Making other legacy ‘poor spares’ jealous

I’ve been a bit concerned about the state of Thomas and Papergirl’s marriage of late.  They’ve not been wanting to try for a baby, he’s been rolling wishes to speak to Sherry Bunch, and she’s been rolling wishes to befriend her male acquaintances.  So I sent them for a romantic break in France.

Of course, I got them doing some skilling, learning and exploring, too.  There are new grape varieties in France.  We discovered three and Thomas harvested some for us to plant at home.  They also act as bait for the French fish, and ingredients for nectar.

Thomas had a go at making nectar with grapes, lime and apples.  The game told us it was disgusting, which might be a fair point.  You can purchase a billion different varieties of nectar at the store onsite, which makes me think the nectar skill and LTW might be very difficult indeed.

Papergirl was sent rummaging to see if she could build up her journalistic skills writing some stories on her French buddies.  She could rummage, but never enough to dig up any dirt (or indeed find anything exciting).

She spent a lot of time buttering up the locals to improve her charisma.  She can talk about her adventures and discuss the local gossip with them.  She can’t interview them, sadly.  On the phone, you can talk to friends in France, or long-distance friends (back home) and when you get home you can also call your long-distance holiday friends, and I’ve heard you can invite them over.  It’s now my ambition to gain spouses from these destinations for future Dayes.

Here, Papergirl is learning songs.  She learned two songs from the shopkeeper.  When she sang one, ‘Je T’aime’ back to him, they got a negative moodlet because he was in a relationship.  Ha.  I didn’t notice her gaining any music skill from the songs though.

In the bedroom she taught the songs to Thomas and he sang the love song back to her.  I spammed their romantic interactions but they had no try for baby option come up, and I thought maybe it just couldn’t happen in France, so I sent them to sleep.

The next day I sent Papergirl off to visit the sights and talk to more locals, while I got Thomas to read his fishing books then carry out his main mission here, to catch the unique fish.

He didn’t seem too impressed with frogs.

Snails were perhaps a little more impressive, given their size.  You can also catch crawfish in France (and some more normal fish).  Fishing here can all  be done in the same place and seems fairly straightforward, but in China I think it’ll be more of a challenge given the number of fishing books and fishing spots for that place.

Papergirl enjoyed whizzing around on the motorbike.  I also sent the two of them for a romantic meal at the cafe in France but she couldn’t eat grilled salmon, so she still hasn’t eaten her favourite meal (Thomas has had key lime pie now, hurrah).

Fortunately, this is not Thomas displaying his sexytime moves.  We bought a camera and Papergirl can ask people to pose.  She didn’t take a picture, but I’m considering letting Eddie Kidd do one of the photography based LTWs so he’ll inherit it on his child birthday (assuming children can use cameras).

After a lot of faffing about (and some obligatory bathroom flirting), they finally succumbed.

Another baby is on the way – and only a few hours before they had to come home.

Evel has started cooking up some of the fancy new WA recipes.  Here she’s seen cooking felafel.  She’s so skillful, she doesn’t even need to look at what she’s doing.  A very cute thing (that will probably become annoying) was that she sang the song she learned in China while she was cooking.  Aw.

Now here’s something exciting.  Look at the bottom option Thomas has here.  It says ‘fertilise garden with best fertiliser’.  Now that seems a very useful new interaction indeed and a much less timewastey one than having to do all the fertilizing manually.  Oh, and we learned more about that darn omni at the science facility.  You can only feed or harvest it at certain times of the day.  Iiiinteresting.

I’m not entirely sure I approve of pregnant women driving around Sunset Valley on mopeds without helmets on.

I sent Papergirl out to do some interviews and reviews to make the best use of her pregnancy… only… nowhere was available to review?  Whaaat??  I hope this is merely the Sim nanny state enforcing new restrictions on pregnant sims and not some patch/WA glitch that has stopped journos doing journalistic things, or I will NOT BE IMPRESSED.

Cos, yeah, she can’t interview, either.  She went to the library to read Totally Preggers and build charisma.  I got her to give a flirty introduction to some townie because I thought it might be better for charisma (I wasn’t going to have her take the flirting anywhere other than that).  Only Abe chose that moment to enter the library and he wasn’t best impressed with his daughter-in-law’s behaviour.  He wasn’t even impressed when she told him a fifth grandchild was on the way, and last time I saw him, he had a wish to have five grandchildren, so you think he’d be over the moon.  Maybe being the living dead has given him a bit of a sense of humour bypass.

His oldest granchildren both aged up.  I was all ready to get Piranha out looking for a spouse to turn into a purple ghost (I like the idea of favourite colour ghosties)… when I realised I had chosen her traits so far and would have to roll her YA trait.  She rolled… whatever and she did NOT roll Gold-digger.  No biggie, I had enough LTH to buy her a change, but reroll as much as I liked, Gold-digger would not come up.

So now she’s just after swimming in cash, which will be a doddle, and is back out looking for the mythical trilobite beetle.  She can have a few more bug hunts overseas, top out a part-time career and (pleeeeease) find that darn bug, and then I’ll let her live her life and make room for Gen 4.

Evel is much better behaved than her cousin.  I chose workaholic for her and she’s (of course) going to be a Five Star Chef.  Next time I play I’ll get a better picture of her – she aged up just as I was about to go out and I didn’t have time to get a good shot.

And finally…. I let Papergirl read Totally Preggers but nothing else and she didn’t go to the spa or have a back massage.  She was mostly happy throughout.  I chose one of this baby’s traits.  Koi Daye likes black and key-lime pie, so should be easy to please.  She rolled clumsy and I chose friendly.  I’m hoping she will test out super-popular via the medium of tag.

Join us next week when we should hopefully have a house full of old people and ghost children, we should discover what colour Koi’s hair will be and we’ll find out if Papergirl can ever conduct an interview or review again!