[Introduction] [Next]
His traits: Green Thumb, Loves the Outdoors, Eco-Friendly, Angler, Natural Cook.
Bought a little house called Teacup Chihuahua, because it has a reasonable-sized plot of land, and an adequate if basic little house.
Got a military job ("Latrine cleaner? Heck that's eco-friendly...") and he had to cut his hair short. After the barber's he went to take a fishing class, since his job didn't start till the next day.
He worried about the environment when riding in a taxi to the pond he had been told was good for fishing, and wondered if he might be able to find a decent fishing place closer to home. But in spite of that he caught a rainbow trout for his supper :)
A little while later he had a few days off work and spent most of them fishing, and caught 3 anchovies, 3 sea sludges, 4 tuna, a rubber duck, 2 alley catfish, a rainbow trout, 2 jellyfish and a red herring!
He needed more money and his sergeant at work told him the only way to earn more was to skill up; so off he went off to the gym, where he met some of the locals. And then off to a gardening class. At last! And upon his return to work, he was promoted to Mess Hall Server.
He met a lady called Constance Shelley at the bookstore, where he went to get a book about fertilizers. Decided to keep in touch with her, and she gradually became a good friend.
At this point he didn't even know how to weed. His plants were dying off and his mood was very low. He felt as if he never got enough sleep, and even the Sergeant noticed his hangdog look.
On his day off, he could see ripening lettuces on his plants but didn't know how to harvest them, or even whether he should. Exhausted, he went back to bed. Hiring a maid helped a little - at least his house was cleaner. He wasn't getting enough sleep and felt rotten all the time; his work was very tiring and he even wondered if he might be ill. He hadn't the energy after a day's work to go out; h could barely manage to keep himself clean and his very small garden watered. He bought a new bed to see if that would help.
[OT: I tried the hotfix http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=432449 but it didn't solve the problem permanently; I had to close down and open game again repeatedly to keep him functioning and out of the red. And he couldn't at this point afford a better bed.]
He got gardening skill level 5 which allows uncommon seeds to be grown, and discovered that gardening made him feel better. [Eco-Friendly gets a mood boost +25 of Replenishing the Earth when gardening.]
One day he got up from a lie-in to find someone had stole the sofa.... it must have been worth more than his grotty old TV!
He was getting to be quite good friends with the maid, Jane. He did wonder what she was doing with all his stuff when once again his new-ish sofa went missing.
Soon afterward she took his TV. As he got to know her he realised she had a slight tendency to kleptomania. He shruggged. She cleaned his house well, he didn't have anything expensive anyway, and she was good company when he wanted company.
He was still growing things and managed to eke out a little extra income by selling some of the fruit and vegetables. But he was still struggling.
Reached gardening level 7, where he could now plant rare seeds. It was probably time to go look for some more seeds. But he needed to work on his athletic skill for work before that. So he spent most of the next weekend at the gym and still apparently wasn't fit enough for a promotion.
He was beginning to think that a full time job as well as the garden was just too much. But the money from the army was good, and so far he couldn't really afford not to have a paid job as well. Maybe he could deal with it by taking unpaid time off work from time to time.
One morning, a notice was hand-delivered to his door.
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He bought a bed, a good bed but second hand; the paint was cracking but it had a good foam mattress and a hard base, and was SOOO comfortable. The first night he got it he slept deeply for 12 hours. Soon his mood lifted and he was able to get on with his life.
Meanwhile, travelling to work every day, even though he was getting a lift from the carpool, was really bugging his Eco-Friendly conscience. He decided he was fed up of using up the Earth's resources and bought a bike for getting to and from work.
Days off were spent fishing, and he was learning to use bait for different types of fish.
Finally he was promoted to Grunt. "Goodbye latrine! - oh, well... maybe not."
But he was already pretty sick of the barking of the officers. His was an independent spirit and he was dreaming of a little self-sufficient farm.
His vegetable patch was expanding: here is a plan he made to keep track of where everything was.
| lettuce great | lettuce very nice | lettuce very nice | lettuce very nice | lettuce very nice | Lettuce outstanding | Lettuce outstanding | Lettuce outstanding | Lettuce Very Nice | Lettuce nice |
| rare seed | rare seed | rare seed | rare seed | Tomato | Tomato very nice | Tomato | Tomato | Tomato | Tomato nice |
| potato great | Grape Great | Grape Great | grape very nice | grape very nice | |||||
| watermelon excellent | unknown uncommon | ||||||||
| onion outstanding | onion outstanding | onion very nice | onion great | onion great |
He managed to upgrade the shower at last, so there would be no more surprise cold showers in the morning.
Much to his surprise, Fritz was promoted to Squad Leader. A great surprise because he was feeling less and less like work. Now he had to learn to bark like the Sergeant!
At tinkering level 4 he finally got the option to upgrade his garden sprinklers to auto-watering. He started to think ahead. Garlic is a fine fertiliser, so he planned to have a patch of garlic, a patch for special and rare plants, and a patch or two for general food of perfect quality for himself and selling.
One day, completely out of the blue, he was offered a transfer to the police as a traffic cop, and took it because he felt it might be a little less tiring. What did surprise him was that he was expected to study logic.
"To direct traffic? Come on..." he had never had any interest in chess, and this was just absurd.
He thought they were kidding in the restaurant when they asked him to grow cheeseplants. "I thought cheeses were made in the basement of the supermarket!" But they gave him some special seeds and he managed to grow them in spite of his disbelief.
The traffic cop thing wasn't working out, and he decided to look for a part time job instead. He dropped into a few places after work to see what he could find jobwise, and in fact he got a job as a grave digger (called Burial Specialist).
"Well that's not so different from farming", he thought. Completely autonomously, he had eaten a garlic from his inventory just before going into the Mausoleum - I wonder if that helped with the interview? It turned out he was a very good gravedigger, as his back was strong from all the gardening, and he positively enjoyed hard work and the peace and quiet of the cemetery. So he was promoted quickly, to the point where his pay was §117 an hour (for 3 hours a day, 5 days a week). But he still felt he had not enough time to work on his gardening.
Finally after much deliberation he registered as self-employed and quit the cemetery job. Right on cue, his money tree finally came to harvest, and more or less at the same time, a large batch of vegetables sold for a lot of money.
Suddenly he had dosh! He bought a couple of things, converted the garage (which had only housed his bicycle, ever) into a spa room, and then he invited Jane, the maid over to spend an evening watching TV and trying out his new hot tub. She was happy to stay overnight.
After a few dates like this, he proposed they get engaged and she agreed happily. "I thought you would never ask!"
They had their private wedding in a public garden in town. Azalea Acres Community Garden. Afterwards, their cameraman, a Mr Fraps, rang to apologise - he had lost all the photographs when his camera broke. So they had no wedding pictures. Meadow came and played the guitar for them, and a couple of other random townies wandered in and out. I wondered who Jane was chatting away to - turned out it was the plants there! Considering that she had just thrown a want to become a ghostbuster, this was surprising. But it turned out she has the green thumb trait too.
Of course she wanted to make over the house. "But we can do it piecemeal. We will certainly need a much bigger house, a decent sized farmhouse - with lots of space for children! And you will need a cellar for storage and maybe I can make some wine..."
He stopped listening at the "children" part. Children would be good....
She planted a long hedge along the roadside, and then they started on the building work. In between, there were long luscious soaks in the hot tub to ease her aching muscles - gardening uses very different muscles from housework! She dismissed the maid the agency had sent to replace her. "I can do it better and faster!"
She had her own car, and was reluctant to give it up. But he talked her into selling it and buying a good bicycle instead, although, as she pointed out, when they had children they would need to revisit the issue.
"One day soon we should have a day out fishing," he said. "When the latest crop of specials and rares is through."
"Meanwhile there is building work to do," she looked up from her gardening book. "I know how to weed now? Want me to?"
"Yes please :) save me a big job! And get rid of the dead plants too."
He took a trip to town to sell the fruit and vegetables; it was a big order and he brought back over 5,000. As they were growing increasingly high quality produce, more and more of the shops in town were taking their vegetables.
The building work was coming on. The new sitting room was ready, with a temporary roof, and they moved furniture into it. The next job was to build a staircase, and his handy skills came in here. Meanwhile they were busy gardening and trying for a baby. She wanted space downstairs for the baby, at least while he was tiny. "Later that can be a playroom. Or maybe we just need a nice big family room."
She does look a little bit pregnant here, doesn't she? Actually she spent her whole pregnancy feeling hot, and for much of the time ran about in her swimsuit. Fritz approved.
Harvest time.
Jane was just taking yet another bath in between some of the building work and starting to do the day's weeding when she was SURE her baby was coming.
"I've got to go NOW," she said. Fritz was busy "Just a minute, love... I need to finish the ferts."
So she set off for the hospital, on her bicycle.... "You've done plenty of ferts already," she laughed.
After finishing the harvesting, he realised what she had said, and raced off to the
hospital.
She had triplets! Felicia, Charis and Analise. They all got the Loves the Outdoors trait.
"Are you sure these are all ours? I thought you said you were having a boy?"
"I must have made a mistake... but they all look so much like us, they must be ours!"
As tends to happen with new babies, they took over the whole of the living area.
Traits: Felicia has Easily Impressed and Loves the Outdoors
Charis has Good and Loves the Outdoors
Analise has Loner and Loves the Outdoors
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They all got neat hairdos for the first day of school.
Felicia, Charis and Anelise. They are not identical but as they tend to dress and wear their hair alike it can be hard to tell them apart. Their natures divide them more. Felicia and Anelise tend to be partners in crime and pick on Charis, or in teasing their parents.
Felicia has Easily Impressed, Loves the Outdoors and now Mean Spirited, and wears red ribbons.
Charis has Good, Loves the Outdoors and now Loser, and wears pink heart ribbons
Analise has Loner, Loves the Outdoors and now Evil, and black and white ribbons.
The week before Valentine's Day, the girls came home from school with a new problem. "We need your wedding pictures, to show our teacher."
Jane was not happy. "We never got any. We had a wonderful, informal wedding... and someone did take pictures, lots of them. But his camera broke and we never got the photos."
Fritz was listening. "I know! Let's do it again!" So they celebrated their wedding all over again, back at the Azalea Community Gardens.
The omni plants were either perfect or putrid quality, but all three produced. (Left to right: books, rubber ducks, candles).
The money trees were "perfect" and "great" quality - the "great" one produced less valuable fruit (starting at §83)
Charis liked to play with blocks and was already showing signs of tinkering skill.
Anelise was here but typically she chose a spot a long way downstream from the others. Fish is of course great fertiliser and good to eat. The children weren't able to help with the gardening but this they could do and loved.
The perfect quality garlic crop this season, along with a few other things, brought in a lot of money, . They were now quite a prosperous farming family.
Anelise, a loner, tended to be off by herself playing while her sisters would run around the farm together. Fritz built onto the house again, adding three separate large bedrooms, each for the girls, a utilities and laundry room, generally more space for all of them.