Sunday, July 19, 2020

Desperately Seeking Fitbit, Game Babies, Mean and Sexy

For some reason, I got it into my head this weekend that I needed to find my long-abandoned Fitbit. I was gifted this item several years ago by a friend and used it obsessively for a month straight before I decided I was in an abusive relationship with it and impulsively tossed it into a drawer, never to pick it up again. But now I want it back and I can’t find it and it’s driving me crazy. I vaguely remember having put it in a box at some point along with my obsolete Kindle and a tangle of cords and cables, but this mythical box is nowhere to be found. I’ve combed through our credenza, our junk drawer in the kitchen, the hall closet, and the bedroom closet. I looked in our storage bin in our Laundry Room. I dug through the computer room closet. It’s nowhere. And the longer I look for it, the more I want it. It’s more about desiring the victory of finding it now than it is about actually wanting to use the annoying thing. I am obviously harboring deep feelings of loss elsewhere in my life that I am projecting onto to the poor Fitbit. But that’s not stopping me from fervently believing that if I can just find the damn gadget, it will redeem all that has gone to wreckage in my life. In fact, I’m going to look for it again after I get this post up.

Game married life in Stardew Valley continues to be relatively dull, but I’m making money hand over fist now selling black market cactus fruit, so I could afford to upgrade my farmhouse, and that means the addition of a nursery. Which means you can make babies if you are properly married in the eyes of God. According to the Wiki, you don’t need to do much with the children. You can toss them up in the air and make them giggle when they’re babies, then they become toddlers and you can pretty much ignore them, so it’s no added work and now I want one. But children don’t just happen. You have to have a “conversation” with your spouse about it and mutually agree to it. There is no poking holes in the condoms in this game. It all has to be above-board. Which means that I have to wait for Harvey to ask me if I want kids, which is a cut scene that has a one in twenty chance of occurring (also according the Wiki.) And he won’t ask. Night after night he just falls asleep and it never comes up. All of the power is in Harvey’s hands. It’s very frustrating, but he has to ask eventually right? And the worst case scenario is that if I have children and get tired of them, I can sacrifice them on the Altar of Selfishness in the Witch’s Hut. But then apparently I’ll be tormented by a haunted doll that comes out of my television set and periodically attacks me. For a cute farming simulator, this game has some deeply demented aspects.

My progress through “The Fountainhead” is staggeringly slow. According my Kindle, I’m only 18% through and I feel like I’ve been reading it forever. Just recently, it introduced The Daughter. The Daughter is sexy and mean and all the guys are totally falling for her. It’s one in my long list of losses that I never tried to pull off Sexy and Mean, and now it’s too late. I just wanted to see what would have happened. Would guys have fallen all over themselves for me, like they are for The Daughter in the book? Or would they find Sexy and Mean off-putting? I guess it’s a moot point because even if I could have pulled off Sexy and Mean, which is very unlikely, I don’t think I could ever have been as mean as The Daughter. She’s a meanness professional. It takes a level of imaginative flair that I do not possess to be that breathtakingly cruel.

This concludes my weekly gaming and literature update. I think we need to watch some Scotsman playing drums in the streets. Enjoy!


--Kristen McHenry