(display: "Begin Every Square")<div class="message">
Oh my //God...//
You're //old//.
You're ''40''. The big four-oh. You have $numKids kids.
Your spouse helps out about $spouseHelp out of 10 times you want them to.
(display: "Every Square")</div>(set: $chosenEvent to "Child Protective Services")(display: "Begin Every Square")<div class="message">
Well...
You don't remember what happened. Except... some beer. There was... probably beer. And maybe a few sunrises? You take stock of yourself.
(display: "Show Happiness Duties")
Child Protective Services is in your living room, and giving you the 3rd degree in between giving you condescending looks. There seem to be a lot of beer bottles around. (if: $id <= 0)[
<u>**SAD SAD SAD SAD**</u> is written again and again on last Friday's newspaper, and smeared with tearstains. Oh right... You just had 0 happiness in your life.
Wait... you do recall crying a lot... That explains all the tissues all over. There were just so many things going on, and so many ways you were the scum of the earth... You sniffle again. It's enough to make you want to drink more.] (if: $superego <= 0)[
<u>**TOO MANY THINGS TOO MANY THINGS**</u> is written repeatedly all over last Tuesday's newspaper. You didn't fulfill any of your duties.
You look around, and see that the family calendar on the wall is crammed with events and tasks overflowing into the margins and over the serene picture of a lake. There's even writing on the wall nearby, so you must've just been exhausted as you scribbled down more duties for yourself. It's depressing just looking at it... No wonder you got so drunk.]
You screwed up the work-life balance. Badly.
You failed as an adult.
You are shunned.
On the upside, your annoying spouse divorced you and took the kids, so you can [[start over->START]] with that nice single-parent you met at the day care.
With nothing to lose, you lumber to the kitchen, intent on another beer before even trying to get your life back together.
(display: "Reset")</div>[[Keep your head down, focus on work->Work Harder]]
[[Give up on today, get drunk->Drink Tonight]] <!--Boring or CPS--!>(display: "Begin Every Square")<div class="message">
At Thanksgiving (you could swear it just happened a few weeks ago, but here we are again), your mom tells your kid - "Ooh, I'm just old, that's why."
With a jolt, you realize that's true.
//Oh my god...//
Mom is //old//. Dad is //old//.
You need to take care of them - food, diapers, medication, doctor visits, everything! You hire a day-caretaker for them. You write in block letters on your calendar to visit them every two weeks. You leave some voicemails (that get more and more passive-aggressive) on your siblings' phones about them coming to help out.
You take on many more duties. Your happiness drops a bit.
(display: "Every Square")</div>(display: "Begin Every Square")<div class="message">
With dripping-wet hands, you are stooping under the kitchen sink to find the big soap-refilling bottle.
//This is the worst, when you are trying to do like five things, but you need to wash your hands, but there's no more soap, and no more refills-//
You stop.
//Is this really all I dreamed of in life? Soap refills?!//
On autopilot, you dry your hands, find a chewed pencil in a drawer somewhere, write soap on the fridge shopping list, pick up the shrimp refridgerator magnet that always falls down, refill the kitchen sink soap from the bathroom soap, and clean your hands.
//Do I just repeat this, again and again, until I die?//
You are now almost done preparing dinner (you have no memory of doing it), and you reach expertly for the oven mitts.
//I used to want to TRAVEL, and HAVE SEX ON BEACHES, and TAME LIONS! Well, maybe not the lions, but definitely the others! I wanted to LIVE! I ... I still want to LIVE!!//
You have finished dinner, the news, and two glasses of beer. You don't remember it, so that's enough justification for another glass.
//I really, really need a change...//
(display: "Show Happiness Duties")
[[Buy a sports car->Buy a Sports Car]]
[[Google up a secret lover for an affair->Secret Lover]]
[[Dye your hair->Dyed Hair]]
</div>(set: $chosenEvent to "New Hobby")(display: "Begin Every Square")<div class="message">
One day, you realize that you've muttered "Ugh, I'm so STRESSED." to yourself five times in one hour.
After a hot shower that night, you swear to the steamy mirror that you're going to take care of yourself. In that moment - naked, clean, warm - you believe it.
The next day finds you sneaking glances at your coworkers' desks for inspiration. Specifically, Mrs. Wardburger's, because she has lots of yarn... things... all over it, like an invading army of colorful, misshapen creatures.
You ask her about it at the water cooler, even though she smells like an explosion at a perfume counter. Although you steadily get more lightheaded from her fumes, you end up clutching three magazines and a chipped blue crochet hook.
Between your new hobby of crocheting whenever you are alone and feeling "STRESSED", and your new friend (?) in Mrs. Wardburger, you grasp a little more happiness in your life. You reorganize your duties and you end up doing less to make time for crocheting.
(display: "Every Square")</div>(display: "Show Happiness Duties")
[[Look out for the next crisis or whatever.->Event Chooser]]
(display: "Drink or Work Options")
(if: $eventsArray's length is 0)[(goto: "Endgame")](if: $id < 0)[(goto: "Child Protective Services")] (if: $superego < 0)[(goto: "Child Protective Services")] ~~randomly choose event~~
(set: $chosenNum to (random: 1, $eventsArray's length)) (print: $chosenNum)
(print: $eventsArray[$chosenNum])
(set: $chosenEvent to (either: ... $eventsArray)) (print: $chosenEvent)
~~remove from possible events~~
(set: $eventsArray to $eventsArray - (a: $chosenEvent))
Event Array is now: (print: $eventsArray)
(display: "Update Id Superego From ChosenEvent")
(goto: $chosenEvent)(set: $numKids to (random: 1,6))
(set: $spouseHelp to (random: 1,6))
(set: $dist to 1) (set: $event to '')
(set: $chosenEvent to "Yet Another Day")
(set: $id to 10)
(set: $superego to 10)
set Events Array for randomly accessible events
(set: $eventsArray to (a:
"New Hobby",
"Old Parents",
"Relatives Take Money",
"College Kid",
"Spouse Crisis",
"Satisfaction With Kids",
"Nice Kids",
"Too Many Animals",
"Pregnant",
"Spouse Illness",
"Spouse New Hobby",
"Sex Life Problem",
"Midlife Crisis",
))
Set Id and Superego Values:
(set: $idEvents to (dm:
"New Hobby", 2,
"Old Parents", -5,
"Relatives Take Money", -1,
"College Kid", 4,
"Spouse Crisis", -3,
"Satisfaction With Kids", 3,
"Nice Kids",3,
"Too Many Animals",-1,
"Pregnant", 2,
"Spouse Illness",-2,
"Spouse New Hobby",-2,
"Sex Life Problem", 0,
"Midlife Crisis", 0,
"Counseling", 0,
"Secret Lover", 7,
"Overworked", -3,
"Buy a Sports Car", 7,
"Dyed Hair", 3,
"Work Harder", -3,
"Drink Tonight", 3,
))
~~gets added to current duty-count~~
(set: $superegoEvents to (dm:
"New Hobby", 0,
"Old Parents", -5,
"Relatives Take Money", 0,
"College Kid", 5,
"Spouse Crisis", -4,
"Satisfaction With Kids", 0,
"Nice Kids", 0,
"Too Many Animals", 3,
"Pregnant", 3,
"Spouse Illness", -4,
"Spouse New Hobby", -4,
"Sex Life Problem", 0,
"Midlife Crisis", 0,
"Counseling", 0,
"Secret Lover", 7,
"Overworked", 7,
"Buy a Sports Car", 0,
"Dyed Hair", 0,
"Work Harder", 3,
"Drink Tonight", -3,
))
(goto: "START")(set: $chosenEvent to "The End!")(display: "Begin Every Square")<div class="message">
Congratulations, you lived long enough to be old!
</div>(display: "Begin Every Square")<div class="message">
Relatives hit you up for so-called loans. You know you will never get that money back.
But... blood thicker than water and so on or whatever.
So you fork over the money, feeling responsible, yet somehow manipulated.
(display: "Every Square")</div>(display: "Begin Every Square")<div class="message">
Your kid got into college! Not only that, they actually moved out and went!
Now you get to practice long-distance fretting, but you also have less duties to perform.
(display: "Every Square")</div>(display: "Begin Every Square")<div class="message">
So you're in bed, head on the pillow, and the other half is really upset. There is a Problem To Be Solved.
"- and it's been going on for a month now - I think it's been a month, it started sometime around when -"
You show your love by trying really hard to stay awake past 10 pm as they talk on and on about... about... um...
//Damn, what was it? Taxis with goopy seats? No, that was the dream when I nodded off. Stay AWAKE!//
"- headache, which happened at work -"
//Oh, right. Health thing. Headaches and exhaustion and maybe other stuff. STAY AWAKE!//
"Should probably get that checked out, honey. Do you have a doctor's - thing?" You manage to say. There's another word, but you don't remember it anymore. "Appon-ment?" Good enough.
Your spouse sighs and tells the cab driver to drive around the giant potholes, because white rabbits live there, and we don't have time to go to Wonderland before the doctor's appointment. There's too much traffic.
"- Tuesday. Still awake?"
"Yes." You snap back to reality, and your eyelids feel like weights. //STAY AWAKE!// "Sorry."
(display: "Every Square")</div>(display: "Begin Every Square")<div class="message">
After dinner, you take a long drink.
You've got it pretty good. Good spouse, good kids.
Yeah. Quite good kids.
(display: "Every Square")</div>(display: "Begin Every Square")<div class="message">
Some mom at the daycare says you have really nice kids. The teacher agrees.
Awww...
(display: "Every Square")</div>(display: "Begin Every Square")<div class="message">
There are just too many animals!
The kids can keep the toad and mice, and your cat-addict spouse can keep the cats (mostly because they'd probably choose the cats over you), but the three neighborhood dogs that come around for food have got to go.
You whip up a rough poster in Word using some WordArt.
You get neighborhood posters up all over.
You take them down, and put up ones with the correct phone number this time.
Eventually, two of the dogs are taken by people who seem nice.
You're resigned to the last one (nicknamed Smooshyface by the kids) being around until you die.
(display: "Every Square")</div>(display: "Begin Every Square")<div class="message">
Oh. Pregnant.
Oh my god.
Wow. Your spouse is excited. Your kids are telling you all the gory details they interrogated out of their suffering teachers about birth.
It's all good. Yeah. All good.
Nine months groan, vomit, and waddle past. No one wants to remember that.
Now you have (set:$numKids to $numKids+1)(print: $numKids) kids! And no one is allowed to sleep for more than 2 hours at once, by decree of the newest infantile overlord.
You are way too tired for baby showers, but you do manage to fire off some emails to family and friends. These people flood into your disaster zone - home, it's a home, - and overdose your kids with sugar, but it's great to see all of those wonderful beings from Beyond.
//Beyond the Screaming Baby Zone, that is.
Wonder what it's like to live there. Must be nice. Maybe that's what heaven is like...//
You drift off to sleep for a precious half-hour.
(display: "Every Square")</div>(display: "Begin Every Square")<div class="message">
Your spouse sounds like a particularly sniffly, miserable Samuel L. Jackson, though you've never heard Samuel L. Jackson curse using "fudge" and "Shiitake mushrooms".
//My better half is a oozing, loopy, moaning zombie for the next few days.//
Your todo list overflows onto two more sticky notes.
The current task is to dose the spouse with enough caffiene to make a sloth tapdance. You don't want them to fall asleep at the wheel, after all.
//This is MY oozing zombie, after all.//
(display: "Every Square")</div>(display: "Begin Every Square")<div class="message">
You love your spouse. Really, you do. Deeply and forever and after.
But - Pokemon Go? Really?
They charge out of the house at odd hours yelling about "rai-chus" and other things that sound like sneezes or gargles.
They do seem happier.
It's difficult to remember that on late Wednesday nights as the oven beeps, the smoke-alarm wails about a low battery, the kids retell poop jokes nonstop, and the spouse is running out the door, though.
(display: "Every Square")</div>(display: "Begin Every Square")<div class="message">
The on-hold music whines tinnily in your ear as you juggle the phone, some laundry, and a toolbox. A child flops onto the living room floor right in front of you - you automatically do an odd sort of skip to avoid stepping on them. You issue some reprimand, nearly drop the phone, and manage to fling most of the laundry into a hamper across the room.
Cartoon-boat panties flutter down. You scoop them up, and veer into your bedroom to gather up you and your spouses' laundry. There's a pair of red panties with a hole atop a trashy romance novel featuring a tattooed upper chest.
//Despite all the panties dropped around here, there isn't that much sexy panty-dropping in marriage.//
//Actually, it's been... a month since we had sex? No, maybe a few months?//
It's been a long time, but with all the kids running around scraping their faces on things, waving grubby field-trip permission slips, fighting each other, and crying about heaven-knows-what... it's just been a non-issue.
You readjust the phone, and find yourself pouring laundry detergent into the machine.
//Wait, no, we argued about sex - ugh, some time ago. And some time before that.//
The familiar petty anger at your spouse rises, syncronized with the static-y crescendo in the on-hold music.
//We //definitely// have a problem in our sex-life. //
(display: "Show Happiness Duties")
[[Throw yourself into work ->Overworked]]
[[Find a new hobby ->New Hobby]]
[[Google up a secret lover in your area ->Secret Lover]]
[[Get marriage counseling ->Counseling]]
</div>(set: $chosenEvent to (either: ... "Divorce", "Compromise", "Sex Life Problem"))(display: "Update Id Superego From ChosenEvent")(display: "Every Square")
(goto: $chosenEvent)
[[Divorce]]
[[Compromise]]
[[Sex Life Problem]](set: $chosenEvent to "Overworked")(display: "Update Id Superego From ChosenEvent")(display: "Begin Every Square")<div class="message">
(display: "Every Square")</div>(set: $chosenEvent to "Secret Lover")(display: "Update Id Superego From ChosenEvent")(display: "Begin Every Square")<div class="message">
You open up an incognito tab. At a library computer.
After glancing suspiciously at the two teenage boys reading "The Angry Caterpiller" nearby and laughing uproariously, you google your town name and "secret affair".
You haven't felt this much adrenaline since that acne-ridden Home Depot worker claimed they already delivered your washing machine when you told them it hadn't arrived for three weeks.
**www.BigSexyConvenientAffairsForMatureAdultsOnLunchBreak.com**
You hear an unfamiliar roaring. Oh, it's your heartbeat in your ears.
**username:**
//Um...// The cursor blinks on and on.
You can recall literally nothing about affairs other than that one song.
**username: PinaColadas**
**//Username is in use. Try: PinaC0ladas991314, PinaColadas63203202, PINAColadasAndGettingDrunkInTheRain33//** You take the last one, plus your usual password of **BeerIsLiquidBreadIt'sGood4U!**. Then you upload a picture you once emailed to yourself (**Subject: actual good picture of me attached**) and type up a profile description that focuses largely on beer, sex, and your peanut and dust allergies.
Finally, you can use the site. Pages of posing men and women appear, beside horny descriptions that overuse and over-abuse the words "wet" and "hard". Some even have the "emoji" ;). Good heavens. You click through in fascination even before filtering for the ages and genders you want.
A month passes - a glorious month of sneaking out of the office on Tuesday at lunch, meeting a sexy, slightly-wrinkled, financially-solvent, middle-aged adult (usually with the same lower back pain that YOU like to talk about!), having sex, having lunch, and returning, out-of-breath but elated, to the grind.
You can't remember the last time work didn't feel like work. You are so much happier, only slighlty more guilty, and your usual begrudging duties feel light as a feather.
(display: "Every Square")</div>(set: $chosenEvent to "Buy a Sports Car")(display: "Update Id Superego From ChosenEvent")(display: "Begin Every Square")<div class="message">
You buy a sporty, bright teal convertible.
All the daddies in trucks stare at you as you blow by them on the highway.
//Aw, yeah.//
(display: "Every Square")</div>(set: $chosenEvent to "Dyed Hair")(display: "Update Id Superego From ChosenEvent")(display: "Begin Every Square")<div class="message">
You enter the salon.
You exit the salon an hour later with brilliantly red hair.
(display: "Every Square")</div>(set: $idBonus to $chosenEvent of $idEvents) (set: $id to ($id + $idBonus))(set: $egoBonus to $chosenEvent of $superegoEvents)(set: $superego to ($superego + $egoBonus))(display: "Begin Every Square")<div class="message">
(display: "Every Square")</div>(display: "Begin Every Square")<div class="message">
(display: "Every Square")</div>(set: $chosenEvent to "Drink Tonight")(display: "Update Id Superego From ChosenEvent")(display: "Begin Every Square")<div class="message">
You drink! Everything is good. You push off some duties until tomorrow... but that's future-you's problem!
<!--(link-goto: (either: "Bones Creak", "Screaming Kids", "Another Day"))--!>
(either:"Your bones creak, and your back hurts.
This is your main conversation topic.
You still have (print: $numKids) kids, and they aren't anywhere near college yet. Ugh..."," Your (print: $numKids) kids are screaming.
Again.
They've been at it for a hour now.
You are starting to vaguely hear the eerie mersong harmony in it as you scrub dishes.", "Another day passes. You remember literally nothing from it.
Is it Tuesday? Thursday? You don't know.")
(display: "Every Square")</div>(set: $chosenEvent to "Work Harder")(display: "Update Id Superego From ChosenEvent")(display: "Begin Every Square")<div class="message">
You throw yourself into work.
<!--(link-goto: (either: "Bones Creak", "Screaming Kids", "Another Day"))--!>
(either:"Your bones creak, and your back hurts.
This is your main conversation topic.
You still have (print: $numKids) kids, and they aren't anywhere near college yet. Ugh..."," Your (print: $numKids) kids are screaming.
Again.
They've been at it for a hour now.
You are starting to vaguely hear the eerie mersong harmony in it as you scrub dishes.", "Another day passes. You remember literally nothing from it.
Is it Tuesday? Thursday? You don't know.")
(display: "Every Square")</div>
----
Happiness: (print: $id) / 20 ((if: ($idBonus >= 0))[+](print: $idBonus))
Duties Fulfilled: (print: $superego) / 20 ((if: ($egoBonus >= 0))[+](print: $egoBonus))
---- (set: $id to 10) (set: $superego to 10)
(set: $idBonus to 0) (set: $egoBonus to 0)**(uppercase: $chosenEvent)**