As I was rubber-necking at the destruction in Louisiana and Mississsippi yesterday, it occurred to me…

The same storm that killed hundreds and caused billions of dollars worth of damage in human terms will have stirred up a rich soup of nutrients from the depths of the Gulf of Mexico, which will precipitate a bloom in aquatic (and correspondingly in terrestrial) life.

I’m still goofing off (which means I’m only minding the munchkins and not trying to work on the website too :-p ), and I can’t help but be riveted to The Weather Channel. One of the fiercest hurricanes ever recorded is blasting through New Orleans today. Here in Tampa Bay we watch these things go past us time and again, always knowing that it’s not a matter of if one will hit us, it’s a matter of when. The legendary (at least to us weather junkies) Jim Cantore has, as usual, been reporting from “ground zero,” which in this case is a concrete building sitting 27′ above sea level, and 1/2 mile north of the shore. He’s been telling us about the water filling the lowest level of the building, and the cars floating by - and how the surge of water came in in about 20 minutes. It’s the kind of thing you hear people say “I can’t imagine” about, but I think everybody who lives here can imagine. The clouds that are dumping rain onto Mississipi, Alabama, and Louisiana today have been pouring a little on us too, the winds that are tearing apart buildings and trees have knocked down a few branches here as well.
Last year, when folks were excaiming over the extraordinarily severe hurricane season, the weather dudes were quick to remind us that such severity was the average, that in fact we’ve just been going through a bit of a lull the past few decades. Add the effects of global warming to that, and I’m seriously concerned that the land my house sits on - about two miles from the ocean - will be waterfront property by the time I leave it to my kids. Or worse, underwater property. After all, waterfront property might actually be worth something if sold to one of the damn fools who apparantly think rebuilding their palatial homes every decade or so is a sort of status symbol. *eyeroll*
Hurricane Katrina will, I expect, claim a couple hundred lives when all is said and done between the floods, tornadoes, and falling trees. (six fatalities in Florida already, five due to falling trees - must be some kind of record) It’ll be listed as one of the most dangerous storms ever. What’s astonishing really, is how a storm that’s if anything fiercer than, say, the Indian super cylone of 1999, will take a few hundred souls here where the Indian storm killed 138,000 people.
Why? Well, we have better warning systems. But mostly, I think, it’s that a lot of folks over here have the means to get away. They’ve got cars, and money for hotel rooms (or relatives on higher ground). Some folks didn’t have the means to get away from this one either. Many of them are huddled inside the Louisiana Superdome while the wind tears pieces off the roof, the levees fail, and Lake Pontchartrian fills the basin the city sits in with water.
I wonder if someday my family will be one of those who haven’t the means to get away.

The new subscription Chateau is almost ready to go, but - as usual - everything is about ten times more complicated as you think it’ll be. I hoped to have it finished by wednesday, I was sure I’d have it done by friday, now here it is friday and I’m so flippin tired of hammering away at it that I just can’t stand it anymore.

I’ve got this week’s gallery up (before noon even - most unusual!), I still have to do the peepshow, then I am taking the rest of the day off, dammit.

I’m all the time talking about how I enjoy doing this for a living, but I have to tell you, some of the things I like about it are (I think) pretty damn funny. Like, when I realized that all my lingerie purchases would be tax deductible, I got physically aroused!

How peculiar is that? *giggle*

As expected, CCBill have once again told me that “courtesan” is unacceptable, so off it goes. :’-( I can’t hold it too much against them since, as I discovered in my attempts to find a decent substitute, “courtesan” is still pretty commonly used in some other parts of the world to mean naught but a woman who has sex for money.

I can’t think of an adequate replacement - “online companion” seems so lame! - and besides, I’m in a total snit today, not interested in playing with the guys unless they’re expecting to get their asses whupped, so I’m just going to remove that section entirely. Dammit.

So after a weekend of hard work I go live with the radically renovated Chateau Cherie last night. I had not finalized the arrangments with the subscription billing company I’d chosen, CCBill, but I had no expectations of any problems when I was filling out the paperwork this morning. Alas, I was wrong, wrong, wrong. As with so many things in the world of “adult” business, there’s finicky regulations hemming me in on all sides. Here I thought I was providing a site and a service a cut above, with something extra of intelligence, class, and real-womanliness to raise it above the standard “fuck my wet gaping holes” trash full of plastic doll-women and no sense of art, but apparantly because I am “describing herself as a courtesan which is a prostitute.” and CCBill’s AUP prohibits “Any and all sites running and/or participating and/or advertising the direct solicitation of sexual acts ” I am required to drop my beloved designation.
(I’m also not allowed to use the words “menstrual blood” as it’s a - gasp! - bodily fluid, which is also a no-no. Never mind that it’s a regular and perfectly normal occurence in the lives of nearly all real women, at least for a portion of their lives. Sigh.)
Anyhow, while it’s a minor matter to me to remove the words “menstrual blood” from the list of my fetish interests, it really hurts to stop calling myself a web courtesan. It’s not as if I’m offering any actual physical contact; I’m not clever enough at scheduling to manage that even if I wanted to, what with two young kids and a husband to work around, lol! And for crying out loud, is there anybody who’s delusional enough to insist that phone or webcam sex isn’t a sexual service, providing sexual acts? If there are any guys out there who ARE dumbassed enough to claim this, you can be damn sure your wives and girlfriends feel differently.
A courtesan is not merely a fast fuck, but also a woman who provides intelligent conversation and an atmosphere of artistic beauty and soothing acceptance which is refreshing to the mind and spirit as well as the libido. Yep, I guess she’s also a prostitue, and frankly I got no problem with that. I don’t think it’s such a godawful thing that there should be women (and men, for that matter) who choose to work as erotic-stimulators-for-hire. IMO they (we!) provide a valuable and necessary service.
Anyhow, I mean to ask the powers-that-be if I can remain a courtesan if I’m careful to attach a “web” or “digital” to it, to make it even more clear (duh!) that I’m not making any house-calls. I don’t expect them to bend though, so if anybody knows any good synonyms for courtesan I’d appreciate hearing them. The only one I can think of is Geisha, and I just don’t think I could pull that one off, being white and all.

I’m still so busy that posting anything here is the LAST thing on my mind, but I just had to take a minute to crow - I got my friday update done at precisely 11:59 this week, just under the wire. *grin*

Wow, it’s been a loooong time since I posted here - I guess it’s about damn time I wrote something. Prolonged dental drama kept me from doing any more than the most basic work on my site for nearly a month, when I was supposed to be renovating it in preparation for turning my boudoir into a subscription area. But at last I am caught up enough to do some tinkering, and since the munchkins are at their grandmothers’ tomorrow I can get some real work done.

I’ve made huge progress this evening already, and I’m feeling darn proud of myself. *grin* Sgt. and I also did a pretty satisfying photo shoot last week, which helps rebuild my stockpile of pics. We did three different costumes, and the gallery I posted on friday actually has a part two and three ready to go. For those of my members who keep a watch on this diary, you have an extra mini-gallery of nothing but upskirt shots, complete with stocking-tops, and one of lovely foot and shoe shots to look forward to. I’ve been practicing my pumping and dangling, bwahaha.

We finished up the shoot with some good old-fashioned oral sex, me on my knees, mouth open and ready to receive. Thanks to that dental drama it’s been a looong time for that too, and oh, how I missed it!