Ok I did more online digging and I FIXED it! Woot!
I came across an entry somewhere where someone posted they had an invisible fire problem.
When I typed in the testingcheatsenabled true I got an error.. I looked up the error and it mentioned the trellis. Aha! I went back onto the lot, deleted all the trellises, saved and then exited and re entered the lot. The whole fence line was ablaze!!!
Called the fire department who put it (and the kid's rear end cuz I could not for the life of me get him to come away from the fire lol!) out, saved the lot and voila! Time running normally again.
How exhausting! I'm wondering now if lightning will strike that trellis everytime. It looked really cool as a privacy fence along the front side of the pool.
I'm thrilled though, this lot is 4th generation, going on 5th for this family. I all ready almost lost them once when I.. ahem.. accidentally deleted the eye file for that family. lol
Thanks for letting me run at the mouth here til I figured it out. I was really worried for a bit there.
Oh, and then this morning my game wouldn't load AT ALL. Talk about panic inducing. I saw about deleting the group cache file and it worked like a charm.