Strange Day, Rambling, & Sims 4 Stuff

The EX-FILES: So, yesterday was a very strange day! My ex called me (haven’t heard from him since about 2018) and so my husband and I spent the evening talking to him on the phone. My ex has Huntington’s Disease now and I felt so sorry for him because it was clearly a struggle to speak. I don’t even know if I’ve ever heard of Huntington’s Disease but I looked it up, and his brother has it, and nephew (I got all this info from his nephew who is quite young and tested positive for the gene, so he’s had a rough year and so we talked for a while). My ex tried to text me first (he got my number from his nephew) but because we live in 2024, I texted back, “Okay, I’m wary of phone scams, so you have to answer a skill testing question before I will text with you: what vehicle were you driving when I met you (around 38 years ago!!), and when he seemed to not be answering, I made the question easier, because honestly, he went through a lot of vehicles lol. So I texted, “and where were you working when I met you??”. It took him a while to answer, but he did. This was before I knew he had HD (I found out after that phone call when I talked to his nephew who is also a writer and we have remained friends). So, once he answered the question about his work, I allowed him to call me (my phone is on do not disturb 24/7 except for a handful of allowed callers to get through: my husband, my bosses, my sister, and my kids). When we talked, I said, “So, you don’t remember what vehicle you were driving when you met me?” He said what vehicle it probably was, and he was probably right, so I said, “I guess that was kind of a trick question because actually, I guess you probably weren’t actually driving the van very much because it was broke most of the time lol.”

So, while we were talking (on speaker and with my husband, who my ex was also friends with and helped when my husband had cancer in 2014), one of our tenants (we manage an apartment building of 57 apartments) showed up at our door with birthday cake because it was his birthday and he wanted to share it with us. 🙂 That was so thoughtful. We have all really good tenants and I love it here! Another tenant who lived down the hall and just moved out in October, used to always show up at our door with everything from pizza to cake to turkey dinners to ice cream sandwiches (so much for my diet!!). Even after he moved out, he still showed up at our door with gingerbread cookies from his mother. Another tenant always leaves us holiday treats for every occasion and cards outside of our door as a surprise; another tenant has left notebooks and pens hanging on my doorknob as a surprise because she works at a stationery store. The tenants here are so nice to us, they follow all the rules, they all get along with each other and help each other out, and it is just a great place to live. On the lobby monitor, sometimes I see some younger tenants carry in groceries for older tenants, or if some of the younger guys are on their way out and a new tenant is moving in (that they don’t even know), they will just turn around and start helping them carry stuff in. It is amazing!

But when we first started here, for the first year, we held “Good Neighbor Awards” and then “Good Tenant Awards” where tenants could nominate each other for acts of kindness and then periodically we would give out the awards, with prizes like $10 or A free load of laundry change, etc. And also, we were strict right off the bat for rule breakers. When tenants would not sort their garbage and put it in the correct section of the garbage room, I told them I would make everyone label the garbage bags with their apt numbers. It was amazing how fast the garbage issue sorted itself out . Good thing because I honesty had no idea how I would begin to enforce the garbage bag labelling! Over the years there have been a couple bad tenants (only two I can think of) that had to get evicted for outrageous behavior! I mean outrageous…throwing furniture out a fifth-floor window!! Destruction of their apts by fighting with each other, etc. They got evicted and now we have had all good tenants for quite a long time.

So, about the sims lol. I’ve been making machinima (not sure if I mentioned it in an earlier post). I have a series (4 episodes so far ) called Modern Office Girl, which is a sitcom revolving around a magazine-turned-publishing business. (Here is the link to episode 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0ASNMyu4tk ) And in January, I’m going to be launching Sims Got Talent. A series in which the audience can vote on which acts they like lol.

Speaking of Youtube, I also have a channel of children’s content called Lizzie Timewarp here: https://www.youtube.com/@LizzieTimewarp