Characters Unselectable and frozen

Oh, I forgot to mention....there are no green squares. There is nothing to suggest there are any sims in my household even though I had four of them. The panel that lets you view their traits, jobs, moods can't be opened when I press the blue arrow. I can switch from live to buy and build mode and I can do anything I want to the house. I can see the part of the panel that controls buy/build and the camera angles and everything but not one option for controlling a sim. Cheats don't work on the sim I can see. Normally I can active "moveobjects" and actually move my sim around but it doesn't even register that there is a sim there. Its like I've loaded a game without choosing an active household which is impossible. Time passes by like normal, npc characters live their day to day but no one interacts with the one sim I can see because it's like she doesn't exist. No matter what household I enter, its the same. I chose one of the families that was already in the town to see if it would play but like I said, the active household is just gone/frozen after I try to do anything.