It's All About Me(linda)!

Welcome!  Thanks for joining us!  This is to be a 100 Baby Challenge for Sims 3.

The "official" rules for this challenge are very specific:

1) Have 100 babies.

2) Do everything the way you want to.

Okay, so not very specific.  For a little extra fun, I'm adding a few more.

3) My sim will not marry, nor will she move anyone in.  She will raise 100 children on her own.

4) To decide who the father of the next child will be, my sim will play guitar for tips.  The first male tipper of majority age will have the honor of being called back to become a father.  Each "audition" will be held at a different lot.  "Callbacks" may repeat the same sim (father), but the lot will be different each time.  In this way I hope to attract different sims as fathers.

Since that's effectively doubled the number of rules, I think that's plenty, don't you?  I don't want to get too ambitious.

Scared yet?

A little history lesson first.  I once wrote and played a challenge for Sims 2 called Who's Your Daddy?  In that challenge, a female sim had 26 pregnancies, one for each letter of the alphabet, each with a different father.  The rules and scoring actually got pretty complex; sometimes they took away from the enjoyment of the challenge.  That sim, Dara Calypso, had a husband, two cats and 19 children before I got overwhelmed and gave up.

This time, it's just about getting to the finish line.  No scoring, no achievements.  I am playing on epic lifespan and plan to let my kids age up normally.  That means there may be larger spans of time between entries, but I'm having fun so far, so I hope I can stick with it (and have you stick with me) to see it through.  Now on to the good stuff!

Melinda Mott

Meet Melinda Mott, mother-to-be of many, many, many.  In both appearance and personality she resembles her Sims 2 counterpart, Dara.


Melinda is Family-Oriented and Nurturing.  I figured that if I'm going to make her have all those kids, she may as well get something back out of the deal in the form of lots of lifetime reward points from lots of completed wishes from lots and lots of kids.


Melinda is a Virtuoso.  It was tempting to give her a whole host of skill-related traits to help with her life to come, but in the end, I thought the personality-related traits were more interesting and only gave her this one skill trait.  Let's hope it means lots of tips!  Melinda's favorite music is songwriter.  (I thought that was appropriate.)


Melinda is an Animal Lover.  Her lifetime wish is to adopt six strays.  Not a problem!  No, of course I'm not going to go about that the easy way and adopt six pets immediately.  To do everything as quickly as possible is not always the goal.  I will tell you, though, that Melinda, like her creator, is a big fan of French Bulldogs.


Finally, Melinda has Commitment Issues.  I figured there had to be a good reason why such a nice lady would so steadily avoid settling down.  Will this have an impact on establishing the relationships required to woohoo and produce a nooboo?  We shall see.


Melinda's favorite color is yellow.  Her favorite food is mac & cheese (because it's yellow.)


I'll let Melinda take over now.

Not Melinda's house

Admiring my new home?  Okay, you win.  I don't live here.

Melinda's house

 I live here.  It's not the largest place in Appaloosa Plains, though it may very well be the smallest.  I was drawn to the beautiful foliage on the trees surrounding the lot, and the privacy.  Do you have any idea how noisy 100 kids can be?  The neighbors would be calling the police on us 24 hours a day!  Better that we have just the one.  Neighbor, that is.



I love building, but to build an entire house from scratch all at once just isn't fun for me.  I'd much rather start with an idea and build as Melinda and I go along.

Mad building skillz

It isn't much, but I'm sure I can make it into a home.  First things first, though: I need to make some money.

Free taxi!

Guitar hero for a day

Commitment issues aren't just about romance

It's just that nothing fit, you know?  Every job I tried seemed to just suck up my time and not leave any time to do important things, like complete wishes.  Eventually, I threw in the towel altogether.  No job for this mama!  I'm sure you're dying to know how I did it.  Who doesn't want to live comfortably without having to work for it?

Eat your heart out, Simmer Homes and Gardens!

No water bugs for us!

I adopted a dog.  I knew I'd have to do this quickly, before my social meter tanked.  Really, though, I wanted to do it anyway.  Dogs provide us with so much.

They follow us like ducklings

They provide us the delight of a warm touch

They're always happy to see us

Even when we haven't yet developed our mad guitar skillz

Warning: dog will snore like chainsaw

I called my new friend Monkey.  As it turns out, Monkey's got a keen nose for super rare gems, which means I can put to use my keen sense for unemployment.  I can also make myself a little more comfortable and spend a little more time away from home.

Where's the safety belt, Mom?

 As it turns out, when a dog goes with his owner to a community lot, unless they also leave together, the dog walks home.  That's fine and dandy, but our house is a long way for such short legs.

Monkey makes a friend

Monkey is also exceedingly easily distracted.

A tipper!

I made it to guitar level five, so I went out to hopefully earn some money on top of improving my skillz.  Quincy was my only tipper.  I had to let him down gently; until I can freeze my age, I can't risk having any nooboos.  I have to be able to concentrate on wish fulfillment until I can be certain I won't run out of time.  I wonder if Mrs. Miller will mind that her husband was tipping me . . .

Right under his nose!

Evidently not.


My days of playing for tips were not so great, really.

Melinda made $0 in tips; Monkey made $2,300 finding rocks

And I was wearing my best dress!

Hair twins!

Maybe I should get some shades?

Nobody even noticed me.  I think that woman was looking at some horse across the street.

In my wayyyy!

Speaking of horses and women in swimsuits, is it just me, or is there something really odd going on here?  Every time a woman in a swimsuit arrives, a white horse arrives behind her!  I gotta try this out.

My knight in shining armor!

Sure enough, I changed into my swimsuit (which I love because it's yellow like my mailbox and my washing machine) and sure enough . . .


I smell a bikini!  I come forthwith, m'lady!

Totally not just me.

Things back at home are more centralized, though no less chaotic.

He wanted a baseball, he got a meteor

And a dinosaur

And this . . . whatever this is

My dog's financial success is a little depressing given how little of it I've had myself, so I took a little money from his wallet and decided to hit the bar.

That's when I saw him.

Gussie!

I know I have commitment issues and I'm not supposed to get married, but . . . I might appeal that decision.


Seriously, for a sim, this fellow is very attractive, far beyond what EA normally gives us.  I'm dying to have Melinda make friends with him so she can invite him over and I can save him into CAS, but I think she's trying too hard or something.

Yes, perhaps a mite too hard

Best dressed nachos in town

I thought for sure that mad consumption of bar snacks would impress Gussie, but he's kind of sort of hard to pin down.  One minute I think he likes me, the next he says I'm boring.  Hmph!  Me?  Boring?!  I live the high life off my coal-mining dog.  I cannot be boring!  I'm like a Kardashian!

Okay, just for the record, I'm nothing like a Kardashian, but I thought it might impress Gussie.

Doesn't his face look gorgeous at this angle?

 
GUSSIE!!!

I call Gussie every day.  Sometimes twice.  He works really long hours.  The bar opens at, like, ten in the morning, not that I was ever there to find that out or anything . . . I'm determined that this could be something more than just a casual bar stalking incident.

At any rate, life goes on.  I'm almost at the 65,000 lifetime reward points needed to freeze my age.  I told myself that when I hit that goal I'd adopt another pet.  Then Hetty called.

What's not to like about Hetty?

Hetty is like my only friend.  I mean, Gussie's my friend, too, in that "he will marry me someday but won't answer my calls yet" kind of way, but Hetty is a real friend, mostly because she calls a lot and asks me to cook stuff.  She said her cat had kittens.  Did I want one?  I figured I shouldn't look a gift cat in the eye.

It was at this point that I decided all the people and pets in Melinda's family will have names beginning with M.  The choice of Melinda, Mott and Monkey was purely coincidental.  "Melinda Mott" is supposed to be "my (Me) beautiful (linda) mother (Mott)."  Monkey's just a cute name for a flat-faced dog.  I had aimed to adopt Hetty's kitten Maria since she already had an M name, but apparently only Hetty's new kittens were available.

Cats should never get any bigger

 
Everyone all together now: AWWWWWW.


I chose this kitten.  The other was Aggressive, but this one was Independent.  I'll have seven kids at home one day.  I need a cat who can look after herself.  Hetty called her Kia, but I changed that to Mia.

You smell like tuna and love.  You just smell like fish.

Best friends already

Monkey and Mia are already getting along splendidly.

Thank goodness.  Monkey's social meter was always tanked.  Melinda just has other things to do than cuddle him every half hour through the whole night.  Now he'll have someone else to pester.

Mia is settling in perfectly!

Mummy, I'm in a space ship!  Or a microwave.  I can't tell.

Scritchy scratchy

Tastes like mint

 And with that, I finally earned my age freezing potion!  Bottoms up!

Thanks for reading this prologue to my challenge.  I promise there will be a nooboo next time, a real one, not a cat.  Below are a few odd shots that didn't make it into the narrative of this entry.  I hope you'll join us next time!

Toilets are aggravating!

Mum?  Found a rock.  Go to sleep, Monkey.

Ugliest paparazzo ever

Melinda also found a chameleon: Montecristo

Learning what not to do: stand in the middle of the road