Can't say I ever got into translating my sims' conversations, but I have noticed that pregnant sims (and sims talking to pregnant sims) will use a different pacifier icon, not the traditional one, when they talk about babies. This one looks more "handmade" and comes in softer colors. Anyone knows why this happens? I always thought it was because the sims in question tended to romanticize the idea of having a baby for the benefit of the expecting mother.

That would be because the Nanny was below Gold Aspiration. Sims below Gold Aspiration who make Smart Milk for toddlers will eff up the brewing and produce bad Smart Milk that will make the toddler feel bad and throw up. Because some toddlers have a Throw Up fear it may have a negative effect on their aspiration meter. Ideal if you want them to Grow Up Badly.

Here's a couple of things I just recently discovered:
1. Sims with high Film and Lit enthusiasm will read a book while walking somewhere.
2. No de-zombification for you! Resurrecting dead zombies - that is, killing a Sim, bringing him back as a zombie, killing them a second time and resurrecting him again - won't turn it back to a human Sim, not even if you pay full price.
3. Some Sims - usually unselectable visitors - will autonomously inspect the Cowplant, make a first reach for the vine cake (that the Cowplant will playfully dodge) and then smarten up and give up. It happens right after the Cowplant sniffes them top to bottom; they won't make a second reach, after which the Cowplant usually plunges forward to swallow them whole. I really freaked out when one of my Sims invited his brother over and the brother fawned around the Cowplant for a while, but the action seemed to fall off the queue before the Cowplant had the opportunity to eat him. It happened a second time with a different Sim. Weird. Not entirely sure it's not a glitch.
4. The Grim Reaper won't come if a Sim is eaten by a Cowplant (yes, I'm currently obsessing over Cowplants. Can you tell?)

Like I said, no custom content. No hacks, mods or anything that isn't The Sims 2 original. And new user data.

So, a couple days ago my game was an authentic glitch soup, freezing every 5 minutes into playing - I don't know why, it just became like that overnight, although I suspect that the problem was a corrupted Sim I extracted using SimPE.

Anyway, since none of the quick fixes for people with identical problems worked for me, I went to Sims2Wiki and did everything their Game Problem FAQ told me to, short of reinstalling. It fixed most of the weirdness, although I'm still not able to create a family or a college household via CAS or Create Students: sometimes, clicking on the Create a Sim button won't do anything (the mouse still turns but the game goes nowhere), other times it will let me build the family normally but then when I submit it and it is loading to the Family Bin the game gets stuck on the blue loading screen without going any further, although music is still playing and the mouse is still turning.

Keep in mind that this is a game without any custom content, as I removed it in the initial stages of my fishing for the problem, with brand new user data, and fully patched minus University (I have all the expansion packs and stuff packs up to Free Time). Any idea of what it might be? Any suggestions would be really appreciated.

In short:
- Game w/all expansion and stuff packs up to FT keeps freezing while creating families and college households
- Game is (almost) fully patched, free of custom content and has fresh new user data
- Player is banging her head on the wall

PS: You'll have to excuse my possibly terrible English; I'm not a native speaker and have been virtually out of practice for about two years now.