4.27 The Battle of Midway

Charles and Veronica’s birthdays passed almost unnoticed. They weren’t even able to celebrate together because Veronica had an extra shift at work.

 

 

 

 

The truth is that both of them were so exhausted from night feedings, toddler training, and long work hours that the best celebration they could come up with was sleep.

Here they were, halfway through their prime years. What did they have to show for it?

This problem seemed to bother Veronica a lot. She came home from her night shifts at work and woke Charles up to talk about it. Some of the reasons were obvious. She’d quit one career, had three babies, and picked up another. Most of her life was just starting out, so she hadn’t had much time to accomplish anything on her new path.

Still, her sense of uncertainty showed up in some strange places.

 

When she showed up at her regular appointment with at the salon to have her hair done, she asked Shanni to build her a completely new look.

“Tear me down and start over!” she said cheerfully.

Shanni raised her eyebrows. “All right. No looking back now!”

 

The first attempt was all right, but it was too, well, corporate culture for Veronica’s tastes.

 

“Let’s keep the hair,” she said.

“You hate it, don’t you?” Shanni asked.

“Just between friends? Yeah.”

 

The second attempt was much more to Veronica’s liking.

She went home and gave Charles The Eye until he clued in and complimented her on her new look.

[Insert missing picture of Veronica posing with her new look. As far ahead as I have played, and I don’t seem to have ANY simple poses of her. You’ll just have get an idea as we go along. ;-p. At least the shot of the game makeover above gives you a good look at her new hairstyle. I think her new clothes better suit an Eccentric.

ETA: OK, here is a totally out-of-context shot to show off the new look:

 
]

And then there was the car. Charles spent weeks persuading Zahra and Fabian to sell the gas-guzzling SUV monstrosity that Fabian had bought before he married Zahra. Neither of them drove it. Fabian preferred to tool around in his patrol car, and Zahra usually made her trips to the Science Center in the Prius because she felt that she ought to be using more advanced technology.

“Don’t worry,” Veronica said when Fabian finally agreed. “Leave it to me. I’ll take care of it.”

She headed off in the Tofunda Wagon in the morning.

 

And she came home in the afternoon with a shiny green Margaret Vaguester.

 

Sure, it had wiped out most of their savings, but MAN could that car go fast. Veronica looked fabulous behind the wheel, too.

 

For Charles, the whole growing older thing felt completely different. He had the Spirit Sample Dojo, and he’d spent half of his adult life finding and settling down with the woman of his dreams. What was so wonderful about recapturing his youth? His life now was better that it was then, and he hardly felt like he’d been wasting his time.

He did grow a beard that he was very proud of.

 

And he wasn’t at all happy to see the new car. “Forget how much it costs. Do you know what kind of gas mileage it gets?” he demanded. “You can hear the trees sobbing when you drive by!”

“We live out in the stix,” Veronica said. “I’ve cut my commute down to just minutes. Trust me. It’s really a very practical car.”

 

“That’s enough,” Charles said, and there was steel to his voice that Veronica had never heard. “You’re beautiful just as you are. You don’t have anything to prove. So stop trying to prove it. We don’t have to act young by being immature.”

“I’m not–!” Veronica started, but he held her gaze until the words trailed away. She dropped her eyes. “You’re right. I’m making a fool of myself. I’ll stop now.”

“Thank you,” Charles said. “I love you.” She did calm down, and that was the last they spoke of it.

But, Veronica still admitted in private, it really was a beautiful car.

———-

My ghost baby is middle aged!

Among the mysteriously missing pictures are the shots I took of both Veronica and Charles’s new looks. I have no idea what the heck happened to these shots.

Both of them rolled Midlife Crises as a matter of fact. Both of them wished to get a makeover, so I sent them to the Salon to get some cute shots of Shanni doing her job. However, when CHARLES arrived, I got a message saying that Occult sims couldn’t have makovers! What’s with that? So here he was with a wish locked in his queue that he couldn’t dismiss and couldn’t fulfill. I gave up on it and sent him to the hospital to get therapy instead. Stupid EA.

Veronica rolled the wish to buy an expensive car, but I did splurge on the fastest car in the game to reduce her commute into town. Their current lot is about as far from downtown as you can get, so she was wasting a lot of time during work.

Here’s Charles getting his head shrunk with Arvid Voss.

 

(Amhranai, “head shrinking” is slang for psychiatric therapy. I cannot keep my idiom under control. I do try :).)

I’m not sure if you can really get a good look at Charles’s new beard from that picture, but it really puts the crown on his John Lennon look. Middle aged Charles has delightfully chiseled features. I think he is my favorite sim so far, appearance-wise. I’m not sure the kids were quite as dominated by Veronica’s features after all; Charles’s cheekbones are quite distinctive.

0 thoughts on “4.27 The Battle of Midway

  1. I love older Charles' look! Very distinguished and very him.

    I like Veronica's new hairstyle, too, but it's too bad that the good pictures disappeared!

    Midlife crisis sims are so weird. I got lucky with Zeke and Gwyn, neither of them freaked out too much. Earlier generations did, though!

    The new car is fabulous.

  2. This was my first pair of Midlife Crises, and I admit that Charles rolled a couple of wishes I ignored before I gave him therapy — one to flirt with other women and one to move to a new house. I mean, seriously, Charles put all this work into finding Veronica, and now he's going to *cheat on her*? Yeah right.

    It seems to me like it would be hard to keep a couple together in a Wishacy!

  3. Wowzers, that car is totally sweet! Interesting how VeroniCharles are adapting to middle age…I can't wait to see the kids!

    On a losing pictures note…just found out that happened to me with my next Simptoms post. I'm only missing one, but I had SUCH a great punchline for it. It irks me. -_-

  4. I think the missing pics are all from the same play session, and I think I must have somehow overwritten them when I was restoring from backup. I had a point where I was having a lot of lag trouble, and I think I might have corrupted something and restored from backup then. Man, there were a lot of pictures I wanted to use from that session!

    Though Charles did have a couple of bad wishes that I ignored at the beginning of his midlife crisis, he actually rolled very few wishes overall. Veronica rolled a ton of wishes, and I couldn't fulfill all of them just due to time. She also wished to get a tattoo, and I thought that was a great idea, but eventually I had to get everyone focused on their actual goals again. I haven't forgotten, and she might still do it.

  5. I'm really excited to see how Veronica looks after her makeover,since we only know about the hair. In a second I will have a look at the two posts you published after this one, but wanted to thank you for the idiom explanation above. 😉 I really didn't know that and was a little confused when reading that sentence first. But now I'm fine. 🙂
    Plus: Arvid, yay 😀

  6. Hooray! you're back! I hope you had a lovely time. sadly, I think there still aren't any good pics up of Veronica's look. But soon I promise!

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