[Current Mood | cranky ]

[Listening To | let's yell about politics! ]

I was up early, aggressively cuddled by the big orange beefball. I let Shawshank sleep in. I hear a crow outside, but I think the ground is too wet for me to put out some puffed wheat. Imma do it anyway.

A squirrel used the crow as a distraction; we weren’t paying attention to it, and it used that chance to shimmy up the bird feeder pole. There’s two squirrels out there now, treating our feeders like a buffet.

Since yesterday was the only day off this weekend, we made our journey out of town for another two weeks of supplies. There were thunderstorm warnings all day, but none ever hit us. The only delay came due to some road construction.

We stopped at the hospital to check in on Shawshank‘s dad, who popped a hip out of its socket last week and caught a ride on the Boo-Boo Bus. They patched him up, but it’s a temporary fix until. Next week, he’ll be transported into the city, where they’ll install some shims and proper bracing, and he’ll have load-bearing legs again. We smuggled in a box of contraband snacks, chatted for a bit, then took off to finish out the supply run.

We hit all the stores in the little plaza, snagging food and toiletries. I’m on the hunt for a wireless mic for my streams, but I’ll have to order one. Upon our return, we didn’t leave the house again. Shawshank ran a load of laundry through the wash and I worked on my embroidery project while we watched wrestling. I’m almost finished with it; just one more kit left before I can work on something I made.

The two of us are back to the mixed schedule again, with work today and tomorrow, then another couple of days off. I’m going to put on some makeup, then smoke myself into an extrovert and try to make some money with my new game.

[Current Mood | accomplished ]

[Listening To | 🚨WHOOP WHOOP🚨 IT'S SATURDAY MORNING CRIME SHOWS ]

Hello, world. Let’s do Saturday, shall we? I got out of bed early because Podrick was causing things to go *thunk* in the living room and I had to make sure he wasn’t into anything really bad. Once I confirmed he wasn’t, I planned to get back under the covers, but Shawshank was out of bed when I went back into the bedroom.

Last night’s shift was slow, but with a steadier flow of viewers than they have been lately. In the lulls, I tried to go through all the things I’ve messed with to see if there is anything that could have really fucked things up for me. Like, honest assessments. Am I not good at this? Too fat? Too old? The biggest things I could come up with are:

1. an irregular streaming schedule, where I was offline for ~3 weeks, came back for a few shifts, then left for another week
2. the psychic hotline shtick

I can’t help the schedule, really. Shawshank‘s schedule was borked and he had four straight days off, so I had four days off. I’m not sure how much, if at all, the regularity of my schedule affects placement in the algorithm, or if the “have a regular schedule” is more so that followers know when they can find you. Regardless, I’m still showing up on time, and staying online through the slow shit.

The bigger change has been the overall room theme, going from a simple “weird chick on her bed” to “lost psychic hotline TV signal”. I love it. I adore the idea of it, I love the vibe, and I have so much fun making the scrolling text crawls on the bottom of the screen. However….. I’m a half a century old bog witch, and my fans are barely out of the education system. My fans don’t get the vibe because they weren’t there for it. On top of that, I spent more time looking at the cards than I did my camera, which doesn’t exactly show an inviting room.

Last night, I started testing out something else that offers the opportunity to keep talking. It’s simple, just a very simple game, but it is very outside my wheelhouse of knowledge and experience. It requires a decent amount of improv out of me, but more than that, I have to put myself into a completely different mindset. Like, we’re talking the complete opposite of how I am. A complete 180°.

To my surprise, I had a fucking blast with it. By the end of my shift, I had made up some very simple rules. By the time Shawshank came home, I’d made a new overlay for my screen with how to play. Come Sunday, I’ll have the new overlay in place and be ready to experiment some more.

[Current Mood | drained ]

[Listening To | morning news and the sound of a fan ]

Morning, fuckers. It’s finally Friday, and once again, it’s sunny. Podrick ✨blessed✨ me with almost semi-hourly snuggles, starting while it was still dark outside. I’d love to claim he’s just a lovey boy who loves his mama, but it’s probably his way of begging for breakfast.

My Thursday wasn’t as bad as Tuesday, but it wasn’t great. I logged in to stream, starting with the Ethernet cable connection, which is usually slow, but stable. Shit was unstable from the very start, and with my frame rate going from 30fps to 1fps and then back to 30fps again. I stuck it out until my first mini break, smoked a bowl, then switched over to my cell’s hotspot. The hotspot didn’t help the problem, unfortunately. The bowl hit hard – I delved too greedily, and too deep – but I stayed online. When most of the high had worn off, I logged out to make some dinner for myself and the cats.

I played some “Civ” for a while, then decided I wanted to do something. Anything. I put on a bra and some shoes, grabbed some poi, and went outside to spin until Shawshank came home.

Today’s the last day of the work week, and the start of a long, 4-day wrestling weekend. FUCK YES OILY BOYS.

[Current Mood | okay ]

[Listening To | World Cup updates ]

Good morning, world. It’s a sunny Thursday, but I’m sure this week’s got a thing for “morning sun, with afternoon bullshit”. Podrick was very cuddly this morning, and I lost count of how many times he came up for attention. And why was he so desperate for attention?

Because I took his automatic food bowl away, and he didn’t get his little 5:30am snack. Captain Butterball treats the robo-feeder like a 24/7 vending machine. If the bowl is empty, he’ll shimmy his paw up into the kibble-chute, turn the mechanism that moves the food, and manually dispense a couple of pieces at a time. Now here we are, with a 20lb cat who can’t stop destroying everything and everyone he lands on. Destruction aside, it’s wicked unhealthy for him, and I want to keep him around. On top of that, he’s dangerously close to being unable to clean his own ass.

As awful as Tuesday’s shift was, I vowed to not let it get to me. I set up the bedroom in the usual way. I’d planned to wear a wig, but changed my mind. I really couldn’t be bothered to fuck with my hair at all. Instead, I pulled it up in two pony tails, then threw a tank top over a sheer bikini top and considered myself “ready”.

I’ve been trying to sort out which tags I work best for me lately, because #mommy is full of people who want to completely disregard the TOS. I took out #mommy, added a bunch of new contenders, and have been running an app that changes my hashtags regularly. Monday was bad. To test things, I modified my little hashtag tracker to watch the 10 new tags, and tried it out on Tuesday’s stream, thinking maybe I’d be able to glean some ideas of what worked and what didn’t. Tuesday was even worse than Monday. Last night, I swapped out a couple of tags that definitely weren’t working for me, and added #mommy back. After two hours, I kept the top five tags, and turned off the tag-switcher. Things were marginally better for my last two hours. I streamed for about 4 hours total, collected my money, and logged out to make a grilled cheese.

Two more days, then we’ll have a day off to go do adult things. Is soccer over yet?

[Current Mood | socially exhausted ]

[Listening To | the world is BURNING ]

Last night’s shift was bad. This morning was bad. It’s just bad all around.

I’d love to know what’s happening to kill my stream. I used to get steady traffic, and now I get crickets. I fixed some of the issues with my cam’s quality last night, but it didn’t matter. In fact, lately it doesn’t matter what connection speed, or what overlays are on my video. It’s just dead for me. No one wants me. I’m a dried up husk of unfuckable woman.

Podrick came up for snuggles this morning, which was really nice. Until the penultimate visit, that is, when I fell asleep with him stretched across my chest and arms. When the 5:30am snack dropped into the bowl, he launched off of me, pulling me out of my fragile slumber. Pod’s next stop was a hard landing on Shawshank‘s stomach, waking him from a dead sleep.

Just bad all around.