In my excitement, I almost forgot about the junk on the front porch and the fact that I still had a good ten minutes left on my cool down timer. I practiced a level of self-restraint I didn’t think was possible and used the rest of my timer to dump the junk. With the leftover time I remembered that I still hadn’t painted the kitchen and should probably get the primer done on the bathroom.

I chose a mint green for the kitchen, though I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about it until I was in there. I then glanced at my dopamine points. I knew I had enough points to prime the bathroom, since those paneling’s gave me so much, but I was floored to see I had 47.03 total dopamine points. It only took me a moment to remember that I finished my to-do list, and I must have gotten a huge bonus for completing it.

There were some mixed feelings going on. Yes, it was great, but it also hurt that I missed out on those bonuses throughout the rest of the season. I could have had that if the greenhouse didn’t get so damaged.

I got the bathroom ready to prime, thinking about a much darker color for the bathroom. It was already dark in there with no window, but I wanted to see what it looked like with a darker color blue or dark red.

I didn’t have much time left, so I raced back to the house and walked over to the clipboard. I was curious to see what kind of recipes were under comfort foods.

Only two were unlocked.

Basic fries and ketchup

0/3 potatoes

0/2 tomatoes

Fish and chips

0/2 fish

0/1 egg

0/3 potatoes

There were a lot of other recipes grayed out. I couldn’t even get a clue to what they were. I was pretty sure flour was involved with fish and chips, but I wasn’t about to question it. I would be very interested in trying these recipes to see how much sanity they gave me.

I would no doubt discover more recipes as I went along. There were two whole greenhouses still to unlock, after all. I would have to try cooking some of those recipes tomorrow, though. I had a bunch of potatoes just waiting to be used up.

As long as I had the room for them.

My gaze traveled to the stuffed storeroom, giving a small sigh. It was getting late enough that I needed to figure out how to fit a small stack of twenty bricks and baked clay into the storage area that were left over from my experiment. The first thing to do was to get the logs out of the storage room. Those were easy resources I could get any time I wanted. With that alone I managed to get half the bricks and baked clay into the storage room. It meant there had to be some size restraints for the storage, too. Of course it made sense that bigger things took more space, but it still annoyed me that I couldn’t just stack the bricks in the storage room in a pile. They had to have their place.

In the end, I took out whatever clay I needed to in order to stuff the rest of the bricks in the storage room. Basic clay was not as worked on as baked clay or even bricks. I already knew I needed stones for the stone blocks, so I kept those in the storage area.

I placed the logs and the clay in the middle of the yard so the wolf wouldn’t hurt the house. As I walked back in the dying light, I pulled out my to-do list for that final burst of dopamine.

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

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Plant lettuce and carrots

To-do list finished, reward of +20.00.

I tucked the list away and opened the front door, seeing the beautiful forest green in the living room and entertainment room. Killie meowed as she rubbed her back against my leg. I picked her up, holding her close.

“How about we go to bed early tonight, huh?”

Killie said nothing, just rubbed her head under my chin as we headed into the beautiful lavender bedroom. I stared at the ceiling, sighing.

“Also, I don’t think you understand how beautiful the ceiling would look with those little plaster floral decorations. Is that an option?” I asked my alien overlords.

They didn’t respond, and for the first time in a long time, I allowed myself to go to sleep well before the hauntings started.

Despite the low stress, it still felt weird to wake up with no true feeling of rest. Just the end of one day, and the start of another with full stamina and now full sanity.

I walked outside, passing the clay and the logs that were now ripped to shreds, but it didn’t hurt as much now that I knew what to expect. I went to the tool, putting the stone blocks into the storage room and adding ten more broken stones. If everything went well, I would get the stone blocks done by tomorrow morning. There would definitely be more the storage would require, but at this point I was fine with that. I was seriously hoping it would take bricks so I could get rid of most of those bricks. I still wanted to keep some in case the fences would need them at the next to-do list. I probably wouldn’t be able to make any clay into baked clay while it was raining. It would be a guessing game about what that to-do list would need. I would need to stockpile some bricks.

But I also needed to cook more food. I had one potato soup left, and four chilled tomato soups. I had two cooked eggs, one basic fish omelet, and four fried fish. I had a basket of three fish, and a basket of tomatoes and potatoes. After doing my morning routine, I added another basket of tomatoes and a basket of carrots as well as another egg. The carrots would need more seeds, and so far, there were no new recipes that unlocked when I picked the carrots. I wasn’t going to buy more seeds unless there was a reason to grow carrots.

Once my usual morning routine was done, I sat down at the newly upgraded cooking fire and placed firewood, sticks, and matches in there. I placed potatoes and tomatoes into the fire, wondering how it was that tomatoes could pop out with ketchup while in a fire. I stopped questioning how it happened, and just waited for it to appear. These comfort foods took a bit longer than the soups, but I remained relaxed by the fire.

The fries and a container of ketchup appeared, and I put it aside with a smile to place two fish, an egg, and three more potatoes into the fire.

I let my mind wander as I stared at this place that was turning quite cozy in the morning light. Killie was exploring through the tall grass. Despite all the work I had done inside the house, the outside still looked dilapidated. Even the updated garage looked far nicer on the outside than the house. There would have to be some way to start making the outside start to look as nice as the inside.

The fish and chips took a lot longer, but once they were done, I started making soup. Those three days of rain pressed on my mind, and I was not prepared with the little soup I had left. I still planned on doing some fishing later today so I could make a few more fish in chips tomorrow. They were coming tomorrow night, and it would be a perfect time to test just how much these two comfort foods would give me.

Though something told me that their arrival perhaps wasn’t the best time to test it. You didn’t do a test run on the day of the race, you did it before. I didn’t have to go to bed tonight. I could stay up and get sufficiently spooked to figure out what these comfort foods did, and then have a whole morning again to cook and be prepared.

I let out a breath, knowing what I had to do, but not being excited about it at all. Technically my sanity could get to fifty percent, and it would still be fine. It was something I really needed to test, but I didn’t like it. Not at all.

I sighed, then glanced at the trees. I had a source to fill up my sanity. It would be stupid not to try this. But it also felt stupid to try it. I-

My brows furrowed as I kept staring at the trees. My eyes darted over all of them, a realization hitting me. The breeze playing over the grass wasn’t necessarily hot. It wasn’t cold, either, but there was a shift. I just didn’t notice it until I saw the trees. Some of the leaves were touched with color. The green leaves were starting to change. Autumn was coming, and the game was showing that by having a handful of leaves on a usually green tree change to gold, orange, or red.

I let out another breath, then finished up the last of my cooking. As the final tomato soup was cooking, I walked over to the garage and chose a dark blue paint for the bathroom. If the alien overlords didn’t count the hallway with the stairs leading up to the second floor, I had the entirety of the first floor primed and painted. It only took a few moments of satisfaction before I wondered about the ceiling. Or even some wallpaper. A nice accented wallpaper wall would be nice.

I waited for my bar of sanity and stamina to grow, but it didn’t. Either I didn’t get a reward for finishing the first floor, or I really did need to make sure to wipe down the walls in the hallway leading up to the second floor.

With that, I spent the rest of the morning fishing. I didn’t think it would take so long, but as soon as I got to the bridge, another spider monster tumbled out of the forest and growled. I grumbled, of course thinking I might gather some sand while I was at it, but that would prove difficult with the monster.

Thankfully the spider monster didn’t chase away all the fish, but it still took a lot longer than I’d like to get two more fish. I wanted to stay and get more, but the stone blocks would soon be done in the tool, and I needed to make sure that was constantly going with new blocks so I could get the storage upgraded.

I walked back to the house and went to the back yard. The tool was done, so I reached in to grab one of the stone blocks. A block came out with a memory orb attached to it. I raised my eyebrows in surprise.

“Oh, it’s been a while!”

That was all I managed to say before the memory orb smacked my chest and everything went dark.