudly from 8AM until about 1PM every day. Chicken keepers call this “the egg song,” which I assure you is entirely tongue in cheek.

I never managed to catch them at it, but here’s a YouTube video of someone else’s chicken singing the egg song. Imagine four chickens doing this together for five hours a day. MAN IT IS LOUD.

They have since settled down with the cackling. In fact, I haven’t heard anything other than the usual quiet clucking for the last few days. I guess it was just a little ALARMING for them at first. “OMG AN EGG! AN EGG CAME OUT OF MY BUTT!” “MINE TOO! THAT JUST HAPPENED TO ME!” “I THINK AN EGG IS COMING OUT OF HER BUTT NOW!” “WAAAAAUGH WHAT IS GOING ON???”

As a side note, Harriet (my Rhode Island Red) has been laying nothing but double-yolkers. These are twice as large as the other eggs, which makes them exactly the same size as a regular egg. With two yolks crammed in there, and practically no egg white. Weird.

At night I like to watch them settling in to sleep on their roost. They make the sweetest little “tuk tuk” noises. If you look closely, you can see them through the window along the top of their coop. I think they like being able to peek out from their roosts.

Tags: My Peeps

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I understand now why I stopped having a proper number of children in each generation, and why I never bothered with birthdays. The entire last week was nothing but BIRTHDAY CHAOS. With eight people in the Alphabetti household, there were so many birthdays going that I had to start throwing combination birthday parties.

But first – Pork With Bones had a great bit of research on my marrying problem. You basically have to keep spamming your partner with Romantic interactions until the marriage-related ones pop up in your menu. Thus, Isabeau was finally able to propose to Gerry Lessen.

Then I got a little ahead of myself, and told them to “Have Private Wedding.” If I’d realized they were going to get married right that instant, I would have had them change into formal wear and go stand out on the lawn. (Even the ghost was wearing his underwear.) Oh well, at least he’s Gerry Alphabetti now.

And not a moment too soon! First thing the next morning, baby Jack was born. (I did a good job keeping Isabeau happy, so I got to choose Jack’s traits. I picked Virtuoso and Easily Impressed.)

Not to sound churlish, but the Lessen house – while it is beautiful and vast and awesome – isn’t really set up for raising children. But I can’t bring myself to remodel any of the pre-made gorgeousness. So all of the babies are being raised in the formal dining room.

I’m having trouble organizing these screenshots. I think this is Jerboa, after her birthday to Toddler. Or is it Janis? I honestly can’t tell.

Whoever was in that last picture, the other one is pictured here after her birthday to Toddler. (Janis is Insane, Loves the Outdoors, and Angler.)

See what I mean? I can hardly keep them straight. At least Jack is easy, being the youngest, and the only boy.

Most of the parties I’ve thrown at the Lessen property have been big successes. (I guess the house is big enough to keep everyone happy.) Not so with the Failed Pool Party, a combination birthday for Jerboa and Isabeau.

I told the guests to show up in swimwear, and then no one went swimming. Instead of having a pool party, they had a stand-around-the-living-room-in-swimsuits party. And at the end of the night, the guests were all, “See ya, that party sucked.” Sigh.

Bit of a traffic jam in the hallway when it came time for Isabeau (farthest left) to blow out her candles and age to Mature Adult.

Here’s Jerboa, about to turn into a Teen. “I DON’T WANT TO BLOW OUT THE CANDLES, I WANT TO GO TO BED.”

Her younger sister Janis slept through the entire party. She woke up hungry in the middle of the night and had to be content with eating a leftover muffin.

I gave Jerboa a quirky makeover, because you know the teenagers today. They love the quirky. (Jerboa is now Good, Genius, Light Sleeper, and Charismatic.)

Once Jerboa grew into a teenager, I decided to just focus on her and let the rest of the Alphabettis sort themselves out. (Sims are actually pretty good of taking care of their own basic needs without you.) So Janis has taken over the carriage house on the corner of the property where Gerry used to live.

It has most of what a person needs, plus a guitar.

I put in this small kitchen back when Gerry and Isabeau lived here. When Jerboa moved in, I was surprised to find that the fridge was filled with fresh leftovers.

Later I learned that Gerry still comes over here to cook all of his meals, then dutifully puts the leftovers in the fridge. Weird. And thanks, dad!

Speaking of food, I just have to brag. Whenever you fulfill a Sim’s wish, you get Lifetime Reward points. Isabeau finally accumulated enough Lifetime Reward points to purchase a Food Replicator!

I’m sure I’m not the first player to earn a Food Replicator without using cheats, but it sure feels like it!

Tags: Sims Sunday

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