Yes, dear readers and Simmers, these are the questions in terms of my whereabouts. I’m sorry to have dropped off. It seems that when things begin to calm down, something else happens. My deepest apologies for that, but sometimes RL certainly knows how to throw the curveballs at you.

So, what has happened? Well, a lot. The big thing is that I ended up getting Covid in January – the hubs and I both did. Sucks, right? Oh, yes it did! Thankfully, we were fully vaccinated and boosted so it didn’t get as bad as it likely would have otherwise. The hubs, thankfully, only felt as though he got a mild cold and was feeling better in about two or three days after our positive Covid test. I, however, wasn’t so lucky. I ran a slight fever for a couple days and felt like I was getting the beginnings of bronchitis. I’m asthmatic, so any kind of cold/flu/whatever goes right to my chest, and I tend to get really, really sick with it. As far as respiratory, I’m happy to say that it didn’t feel much worse than beginning bronchitis. I did have shortness of breath and some mild coughing, but that didn’t last long. I also got a headache that hung on, and my taste was certainly off for a while. The headache and altered taste took a while to go away, with the altered taste lasting a couple weeks or so. It did, however, mess up my stomach so had to keep to a liquid diet for a bit. The big thing that debilitated me, though, was the fatigue, lightheadedness, body aches, and all-around weakness. I couldn’t stray far from my bed for at least a couple weeks, and all I wanted to do was sleep. That lasted a good 2-3 weeks, but I still have a little residual effects from it. It’s getting a lot better, but I still get rather tired easily, and sometimes an afternoon nap is a must. But all in all, I’m very fortunate, and it gets better day by day and week by week.

All the dogs are doing great. Our little Brody, now 7-months old, weighs 25 pounds! Can you believe it? He was a little 8-pounder when we picked him up at around 8 weeks of age. Now, he’s tripppled in size and weight. My little baby isn’t so little anymore although we still sometimes call him “Little Guy.” But he’s so smart and is blossoming in his development. Everyone gets on well, and all of them are very much used to each other.

Now, I suppose I should move on to what’s going on with my stories and playing Sims, in general. Well, I had a couple of major setbacks, I’m sorry to say. All was going well, and I was playing a personal game (one I haven’t showed on my YouTube channel or used in a story thus far) where I made a lot of progress with this Sim I was playing. I upped a bunch of her skills, she was making a killing at making and selling Plumbots, and she was at Level 9 of the Commedian (a custom career I downloaded) career. All went fine until my updated anti-virus wanted me to add a component of extra security which I did, thinking it was a good thing. Boy howdy, was I wrong! It started throwing files into Quarantine that didn’t need to go. My computer began to act completely wonky, and that beautiful save I’d been playing just would not open. I fiddled and fenagled, finally having to take it back to an earlier restore point before all the damage happened. Well, in general, the computer worked after that, but there was no salvaging my save I’d been playing. Heck, it didn’t even show up in the main menu although I had only it and one other save in my Saves folder at the time. I tried the backup I had, and still no go. Unfortunately, I’ve had to put that on the back burner and will try to rebuild my progress with it when I’m not so friggin’ disgusted. Thank goodness for Master Controller.

Then, I ended up downloading some more Mods and soon realized I had some conflicts and outdated stuff. By that time, I’d totally redone my Mods folder and, thankfully, had the new ones in a test folder. My game got super messed up, and it took me a good two weeks to figure out what was causing the issue. Those of you who play Sims 3 and have Mods, you know how long it can take for the game to load. I kept sliding Mods in and out, loading, exiting, sliding more Mods in and out, reloading, exiting…again, and again. Well, you get the picture and have an idea of how time consuming that can be. Come to find out, it was a Mod I totally overlooked, thinking it wasn’t the culprit. Boy, did I feel dumb!

My CAS was also loading super, super slow, and I couldn’t stand it. I ended up redoing my CC folders and remerging some content and taking some out. Hell, I couldn’t even make a Sim without the game crashing, so something had to be done. Yet, another time consuming activity. Anyway, once I got everything working properly again, I needed a total break (my brain was utterly fried) and engaged in some other hobbies until I felt the urge to play Sims and write again.

So, this brings me to present day where I’m getting back on the proverbial horse. I’ve been working on some chapter pieces and scenes, mainly for Forever in Time and should have Chapter 40 released tomorrow hopefully. I do have a busy day due to RL tomorrow, so it’ll depend on how quickly I can get into game, set things up, and get screenshots. I’m planning and hoping that further chapters will come much, much more rapidly and the story can move along. After all, poor Lenora has been in a very bad way for a long, long time (in real time), and we need to get things improved for her. However, there is still a lot more drama, twists, and turns to come. That said, I do hope I still have readers who’ve stuck with me.

I don’t want to make this post dreadfully long so I will end here for the time being. Please continue to hang in with me and look for a new chapter in the very, very near future. As always, I thank you for your patience, support, and perseverance.

With love always,

SweetNightingale  🙂