Can I do it? Can I do it?

Posted on November 16, 2014 by luckyotter

“I think I can. I think I can.”
–The Little Engine who Could

Although my blog has been definitely picking up (a couple of my articles even have been appearing on PAGE ONE of Google!!!), September 21st is still my “Best Day Ever”–the day my “I’m Frustrated” rant was reblogged by OM at Harsh Reality and I was swarmed with new viewers and followers (354 views that day to be exact). It was a heady day, especially because I was new at this and had only been blogging for 11 days. Prior to that I had a pitiful 12 followers and almost no comments or views (and that’s why I was so frustrated and wrote that rant).

This month, I’ve noticed my views have been increasing a lot. If I knew how to “screencap” the graph on my stats page, I would. But now I’m getting views and comments even on days I haven’t posted anything new, and I’m getting more views every day. So far today I have a whopping 244 views, which is the most I’ve had since September 21. That’s exciting!

I’m hoping to beat my “best day ever.” I still have a few hours left. I wonder if I can do it?

WordPress Classic Editor vs. the “new, improved” Editor

Posted on November 14, 2014 by luckyotter

Yeah. I made this. It sucks. That thing that looks like a dandelion drawn by a 5 year old is supposed to be a ninja star weapon. Oh, well.

For some reason, WordPress keeps switching me over to the new editor (the beep beep boop one) and I have to manually switch it back to classic, which I like much better.

First of all, I think the classic editor is more readable. Second, my photos automatically resize themselves to the size I specified in my settings. The new editor doesn’t do that (maybe there’s a glitch), and I wind up having to upload my photos to Photobucket, and then resize them there, and that is time consuming. But the worst thing I noticed is the new editor doesn’t always save my changes. If I go in to edit a post again (I usually edit a post anywhere between 5 and 10 times, sometimes even more for longer posts), all my previous changes are lost. I finally figured out if I use the classic editor, my photos default to the correct size and I don’t have to worry about my changes being lost. Easy peasy!

I just wish I knew how to keep the classic editor from switching to the new one. I really don’t know what’s better about it. I really don’t need juvenile prompts like “Your post is lookin’ great!” and “Beep Beep Boop.” I’m not in kindergarten. And I will be the judge of whether my post looks great or not.

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Remember New Coke? It was an epic fail. Everyone still wanted “Classic Coke.”

What do other bloggers prefer? The new editor or the classic mode?

Who is the real “Lucky Otter” and why you should care

Posted on November 13, 2014 by luckyotter

Last Christmas, I sent my son, who loves otters, one of these little critters I found online.

I thought he was so cute I ordered another one for myself. My son named his “Alfonso” and he has actually dressed him in little clothes and then tweets the photos from different locations. Yeah, he’s a total dork. Here’s “Alfonso” protecting a smartphone.

Touch this phone and I’ll rip your face off.

Yeah, I know. It sort of reminds me of the guy who kidnapped someone’s garden gnomes, took them on a trip around the world, and sent the owners photos of the stolen gnomes in exotic settings such as the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, London’s Big Ben, The Great Wall of China, and under the arches at the Mickey D’s in Podunk, Iowa.

Don’t step any closer. It might be possessed.

So anyway. I couldn’t think of a name for my guy, but there’s a restaurant in town named “Lucky Otter.” Otters are not on the menu, but Cali-style burritos are. The logo, inexplicably, is two conjoined dachsunds that look vaguely reminiscent of “CatDog,” of the ’90s era Nickelodeon cartoon.

The important thing is, my fuzzy little guy is otterly delighted not only with his name, but to have an entire blog named after him.

Holy shirt!

Posted on November 11, 2014 by luckyotter

Be honest. Do any of you women suffer from holy shirt syndrome? I have a lot of thin cotton tee shirts, and every last one of them has an array of tiny little holes right in the front at the bottom, over the belly button area.

This is a huge mystery to me. My first thought was clothes moths, but that couldn’t be it, because why would the clothes moths only attack the same area of every tee shirt? Besides, I haven’t seen any clothes moths and none of my other clothes suffer. Belts? No, that couldn’t be it either. I never wore belts until very recently after I lost a bunch of weight because that was the only way I could get my old pants from falling off. I have had my holy shirt problem far longer than that. Someone suggested seat belts might be the culprit, but it happens even in cold weather when I’m wearing a coat and the seatbelt is not touching my tee shirt. Tucking my shirt into my pants can’t be it either because I never tuck my shirt into my pants.

Today I Googled “tiny holes at bottoms of tee shirts” and was shocked to find out this is actually a common problem and everyone else seems as mystified by it as me! For some reason I thought no one else had this problem. Anyway I found this article saying it’s caused by leaning over kitchen counters. Hmmm, I guess it’s time to start wearing an apron. Somehow I don’t believe it though. I’ve had brand new tee shirts I hung in the closet and never wore to cook anything, and somehow the holes still appear.

I don’t get it. Does anyone have a better theory of what causes this? And what can be done about it?

High anxiety

Posted on November 10, 2014 by luckyotter

I’m having one of those days again. You know, those days where you feel like all your nerves are beeping and buzzing and flashing the red DANGER sign. I deliberately stayed home from work today because I felt like sleeping in (and honestly, I wasn’t feeling well–I think I’m coming down with a cold, the flu, or maybe Ebola). But once I got over the anxiety-inducing hurdle of actually calling work, I curled back into my nice warm bed, expecting to drift into pleasant dreams, but instead I couldn’t go back to sleep! This happens A LOT when I try to relax: my mind starts racing and my heart begins to palpitate, while all my morbid, negative thoughts of unnamed disaster start to overtake my brain. This always happens, especially when I’m trying to relax.

When I was young I never had this problem. The 20-something version of myself could languish in bed until 2 PM or even later, with nary a sense of guilt or anxiety. I would drift into the most incredible, lucid-like dreams like someone on a mushroom high. I woke up ready to take on the world. But things have changed. As I’ve grown older, my attempts to sleep in just make me feel like I deserve to be punished and my body responds in kind. What’s up with that?

So I finally gave up trying to get back to sleep. I untangled my legs from under the covers, stood on the cold floor and walked to the kitchen where I made a strong pot of my favorite hazelnut coffee (I’m weird–coffee sometimes makes me sleepy) with cream and no sugar, put on some socks and opened my laptop. I read some blogs and blogged a little myself, but the nervousness was still there.

Around 11:30, I could no longer stand laying around in the clothes I sleep in (last night it was a tee shirt with threadbare drawstring pajama pants with Lucky Charms logos and leprechauns all over them) and got dressed in real clothes. But I still feel that unnamed sense of dread. My palms feel sweaty and my heart is in my throat. Should I go for a drive? Mow the grass (which is still overgrown and weedy looking even though it’s been cold)? Read a good novel? Cook something scrumptious that involves plenty of chocolate and butter? Arrange all my books in order by color to make my bookshelves look like a rainbow? I just don’t know. Now I wish I went to work today. I don’t know why I take these “mental health days” when I always wind up feeling guilty for doing so and crazier than if I’d just gone to my crummy job.

The crazy outfit I slept in last night. Maybe going to dreamland with kittens and leprechauns is the stuff of nightmares.

Am I the only one? Do any of you suffer anxiety and guilt when you take a day off from work when you’re not really sick? What do you do to combat your nerves?

Post #100: my surviving book collection.

Posted on November 10, 2014 by luckyotter

Books and reading have always been my passion. As long as I can remember I always had my nose stuck in a book. I actually used to “cut class” in third grade to go to the school library (I hated 3rd grade the most because I was not only bullied by the other kids but was also bullied by my teacher Mrs. Morse, who had it in for me through the whole year and actually encouraged the other kids to gang up on me.) Reading was my escape, my middle childhood version of creating my own imaginary friends and worlds, and I read on a 7th-8th grade level in the third grade.

My two favorite books as a child were (1) Louise Fitzhugh’s classic “Harriet the Spy” (read the book but skip the movie –Harriet is not your usual female heroine–she’s feisty, neurotic and isn’t even all that nice–she is part villain, part hero, and that makes her have so many dimensions for a kids’ book) and (2) Scott O’Dell’s breathtaking survival story, “The Island of the Blue Dolphins”. How I longed, like the young heroine in that beautiful story, to be stranded for 18 years on a desert island, swim with the dolphins, commune with nature and wildlife, fashion my own hut and raft for fishing, and most of all, spend almost two decades not having to deal with people at all. .

These two bookshelves pictured below contain almost all my remaining books. I keep a few others in the ~~reading room~~ bathroom and a few more on a smaller shelf next to my bed. I used to read an average of 3 books a week but lately I haven’t been reading nearly so much, because I do so much reading on line now.

Yes, that is a Salvador Dali inspired melting clock dripping off one of the shelves on the left hand side. It was given to me as a gag gift last Christmas, but it was the perfect gift for a person like me who loves the random and unexpected when it comes to gifts. The clock works too! (Click photo to enlarge).

I used to own more than 3,000 titles (hell, I could have opened my own little bookstore!) but lack of space and financial necessity obliged me to sell most of the books or give them away to charity. There’s a few books I regret giving up; here are most of the remaining titles that either didn’t sell, or I refused to sell.

And now….(drum roll please!)…I have reached 100 posts. 🙂

16 overrated things

Posted on October 31, 2014 by luckyotter

1. Facebook. Your boss or your potential boss can spy on you and make character judgments based on what your updates say or what your photographs look like. Family members and old classmates you’d rather have nothing to do with can find you here. Companies can profile you and bombard you with ads for you to “like.” Facebook is fucking Big Brother. It’s going to take over the world someday. It must be stopped.

2. Stainless steel appliances. They look nice when new, but they’re hard to maintain and keep looking nice. They can’t take fingerprints and everything shows on them. After a few years they just start to look like shit. I’ll stick with plain old boring white appliances, thank you. Unfortunately, if you’re in the market for a new fridge or oven, they’re ALL in stainless steel these days.

3. The Kardashians. Famous for doing nothing at all. What the hell is so interesting about them?

4. Shrimp and other invertebrate seafood. Shrimp has a disturbing crunchy texture that reminds me of the exoskeletons of insects and arthropods. In fact, as members of Crustacea, shrimp, crab and lobster are biologically very close to Insectivora and Arthropoda. Sea-bugs for supper. Yum.

5. Vampires/zombies. They bore me. I’ll never get the neverending love affair America has with these uninteresting creatures.

6. Homeschooling. Kids don’t learn to interact with their peers, and most parents really aren’t cut out to be teachers. That said, I suppose there are some benefits for families who want to be able to control what their kids are exposed to. I’m not sure that’s always a good thing.

7. Autumn. There’s about a week where the trees actually look colorful, then it’s all downhill after that. While the weather is okay (in September and October), it’s getting colder and by November and December, it might as well be the middle of February. I don’t like fall because it reminds me that my least favorite season, winter, is coming. The days are getting shorter and everything is dying. It’s fucking depressing.

8. Snow. I ranted about it in this blog post.

9. Blonde hair. Women with blonde hair have to work extra hard to be taken seriously because everyone assumes they’re stupid. Blonde hair doesn’t age well and makes some people look washed out. Why 90% of women want to be blonde is a mystery.

10. Tans. The precursor to skin cancer, and they don’t look all that great anyway. I’d rather be pasty and free of both wrinkles and dangerous sun lesions for a few more years.

11. Christmas. The main problem I have with Christmas is how overcommercialized it has become. The day after Halloween it starts, and for almost two months we are made to feel guilty if we can’t afford the latest, most expensive gifts for our loved ones and can’t act jolly all the time. You can’t get away from it. Commercials and ads showing large, happy families sitting down enjoying a sumptuous Christmas meal with everyone opening gifts make me feel inferior and ashamed of my small, dysfunctional, impoverished family. One of my favorite radio stations during the rest of the year plays Christmas music 24/7 and it’s enough to make me want to stab Santa Claus.

12. Sushi. The package is nice but it’s RAW FISH. I’ll pass.

13. Major Sports (baseball, football, basketball, hockey). I just. don’t. care. Mmmmkay?

14. The news. I don’t like to get angry, and watching the news has an unfortunate tendency to make my blood boil. If it’s something I really need to know about, I figure it can’t be avoided anyway and I’ll be duly informed. Until then, I’m perfectly happy with my ignorant head stuck down here in the sand

15. Family Guy. Once upon a time it was funny (sort of). Now it’s just pathetic, recycling the same old lame jokes and unfunny cutaways. It’s time to put this show out of its misery. Peter is particularly insufferable.

16. Random, pointless lists ranting about things you think are overrated.

Move over, Hershey’s. I’m a chocolate snob.

Posted on October 30, 2014 by luckyotter

I admit it. I’m a chocolate snob. Although I can barely afford it, you’ll always find me in the “gourmet chocolate” section of the candy department at the grocery store, drooling over (and sometimes buying) big dark chocolate bars studded with sea salt, bits of almonds, filled with raspberry fondant, or just plain naked chocolate. It’s always dark–and the label usually reads Lindt, Ghirardelli (their huge 60% dark chocolate chips are to die for) or Green and Black’s. Whatever is available at my local Food Lion, since I lack the funds to visit The Chocolate Fetish downtown, which makes handmade chocolates right on their premises. I won’t even go near that store–because I would lose my mind if set loose in there.

Around the year 2005, Target noticed its female customers were very different than Wal-Mart’s–thin, professional looking women who were attracted to their boldly colorful, minimalist, and trendy home furnishings and decor–the sort of women who would give side-eye to sentimental picture frames featuring an insert for each of baby’s first twelve years, “Footprints” plaques framed in gold-tinged plastic frames, and particleboard/wood veneer furnishings of the type Wal-Mart offers.

Target realized that the commercial boxed chocolates Wal-Mart offers–with Hersheys Pot of Gold, Russell Stover, and Whitmans Samplers being pretty much its highest-end offerings (all too sweet, too bland, and too focused on the milk chocolate)–would not do for these thin upper middle class women who parked their soccer mom SUVs at the Target up the street and wouldn’t be caught dead at Wal-Mart. So Target came out with their own brand: Choxie.

Yes, those really are all edible.

Choxie was packaged in interesting containers and featured “artisan” chocolates that contained things like infusions of green tea, chili powder, espresso, deep red raspberry puree with no added sugar, sea salt, and other unique ingredients and flavors intended to enhance or provide counterpoint to the taste of the chocolate. Some looked like little packages and just like real presents, they always contained a gustatory surprise. Choxie chocolates were also aesthetically pleasing–little works of art featuring colored candy squiggles worthy of Jackson Pollack, inserts of white or mocha or green mint chocolate, or different colored chocolates all swirled together in a way reminiscent of one of those “spin art” cards we old folks used to make at the fair as kids. Their unbelievably delicious raspberry bombs were dusted in a sour raspberry powder to give them bite. I loved the way my fingers turned red after eating a few. All these candies were way too pretty to be eaten, but I ate them anyway, and they tasted as good as they looked.

About a month ago I went back to Target to find them. But no one there even knew what Choxie was anymore, so apparently it’s no longer made and hasn’t been in some time. Tears! I miss those tiny edible masterpieces, but I’ve found something almost as great: if you’ve never tried Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Turbinado Sea Salt Almonds, you have not lived. As you can see from the photo, they look like little rat turds, but ohhhh, baby, their sorry appearance is misleading! The experience of eating one is better than sex–and you will NOT be able to stop at just one. They should probably be illegal. I even learned how to make them myself, and they are almost as good as Trader Joe’s.

Recipe: Lucky Otter’s Dark Chocolate Almonds Encrusted with Sea Salt and Turbinado Sugar

Two bars of plain dark gourmet chocolate–I like Ghirardelli’s.
Melt these over low heat until soft–do not allow chocolate to boil.
Set aside about 30-35 almonds, also a dish spread with sea salt, and another dish spread with about 2 tablespoons turbinado sugar.
Take the melted chocolate off the stove, and with a teaspoon, dip and swirl each almond in the chocolate, and then set each on a cookie sheet. Don’t worry if the chocolate makes a little pool around the almonds.
Allow the chocolate to harden but don’t let it harden completely. It should still be soft and malleable. With a teaspoon, coat each almond in the turbinado sugar, and then sprinkle a little sea salt on each. Be careful you don’t overdo it with the salt–there should be more sugar than salt on each almond. You can test a few to see what proportion tastes best, but they won’t taste good if you use too much salt–they should just have a hint of a salty taste.
Place the covered almonds on a dish and refrigerate for about an hour.
Enjoy.

Which religion is the One True Religion?

Posted on October 28, 2014 by luckyotter

I came across a fascinating post over at Godless Cranium’s blog. Although I’m not an atheist, I always find his posts thought-provoking and he raises a lot of great questions. This one really got me thinking.

Until recently I’ve been agnostic, and I still have a lot of agnostic views. I don’t expect those to all change any time soon. But this week I decided to become Catholic. I know, I know, a lot of you are thinking, WTF? Why would you choose such an ancient, archaic, bloated religion that has a violent past full of hypocrisy, bloodshed and immoral practices such as people being bilked out of their hard earned money to get someone out of Purgatory? I have my reasons. If you’re interested in why I chose this faith over others, you can read the two posts I wrote a few days ago.

That being said, do I think the Catholic church is the “right” religion? Not really. It may be all wrong for someone else, but for a number of reasons, I think it will work for me. Catholics actually believe all Christians are going to heaven, and some non-Christians who do good works are going there too. I like that. But they still have their doctrine that holds that it’s much, much better to be a Christian, even a non-Catholic one, so a non-Christian’s chances of getting to heaven still aren’t very good.

Muslims believe they are the only ones going to heaven. Allah will save a faithful Muslim but everyone else, including all Christians, will go to their version of hell. What if they are right? I mean, they could be, right? They are as convinced as any Christian that their Allah is the One True God and believing anything else is heresy.

Closer to home, many fundamentalist Protestant denominations think only members of their particular denomination will go to heaven. There are about 30,000 Protestant denominations. Which one is right? Then of course there are the offshoots of Christianity that don’t really fit into traditional Christianity–Jehovah’s Witnesses, Seventh Day Adventists and Mormons come to mind. Without exception, they all believe their faith is the one true religion and only their Bible is the correct one.

There are the non-Abrahamic religions too–Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism and other eastern religions, as well as Wicca and various forms of paganism and shamanism, not to mention Scientology and Santeria. Even though they don’t worship the western God and don’t use any version of the Bible, their adherents all think they’re right. Who is to say they aren’t?

Who is right? Is anyone right? Maybe the atheists are right and there is no God or afterlife at all.

None of us will know for certain what will happen until we die. If we are just annihilated at death we will never be surprised there is no God waiting for us at the pearly gates because there will be no consciousness to draw such a conclusion. Perhaps reincarnation is what will happen. I can imagine many evangelical Christians being gobsmacked when they realize the Buddhists were right all along. Who’s to say? There are some very good arguments in favor of reincarnation. There are even some Christians who don’t think the idea of reincarnation can’t be reconciled with Christianity.

My head is swimming.

Maybe what happens is whatever we believe will happen. If you’re a good Christian and believe you will go to heaven, then better start shining that halo. If you’re a miserable person who thinks you deserve fiery torture, then to hell you go. If you worship Allah and believe you have pleased that God, then expect Arabic to be spoken in heaven. If you’re a Jew you will find the promised land. If you’re a Buddhist get ready for Nirvana (but be ready for a few more thousand earthly lives first). If you’re a Scientologist, L.Ron Hubbard instead of Jesus will meet you at the gates. If you’re an atheist you may be surprised you aren’t annihilated after all, but what to do then? It might be nice to be free of an earthly body, but you’ll have to decide on some sort of afterlife for yourself. Maybe if you don’t believe in anything you’ll spend eternity floating around aimlessly here on earth. Maybe ghosts are really confused atheists who have passed on.

Is it possible everyone is right and there is no one true religion? Because if only one of them was right, wouldn’t there be a way for God to show us slow-witted humans which one was the One True Religion, while identifying the rest as false? Answering “The Bible answers this” doesn’t cut it, because so many groups of Christians can’t seem to agree. Even those that use the same Bible can’t agree on how to interpret many of the passages. Then of course there are different translations of the Bible and not all are exactly the same. Some even include extra books (Catholics and Mormoms) that are considered heretic by other Christians. And of course, the Muslims can counter any Christian argument by smugly stating, “It’s all here in the Q’uran.”

It’s enough to make my head explode.

I am going to die.

Posted on October 28, 2014 by luckyotter

I am going to die. Someday. And so will you. Let’s not kid ourselves–life is a terminal illness and you and I will both die from it sooner or later.

My daughter said something just the other day that made me stop in my tracks and gave me a bit of a jolt.
She said, “Mom, you’re entirely too healthy for your age.”

She’s right. I’ve never had a serious illness (not counting major depression that required inpatient psychiatric treatment) and I avoid doctors like the plague. Most people my age suffer from some sort of chronic health problem or another. I don’t fuss about my health more than the average 20 year old and I certainly enjoy my artery-clogging, sugar-laden foods. The only reason I don’t weigh as much as a house is because I work it all off at my physically strenuous job. So at least I’m not living a sedentary lifestyle. I quit my gym membership because I don’t need it anymore. Every major muscle group gets a workout every day. I’ve never been in better shape. It’s the best thing about my job.

I’m 55. That means if I die at an average ripe old age (75), I only have twenty years left to live. That’s a sobering thought. Twenty. years. until. I. die. Going backwards in time, twenty years puts me at age 35, in 1994. So the amount of time that has past between 1994 and now is the same as how much time I have until I’m 75–and that’s if I’m lucky. I don’t eat right–I love my comfort foods way too much, and I smoke. Not heavily, but I still indulge in this killer habit, knowing it will probably spell my early demise. If I don’t quit smoking and don’t change my eating habits, I will be lucky to make it to 75.

Let’s say I actually live to be 80. That’s only 25 years from now: the same time forwards from today as going backwards to age 30, in 1989. That’s only one year shy of the 1990s, folks, and the 90s don’t seem that far in the past to me, no sirree. Not like the ’70s seemed remote and distant to me when I was living in the ’90s. But I was younger then and time stretched and yawned forward and back in both directions. Now it seems compressed and speeds up faster every year. Ever notice how the older you get, the time seems to speed up? When I was 10 or 15, a decade seemed like an eon. Now a decade seems like a year did back then. Maybe even less than that.

If by some fluke, I live to be 90, that’s the same amount of time going forward (35 years) as going back to 1979, when I was 20. Now that seems like a good chunk of time. 1979 seems like a pretty long time in the past. Disco wasn’t even dead yet. Jimmy Carter was still president. I was still a “minor.” I can get down with living another 35 years. But I don’t really want to live to be 90.

I wonder if all this thinking about God and religion and spirituality I’ve been doing lately has to do with realizing I’m getting up there and having to face my own mortality. When you’re young, the rest of your life seems like a vast amount of time; you can always put off that thing you know you should do until later. Why rush things? But listen, kids. Life’s not as long as you think–because as you get older, the time will speed up. A lot.

There are some interesting theories as to why time seems to speed up as we age. One of them, described in this blog post in Scientific American, is because as a percentage of our age, a given chunk of time takes up a smaller and smaller percentage the older we get.

Here’s an interesting thought experiment. When you’re five, five years is a very long time–it’s your entire lifetime! To a fifty year old, five years is a mere 10% of the time they’ve lived, so it doesn’t seem like much. What is 10% of a five year old’s life? Six months! So six months to a five year old is perceived the same way as five years is perceived by a fifty year old! You can have a lot of fun playing with the numbers this way. When I was 35, twenty years seemed like a very long time–because it was more than 50% of the time I’d lived. At my current age, twenty years is just a little more than a third of the time I’ve been alive, so it seems that much shorter. My perception of time passing is such that thirty years is roughly the same as 20 years was to me then. And it will continue to get worse until the day I finally shuck off this mortal coil.