wedding prep picspam and chatter

June 2086. 


"Look, my sweetie is here," Stephanie mused. Stephanie never thought that work could be so much fun until Sharon's usual fix-it guy couldn't make it in for a Supper Club event, so Sharon asked Stephanie to see if Justin could stop by. Every time Stephanie turned around, there he was, her sweetheart, with his talented hands making broken things work again. She felt fluttery and charmed, but also distracted. She missed the tomatoes and spilled olive oil on the floor.


A little kiss, before he ran off to save the day—the radio was spewing sparks and what good was a dinner party without any music?


When Stephanie started working here, Sharon had promised that she could bring the kids along if the need ever arose, and tonight was a first since Justin was here, too. Lily wasn't too happy about the late phone call, just as she was looking forward to cookies and a bedtime story.


But Willow didn't mind missing her bedtime too much. She found some fun things to do.


It was a long night for everyone. Stephanie had never needed to work through a pregnancy before, and eight months along, she found it utterly exhausting. She didn't exactly need to work now—not anymore, anyway, since Justin was making plenty of money now—but she was very much needed here in any case. Most of the wedding menu was on her shoulders and she didn't want to let anyone down. With the wedding preparations, the Sunday brunches and Saturday night supper clubs, Stephanie was putting in twenty hours a week in addition to being a full time mom and gestating a giant squirming baby boy in her belly. She could safely say that she'd never worked so hard in her entire life.

Sharon promised that she would look for another girl to lighten the load a little, and Stephanie could pull back her hours after the wedding was finished.



Lily found a quiet place to rest. This is a hotel, after all. There are lots of beds here.

"Come on, little girlie. It's time to go home and sleep in your own bed now."

—

The new girl Sharon found to join the staff was Maria. She was cheerful and eager, although she couldn't cook anything more complicated than scrambled eggs. That was fine, though, because she could clear the tables, tidy the rooms, and pour drinks. It was a big help to have her around so that Stephanie could focus on the cooking and Sharon could focus on greeting and entertaining the guests.


Good work, Steph!



This chicken was supposed to be for the wedding menu because it came out excellent, but nobody could stop Stephanie from taking a piece. She said, "I’m eight months pregnant and you’ve had me on my feet and cooking for six hours, I am gonna eat this chicken and you’re not going to stop me!"

So she ate the chicken and hoped that nobody would notice the platter had seven pieces instead of eight. It was really good chicken.





So then they were all dressed and set up to host a wedding. Everything was ready, or ready as it would ever be. The bridal party was due to arrive at noon.

—

notes and chatter: cooking is no desk job! A couple hours in the kitchen always wears me out and I'm not even pregnant! I can't even imagine having to do it while eight months pregnant, all the bending and stretching and standing, all the yummy food that she's not supposed to eat because it's for the guests, lol! Poor girl. 

But Steph will get a break very soon here. I don't think she ever considered exactly how long she'd like to take off for her maternity leave, probably because I don't think she ever considered that she would still be working when she was this pregnant. She does really like the work, she just wants considerably less of it. Like, one day/four hours a week would be good, but before Maria came in, she was doing way more than that. Stephanie's skills are much more needed for Supper Club than Sunday Brunch, so from here, she'll only do the Saturday dinners and not the brunches. And only the cooking and gardening, no cleaning or hospitality stuff except for special occasions. If there's anything special that needs to be made for Brunch that nobody else can do, she can do it while she's working on dinner the night before. But most of the breakfast food is pretty easy, so Sharon and Maria could handle that.  

Sharon’s hotel business is still super fun to play, even though it uses very few in-game gameplay mechanics. As far as the game is concerned, Sharon and all of her employees are unemployed and the hotel is just an ordinary residential lot. It’s irritating to see that they are unemployed in their bio panels, or if another sim asks about their career and they have nothing to say in response. I wish we could get back the self-employed tags like we had in TS3. Then at least I could have them consider themselves self-employed. 

I considered that I might like to put Stephanie “on salary” = in game culinary career, so that she could get the cooking rewards that the game gives, because the promotions give neat kitchen appliances and decor, but the hours would be way way too much. It's too bad adults can't choose to work part time in these games. The other problem is that if she’s off working at a game career at a certain time, say Saturday night from 4pm to midnight, then I can't also have her working at Sharon's real Supper Club on Saturday nights too without having to skip work and lose performance. Ugh. 

Same thing happens with my schools, teachers and students. I have to hold school sessions on Saturdays when nobody is attending in-game school. It ends up being that nobody ever gets a regular lazy weekend because I’m always trying to use their weekends off game work to do school sessions and story pieces or whatever other thing I'm trying to squeeze in. 

I can’t even remember how I used to work around this in TS2, because those sims must have needed to attend school during the week, too. But I remember that TS2 had lots of handy time cheats, so I could probably just extend the days. In TS4, the days go by very fast and it’s hard to fit as much into them, especially when sims disappear for 6-8 hours to their “void” jobs and schools. TS4 is annoying in that there is no way to pause, slow, stop, or rewind time. At all. 

I wish all careers were active with real places to go, so that I could send them off when I don’t want to play the work, or go with them when I do want to play through the session. I feel like, as we get more active careers (the upcoming EP is rumored to have an active political career), the base game standard careers are going to feel lacking and I’ll want to use them less. I really much prefer having the active careers with the option to go with them to work or send them to the "void." 

update 1/14/17: Problem solved!!! With the addition of this little mod to add vacation days (or I think MCCC has the option now, too), your sims can be employed in real game careers (culinary, for example, or whatever career) and take a "day off" to attend their active work place and get paid for it at the end of their day. Much like the way active GTW careers work. Except there won't be any career progress on those days since the game thinks they're taking a day off. But with this trick, it's now possible for me to send my teachers and students to my school lot on real weekdays without being penalized for missing work/school, and I'm totally excited about that!