Cannot change households

So I made the huge mistake of thinking that I could update The Sims w/o causing problems. I must be stupid.

I took EA up on their offer of a free "stuff pack" and now upon trying to change households to play a different family - the checkmark button greys out but does absolutely nothing. Even after 5+ minutes of waiting the game never loaded the house.

I would appreciate a straight and direct answer to this problem; not just a link to a generalized stewpot of how to troubleshoot 900 different problems in the game BECAUSE THEY DON'T WORK FOR THIS!!!

So really - is there any way to "fix" the problem of my game not loading households?