I could feel my body relaxing. Feel myself not reacting nearly to the stress. I had three full days until they attacked, and my to-do list was well on its way to being completed.

Despite the glass in the tool needing to get out, I gave myself a moment to admire the bedroom walls. They were a beautiful lilac color. The ceiling had rounded edges, and the lilac only reached to where the rounded edges started. I stared at the white ceiling, wondering what it would look like to paint the ceiling lilac, too. Was that an option? Could I do a bit more with the painting options?

I walked out into the entertainment room. I didn’t get a good look at it last night because it was dark and I just wanted to go to bed, but the dark green did look beautiful, as long as I didn’t look at it with the carpet too long. In the corner of the room was a bundle of paneling. That must have been from the walls. There was a similar bundle in the living room next to the door. This was probably in the same category of junk, and I was probably supposed to dump it.

I glanced up and noticed something else. The previous owners must have built something in order to artificially lower the ceilings. Those were gone now, and the ceiling was much the same as in the bedroom. Much taller, with the same rounded edges. Honestly, the forest green was a lovely color, but I definitely wanted to paint the ceiling. Was there an option of giving the ceiling a more decorated style to it with plaster? Give some lines and definition to a blank ceiling? Something that would come right out of the eighteen hundreds?

This old house was beautiful, honestly. Absolutely beautiful. It would be even more beautiful without a wall of horror novels and VHS’s, with a TV that came out of the nineties, but I already tried getting rid of those things.

The living room wasn’t painted yet, but I was trying to imagine it with the same forest green, and I was excited. I gathered the paneling and took it outside. I had momentarily forgot that it would be a blisteringly hot day until I stepped off the front porch and into the heat. I could feel the sweat already forming as I sacrificed a little stamina to dump the paneling into the dumpster. I didn’t get much for junk from the house, but seeing a huge +9.43 boost to my dopamine made the sacrifice to my stamina worth it. So much, in fact, that I grabbed the other pile of paneling and sacrificed even more stamina dumping it in there. +7.57. Nice! All that together with my leftover points, I got a comfortable 25.94 total dopamine points. That was going to last me a bit.

I finally ate my chilled tomato soup in three bites to give me the fifteen minutes I needed to do my morning routine. Killie was unaffected by the heat, so she zipped in and out of the greenhouse and chicken coop as I grabbed the panes of glass and put two in the greenhouse and two in the storage unit. I then pulled out my list, just to make sure.

Repair all damages caused by them

Strengthen the wall around the house and greenhouses

Prime and paint three rooms on first floor

Upgrade cooking fire

Purchase third article of clothing for farming

Plant lettuce and carrots

This was so getting done. Upgrading fire with three days left? Yeah, I could do this.

I considered buying Daisy another chicken friend, but I didn’t want to do that until I knew how much space I would have in the storage room once I upgraded it. Once my morning routine was done, I got to work making clay into brick shape and leaving them out to bake. I stuffed as many clay shaped bricks on the back porch as I possibly could, eating through two more tomato soups to do it. Then I used the rest of my timer to chop down trees to boards and place them into upgrading the storage. By the time it was done, I had five uncut logs and a full 100/100 boards. I waited, watching the words above shift.

0/50 stone blocks

I let out a sigh. That was going to be a lot.

I tried to place the five logs into the storage room, but I only got two in there before I could no longer move. I really needed the storage room upgraded. It did not bode well for how many bricks I wanted to add in there.

With this new situation, I grabbed every finished brick I stored in the storage room and placed them into the cooking fire for part of upgrading the fire. I had eight total bricks out of the storage room and into the fire, and getting rid of ten more stones and breaking them up to place in the tool. I could still do a batch of bricks after these blocks and still have time to put the two bricks in the cooking fire before tonight. And if that was it, I’d be done with my to-do list with two full days left before they arrived.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

And yet I still had so much to do with making sure I could fit all the stuff I just made into the storage room.

I was about ready to go inside. I had one more chilled tomato soup left, and was ready to spend some time decluttering the second floor when the baked clay started to give off a sheen.

That caused my own moment of satisfaction. My experimentation paid off. A hotter day cut the time in half. The bricks were done baking in three hours instead of six. But there was also a nagging annoyance that now I would really have to juggle what was in my storage to fit this all.

I had a slight change of plans, eating my final chilled tomato soup before beginning to move the baked clay into the storage area. It was a struggle. There was a lot of rearranging as I added another thirty baked clay into the storage area. I put the last four tomato soups in the fridge to start them chilling. With that I knew I needed to make more food. The last three days of summer had three rainy symbols on them. I would need all the soup I could get to finish the to-do list, but I had no room. It was frustrating.

“You know,” I said to my alien overlords. “I distinctly remember there was one game I used to play where they had an unlimited amount of storage space. You know why I remember that when there are so many things I can’t remember?” I grunted, trying to shove another baked clay into the storage. “Because of the overwhelming relief I felt knowing I didn’t have to worry about things like this. Not needing to rearrange everything all the time. Just stockpiling to my hearts delight.” I let go of the baked clay as it clattered to the ground. I glared at my already stuffed storage room.

On a whim, I turned around and tried to move the baked clay into the house. Logic told me that the wolf would only destroy things if they were outside the house. I had plenty of room in there, and the second floor was already used to being a storage place of some sort, so it wouldn’t be that big of a stretch to imagine it being a second storage room. I didn’t get far before the invisible wall kept me from going inside with the baked clay. I grumbled, setting the baked clay on the ground.

The stone blocks would soon be done cooking, and I could place fifteen of the baked clay in the tool to store them in there.

I sighed, feeling like this was simply taking too much time. I didn’t have to worry about this until the wolf came tonight. Until then, yes, I would have fifteen more bricks to deal with, but I’d also be getting rid of a few more things to bake in the tool, too. Upgrading the storage room was now a priority. Since I had nothing else on the to-do list except upgrade the fire, I would focus on that now.

I finished putting the rest of the clay into bricks, even though I knew they would never fit in the storage room. I was hoping, on a whim, that I would be able to get some sort of inspiration for them and figure out how to store them before tonight.

I began decluttering the second floor, in a room I started calling the green room. Each of these bedrooms on the second floor had a primary color to their walls already, and as I decluttered this room, I realized there was peeling green wallpaper in this room. It didn’t look like it held anything like the sewing machine in the pink room. Either way, the second floor needed to be decluttered, and it was a hot day. I had five soups in the fridge starting to chill, so I used that time to move down boxes and slowly make a dent in the clutter of the second floor.

For the most part, I put thoughts of the storage room away from my mind. I took a break to pull out the stone blocks when they were done cooking and place fifteen of the baked clay into the tool to make bricks. I placed the blocks right into the storage room for upgrade, and went right back to decluttering. That would at least get rid of ten stones. Instinct told me that I needed to get the logs out of the storage room. They took up way too much space, and they weren’t nearly as valuable as the baked clay or finished bricks.

I kept working throughout the day, waiting for the tool to finish making those fifteen bricks. I wanted to know what else the fire would need, because upgrading things were always a great place to store things.

I had a third of the green room decluttered when I went downstairs to eat a chilled tomato soup and placed the rest of the junk in the dumpster. That green room was probably the most stuffed with junk. I used the excuse that I was placing junk in the dumpster, but really I went to check on the tool. I had kept an eye on the wolf timer and watched it as it counted down six hours. It was a handy thing having a clock in my head.

The tool was done, and I was so excited I momentarily forgot about all the junk on the front porch as I grabbed the fifteen bricks out of the tool. I set two into the fireplace and waited eagerly.

To my surprise, it looked like the fire only needed those ten bricks to upgrade. I would have loved to of gotten rid of more stuff in the storage room, but I would take this.

New words appeared in my head.

New Recipe Section Unlocked: Comfort Foods

Comfort Foods restore a small amount of sanity.

I gasped. I had thought of it as a possibility, but I didn’t think it would already happen. This was excellent! Did this mean I wouldn’t be such a mess after they attacked? Now that I could restore sanity by eating as well as sleeping, this could possibly make me braver.

I hesitated, frowning as I imagined what it would take to stay outside after the wolf was prowling. I had already done that and swore to never do that again. I doubted a bit of food would magically change that.

Okay, so maybe this would only make me a little braver. But it was a step in the right direction.