T w e n t y S i d e d

It’s now 2006, Lorretta is 61, Logan is five. Kelly and Michael are married, and Lorretta has cancer.

The few weeks after the concerning diagnosis are a blur. The doctors at the ER are worried it’s progressed due to her symptoms, but the specialist she’s sent to is really optimistic it’s not. The nurse doing her blood draw helpfully mentions she has an uncle who recently died of cancer, but one of Lorretta’s colleagues at the library has herself been cancer-free for twenty years. Everyone has something different to say, and none of it is collaborated in any way because none of these people know each other. If Lorretta wasn’t under an over-abundance of stress and worry, she’d be understanding about that, but as it is she wishes these idiots could have a group call and get their stories straight.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Sims 4 Overthinking: Ice Cream and Noodles”

Bay Jubilee Oldest child of Shamus Young. They/Them

Michael and Kelly are engaged, and then quickly married. Michael’s mom can be a nosy piece of work, and so although the couple planned to hold a ceremony proper, that quickly proved too dramatic for either of them. They eloped shortly after Logan’s first birthday. She takes his last name, less for tradition and more for the fact that she never liked ‘Whitman’. This makes them Michael and Kelly Zhu, and provides an interesting hurtle of changing their baby’s last name to match.

I was going to insert a family photo here, but two hours of effort and sims infuriatingly ignoring me, I give up. It’s not a Sims play-through if you don’t at least once want to scream into the void. Turns out, the photography stuff doesn’t work with babies yet, since they’re too new a feature, in 2023. I hate this game.

But yes, back to the elephant in the room, the elephant that is now likely bored after watching me shake my fist at a broken video game for two hours.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Sims 4 Overthinking: Too Many Surprises”

Bay Jubilee Oldest child of Shamus Young. They/Them

Lorretta and Kelly’s relationship had been somewhat strained before baby Logan was born. Kelly had always been more close to her dad, and her mom had seemed bossy and controlling when she was growing up. Lots of things changed in the last year, though. From Lorretta’s divorce, to starting college, and then the birth of her first grandchild, she’s a very different person from then to now.

She’d been outside-appearance motivated, practical, and sometimes overbearing as a parent. She’d been desperate to make her time sitting at home alone with babies worth it. If she was to have given up collage for something, she wanted to have something to show for it. That mindset had put undue pressure on her girls to be something worth showing off.

She’s started therapy now, and after some thought, brings that realization to Kelly in the form of an apology.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Sims 4 Overthinking: Not a Duplex”

Bay Jubilee Oldest child of Shamus Young. They/Them

The baby is here, the house is more or less done in time, and time can move quickly again, for both us and the new parents. The first two weeks go by as an odd liminal space. The nursery was stunning when they got to first bring their baby boy home, and it lasted all of two days. It’s still stunning underneath the tossed baby clothes and still-in-boxes baby shower gifts, but the mess isn’t the focus; Kelly and Michael are just trying to survive. They’re both young, first time parents, which is already exhausting, but they also had an odd situation. Kelly hadn’t even stepped into the house for longer than a few minutes when she came home from the hospital. She’s tired and disoriented already, let alone not knowing where the bathroom is, where the spatulas are kept, or how to turn on the shower.

Added to all of that, they got unlucky, and baby Logan is a miserable little guy, his stomach is always bloated and if he’s not sleeping, he’s crying. The nursery becomes a desperate space, furniture is moved haphazardly to make things easier, aesthetics be damned. Kelly is sleeping in the recliner next to the crib, rather than her bed, so that she doesn’t have to get out of bed sixty times a night. Michael offers repeatedly to take shifts, but Kelly is struggling to breastfeed and sleeping in the nursery feels like something she can control, Michael is turned down.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Sims 4 Overthinking: Logan”

Bay Jubilee Oldest child of Shamus Young. They/Them