Questions to Ask, part II

Tyr Ragnarok was born just after his father had lifted the culinary restrictions, so he was the first baby in the family who got a birthday cake when he turned toddler, and who never had to go hungry. Yes, Ask was blue from cold. Maybe Saga's screams when she was in labor scared him so much he was afraid to go inside. But hey, culinary is very good for that...



Hot chocolate is a must when you're dealing with constant winter. Apparently you only have to make it once, and then that pot lasts forever? Weird. Anyway, Tyr always had to come inside for some hot cocoa halfway through building a snowman, because I didn't want to risk the social worker coming for him.



Fifi, that is not your color.

I call her Fifi because, well, I didn't want to call her by my own name. Too weird, especially with an apocalypse. Anyway, she was one promotion from Chief of Staff when I moved her in, and it took her a week to get it - just before Ask and Embla were due to become adults.



Poor Embla. She and Ask both had the stuck smart milk effect, but then about halfway through teenhood hers disappeared, and his stayed. As knowledge sims, they'd depended on gaining skill points for keeping their aspiration up, and now hers came much more slowly. To add insult to injury, she developed a crush on Alvin Futa, but then never saw him again, while her twin had a future spouse (who he liked a lot) arranged for him by their mother. No wonder she was feeling left out.



I wasted a couple of sips of the precious elixir hoping to get Saga a job in music, so she could suppress the artist restrictions and the kids could gain creativity points, but no go. (Which means Embla found it impossible to get promoted in her teen gamer job.) Shortly before Fifi topped medical, Saga turned elder.



Not to worry, though, Ratna still thinks she's the hottest thing since the sun disappeared behind thick clouds.



You know, when a townie kid comes home from school with one of your sims, and stays so long that a random townie comes by to pick them up... You kind of expect them to leave in the same direction, don't you?



Sims have interesting ideas about hanging out. Why does everyone have their back to Saga, who initiated the hangout? Is it just to keep Ratna trapped so he can't leave the table when he's done?

Quick tour of my apocalypse house, just because I can't think of anything else to say:



First floor: Kitchen and dining area. This is also where the noise makers are, the phone and the stereo. Not a single item is more than one tile, so I could easily change the layout if I had to.

The stove was bought after Ratna topped culinary, of course. The grill came in Fifi's inventory. I later moved it down underneath the house, to avoid traffic jams on the porch.



The second floor is the study area. Computer, chess table, bookcase and couch. The education bookcase has its back to the room until someone lifts adventurer. Two cribs, because Saga went and had twins...

By the way, the "Stairway to Heaven" stairs are a must in any apocalypse house. You can place one above the other, saving several tiles worth of space!



The third floor is for sleeping. Oh, and the bathrooms, one with a sink and the other with a toilet, so both can be used at the same time. Once medical was lifted, I remodelled a little; one 1x2 shower stall, and one 3x2 full bathroom.

As you can see, each floor has a wide open area. This is very useful for several purposes - hanging out with friends, 'playing with' toddler bunny heads, doing yoga, meditating... Not to mention that it helps to avoid traffic jams. It works for me.

And remember:



The Apocalypse is fun!

Questions to Ask

Yo, yo, yo, listen up!
Ask Ragnarok is the greatest guy in town
He'll cheer you up when you're feelin' down
So when nothin' else seems right in your life
just give me a call and... and...

Damn, I suck at this. Even my mom is a better rapper than I am, how's that for embarrassing? But then she's good at everything she does, pretty much. She and Dad set the bar kinda high for us kids, what with her getting the schools back on track, and him fixing the food problem. That's a lot to live up to, you know?



So my twin sister Embla and I, we study pretty much all the time. That's not so bad, really - I like learning new things. It's just that I'm not sure what I want to do with my life. Embla is. She says she wants to fix the phones so we can talk to our friends anytime we want, rather than just when we manage to get through. That's cool, but it just seems like there are so many bigger problems around here, you know?

I thought about becoming a doctor or engineer or something. There's a lot of diseases going around, even if we've been lucky and managed to avoid them, but still. And there's the water problem. Mom and Dad are always going on about how much they miss being able to take "showers" and "baths." I mentioned how maybe I could figure out a way to fix that, but then Mom said she has some friends who are already working on it, so I guess I'll do something else instead.



And Mom even asked one of those friends to move in with us. She says that with us taking care of everything else around the house, this friend of hers can focus that much more on her research, you know? Her name is Felicia Futa, but Mom calls her Fifi. I like that - Fifi. It's cool. She's cool. Not stuck up or anything, just real nice, and she knows how to have fun, too.



Embla doesn't seem to like her, though. I don't know why. But then Embla has been kinda grouchy lately about lots of things. She calls me blind, says I can't see what's right under my nose, but won't tell me what it is I'm not seeing. Like, hello, how does that make any sense? Then she mutters that nobody cares about her. I care! We all care! That doesn't mean she has to be the only friend I have in the world, does it?



I'm not gonna let my sister's moods stop me from being friends with someone I like, though. Mom is glad that Fifi and I are friends, anyway. She's always watching us when we're talking, with this smile on her face. Even when she's supposed to be meditating!



She's good with Tyr, too. Tyr is my baby brother, and he's, well, a little odd. I think he listened too much to Mom's stories when he was little. (Okay, littler.) On his birthday, he spent a lot of time staring at his hands, like he had to make sure they were still there. I figured it out later - the god he's named for lost his right hand to chain that big wolf in Mom's stories. I guess Tyr was worried that was going to happen to him too, or something. He's such a peabrain.



Like this time I found him sleeping on the couch. I woke him up and sent him up to bed, and he mumbled something about wanting to know what the flowers smelled like. I'd explained to him earlier that day that the pattern on the couch was something called "flowers" which used to grow before the snow came, and then he'd asked Mom what they were, and she went on about how wonderful flowers smelled. So Tyr lay down on the couch and tried to smell it! But ended up falling asleep, instead.



I guess I shouldn't make fun of him too much. Lots of the things Mom and Dad talk about sound strange to me, too. Like the sky. I get that there's something behind the overcast, but it's blue? Really? I can sort of imagine stars and stuff - like the walls in our bedroom, dark blue with little white dots - but this whole "sun" thing, that's just too much. A big bright ball in the sky, that lights up and warms up the whole world? Come on! How does that even work? It'd have to be huge!

I wonder if you could make a sun. Not a big one to light up the whole world, but maybe a little one, that we could put in the house? I gotta ask Mom and Dad if anyone's ever made something like that...



Ahhh... So this is what a "shower" feels like.