1.3 Rise and Shine

Rise and shine, Marko! You have an exciting day of work ahead of you! 

He looks appropriately enthusiastic. He also dines on the party firecracker shrimp and revels in its absolute averageness. Marko's life is truly exciting. 

Persis waters her plants, apparently not realizing that it's already raining. Despite this excess in water, the garden seems to be coming along nicely under her care. Soon (but not soon enough) she'll be able to harvest her plants and sell the produce. I dream of the day. 

Later, when it stops raining, she finishes her gardening work for the day. The sun is shining, the weather is warm, her plants are growing... Persis feels calm and at peace. 

This tranquility is only allowed to last for so long. The sink spontaneously begins to flood the bathroom. It takes Persis hours to realize that it broke in the first place. 

Persis may have no handiness skill, but she's the only one around to fix the problem, so she tackles it seriously. Somehow wrenching the tap tightly shut a few times and flailing her arms at the gushing water fixes the problem in just under two hours. In the real world, this would be some magical sorcery. In Sims 3, it's just a boost to the handiness skill. 

Nothing much happens when Marko works. His performance metric goes up, he finishes his shift and gets paid, and then he leaves. After texting his co-workers a few times, he wanted to improve his social networking skill. Not wanting to grind endlessly by texting other sims and having him blog non-stop, I just sent Marko to the library and read the book on social networking. Sitting nearby him is Calvin Riffin, who is almost never seen around town. He reads unobtrusively, giving me absolutely no reason to note his presence, but I noted it anyways. Oh well. 

Somewhere along the line Marko's work clothes melted into his everyday wear for no reason. Apparently he has the power to instantly change his outfits without moving. Rather mundane, but hey, it's pretty useful. 

In Appaloosa Plains not only do people bring their pets to the library, but absolutely no one reacts when said pets begin tearing up the furniture. 

I mean come on, there's a dust cloud and everything. Someone will have to pay for that chair to be replaced. 

Cheyenne Fox politely ignores the cat, seemingly unconcerned that a possibly wild animal is near her tiny, defenseless toddler.  Hours go by and Cheyenne's son just sits and giggles to himself while the nameless cat tears up various pieces of furniture. 

The full moon is coming up soon, which means annoying zombies eating any plants outside. Now, this fence should not actually be able to repel them seeing as they could just crawl under it, but this being sims 3, the mere presence of a thin steel bar at waist height makes the garden impenetrable. 

Sims always roll wishes to go to the graveyard on the night of a full moon. Marko did not, but Persis did this time around so off she goes. She ponders this bush for dozens of sim minutes before wishing to do anything else. 

That "anything else" turns out to be spray painting a ground mural. The family's funds are a bit larger after Marko's mildly successful day at work, so I cave and buy the Winterly family a spray paint kit. 

Persis is forced to go home to do this, though. No way will I risk her getting fined by the police for vandalizing public property. 

I'm not sure what this is supposed to be. It has a blue outline, Persis' hair is blue, I'm lazy, I'll just go ahead and say she spray painted her own name onto her lawn. How rebellious. 

If this were a different kind of blog, Persis could be in real danger here. Thankfully for her, I'm more than happy to let the zombies do their harmless groaning and shuffling before letting her go on her way. 

Really, in a different blog with a different story, this could have been a very scary and potentially traumatizing event for Persis. 

Instead, I feel compelled to point out that this zombie is wearing a cowboy hat. I have no idea why this amuses me, but it does. 

The female zombie, Charmaine Hopper, patiently waits her turn to "attack" Persis. 

Persis is tired of all this nonsense and cancels the action queue, preferring to sleep in her (mostly) comfortable bed. 

Another day another dollar... or so Marko tells himself. His job right now consists of just showing up, which sounds great, but that gets boring after a while. Marko never gets the chance to talk to anyone at work, which is slowly driving him insane. He would do anything for a promotion, if only for the chance to talk to someone. 

Gardening in your underwear. Classy. Their next door neighbors are either too polite to say anything to Persis' face or are pretending this isn't happening. 

Persis' gardening is interrupted by a phone call. (Where exactly she's keeping her phone is what I want to know).

Please be an opportunity, please be an opportunity, please be an opportunity, this family needs money so bad... 

Ugh, dang it. It's one of those random phone calls your sims get for no reason and then promptly hang up on, leaving you, the player, completely in the dark (and annoyed if the sims' action queue was cancelled to answer this call) as to who was calling and why. 

Persis continues to garden, still not bothered by her lack of pants. 

She does pull on her normal outfit to graffiti her own lawn, though. Somehow spray-painting warrants pants but gardening does not. 

Whatever, I'll accept it. 

Gah! How long has he been standing there for?! I didn't notice him there at all. 

"Nice...uh...thing you're painting there," Marko tries to be supportive of his wife's new hobby. 

Persis suddenly becomes frustrated and sets down her spray-paint can. 

"I'm going to go fishing," she grumbles. She jogs down the road, leaving Marko alone with her spray paint kit. 

Eh, why not? 

Persis' mood perks up after she reels in a few fish. This pond is bigger than the one at the park and is thus easier for beginners like Persis to fish in. 

She deliberately ignores Esme and Tate Curley having the worst date ever behind her. Tate tries over and over again to get his wife to laugh but fails miserably. The harder he tries, the more unimpressed Esme is and the more embarrassing his antics become. He can make everyone but his own wife laugh. 

Man, that's sad. 

Persis unknowingly breaks some of the tension when she screams about hatred at the top of her lungs. All that spray-painting gave her rebel points and she autonomously began a rant. Thanks, Persis. 

All this talk about hate just makes Esme feel hungry... 

Back at home, Marko decides that with the summer festival coming around, they should decorate accordingly. I have arbitrarily decided that for the Winterlys, summer is marked by tacky lawn ornaments. So we have a pair of flamingos in the front yard (to guard Persis' garden... or something)

And a garden gnome inside the house. Because Marko and Persis are rebels now. 

Uh, yeah. 

What tacky decorations will they have for the next season!? Tune in next time and find out!