All posts in category Ultimate Blog Challenge

Whole 30 for Writing – Where you want to gain not lose

Every day is Blogging Day in April

I’ve been asked if I take the weekend off from blogging. In light of the current challenge, which I have dubbed the only Whole 30 (crazed writing, not crazed weight loss) I will ever do, I understand the question.

My kids will get particular enjoyment out of the question as they know I’ll take a day off with great ease. The real question is – take a day off from what? But I’ll cover that in future posts.

I know writing is what we’re focusing on here, but it’s only part of the – what’s that math thingy I’m trying to think of, oh yeah – equation. (Again, I’ll check in with my engineer later to make sure of this.)

I was geared up for this blogging challenge. I had several drafts in the works and ideas were flowing, which I greatly believe was God giving me the green light on this. Half of my April will involve having family in from out-of-town, so sneaking away to write may become a challenge, especially when my grandchildren from North Carolina arrive, but I’m also confident that where grandchildren are, blogging ideas flow.

Days 1 – 7 were relatively easy. Finding something like LEGO Jesus was the kind of thing that primes my writer’s pump. But my MO has been to finalize the day before I post. Yesterday was Sunday and I discovered I should have used Saturday better. After church Bob and I went to an usher’s meeting/game afternoon. Again, if you ask me to play a game, my writing will not even enter my mind. We were the last to leave, too, putting us home at 5:30, just in time for Bob to fix dinner.

I’m on a crazy diet right now, so if Bob doesn’t cook, he doesn’t eat anything interesting. He does this out of love for me and support for my weight loss endeavor. Thankfully, he likes to cook.

By the time dinner was over and I did the last of the dishes, I realized that due to circumstances, I hadn’t had any time with Bob for the last two days, so I took the night off from blogging. I even resisted using my devices except for a facetime with our granddaughter, Layna, who turned 7 on the 7th and was pretty pumped about her golden birthday.

Because I am driven to perfection regarding this Whole 30, it was surprising and delightful to me when I realized that I was okay with a quiet night with my husband instead of leaving him to himself while I wrote. And then this morning, our blog-meister Paul asked about taking a day off, so now you know the rest of my story. Sometimes you just have to let it go. When I return to my normal schedule of a once-a-week post, I won’t typically write on Sunday. But I have no hard and fast rules. If inspiration hits me, I’ll pull away and at least jot down a few notes, night or day.

I hope you had a restful Sunday and thanks for reading, especially during my Whole 30!

 

This is Post #8 of the Ultimate Blog Challenge to post every day in April.

11 Comments
by Bonnie Anderson on April 8, 2019  •  Permalink
Posted in Stuff I Go Through, Ultimate Blog Challenge, Writing
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Posted by Bonnie Anderson on April 8, 2019

https://lifeonthelighterside.com/2019/04/08/whole-30-for-writing-where-you-want-to-gain-not-lose/

LEGO Jesus

Easter is quickly approaching so if you have shopping to do to fill those baskets, you may want to consider purchasing Jesus. He’s available in LEGO form for the low price of $19.99, and with Amazon Prime, Jesus could be delivered to you in two days. He’ll be ready to turn water into wine, so be cautious about the age of the person who receives Jesus. While it’s fine to receive Jesus into your heart at any age, wine drinking should be for the responsible adult. I think Jesus would agree.

 

 

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This is Post #7 in the Ultimate Blog Challenge to post every day in April.

 

8 Comments
by Bonnie Anderson on April 7, 2019  •  Permalink
Posted in Holidays, shopping, Ultimate Blog Challenge
Tagged , , ,

Posted by Bonnie Anderson on April 7, 2019

https://lifeonthelighterside.com/2019/04/07/lego-jesus/

Lessons from my Orchid

Getting to the root of the problem: Are you too preoccupied with ugly roots to enjoy the beauty of the flower?

In January 2016 a Whole Foods opened near me, so I had to check it out. I had heard how expensive they were, but I also had heard how unique and beautiful the store was. I didn’t plan on buying anything, but you never know. It was a madhouse that day and I would have left empty-handed except for the orchids. Their grand-opening special was a beautiful potted Phalaenopsis orchid for $10.

I displayed it on my bathroom counter where it was very happy enjoying the morning sun. (Plant tip #1 – find a happy place for your plant and it will thank you.) The flowers greeted me every morning and they lasted a long time, much longer than any $10 bouquet I could have purchased. That’s my outlook on potted plants – if they give me at least a season of return and they never really thrive or bloom again, then that’s okay with me. It wasn’t a bad investment.

But this little guy is the little orchid that would and could and did. Here’s a picture of it today. It has looked like this for over a month. This is its third re-bloom and first double shoot. That’s amazing to me.

I like to look at this orchid face. It’s so cheery.

This weird root system supports the lovely plant.

A lesson from this beauty is that you can’t judge a plant by its root system. Its roots are messy and visible and they look like they need attention – not unlike myself after four weeks out from the hairdresser. Since I see this plant every day that it’s blooming, I really hardly notice the roots. I just look at the beautiful flowers. That is until I came home one day and discovered that a friend saw my plant and thought she would water it for me because the roots looked so dry. I tried to be nonchalant about this and told her that I had actually watered it that very morning. She couldn’t believe it and felt horrible. I told her no worries. I set it outside to help dry it out a little and reminded myself that, hey, it’s just a $10 plant.

Once a week I set this orchid in a couple of inches of water for 5 minutes – never watering it from the top. That’s it. Five minutes a week and this is what you get. Not only that, when the blooms fall off, I cut it back below a juicy knuckle (as my orchid-growing friend calls it) and set it outside in its outdoor happy place (remember I live in Florida), which gets some sun but not too much. I ignore it until it puts out another shoot. This has worked over the last three years. Nobody is more surprised than I am.

I’m sure I would have killed this by now if I tried to replant it to make those roots less conspicuous. The roots are part of its beauty. They’re weird-looking and provide a great contrast to the delicate-looking orchid. I have cut back some dead ones before (they look brown and papery), but that’s it.

I know you may be expecting some kind of humor here, but the funny thing is that people look at me as some kind of an orchid expert when the truth is I just ask questions, read labels, and moved the plant around until I found its happy place. Plants have them just like people do.

 

This is Post #6 of the Ultimate Blog Challenge to post every day in April.

10 Comments
by Bonnie Anderson on April 6, 2019  •  Permalink
Posted in Gardening, Ultimate Blog Challenge
Tagged , ,

Posted by Bonnie Anderson on April 6, 2019

https://lifeonthelighterside.com/2019/04/06/lessons-from-my-orchid/

Killer Toads Invade Florida

I have a love/hate relationship with things that hop. I like rabbits and bunnies, but the Easter Bunny at the mall is a little freaky. I think kangaroos are fascinating, though I never have encountered one in the wild; and I think I would be mildly terrified if I did. I like a good sock hop, even though my dancing skills are rusty. What I don’t like are frogs and toads. They give me the creeps. I never know where they are going to hop, and it always seems like they like to torture me and come my way. Yes, I think it’s personal.

So you can understand why I was attentive to a recent news story about killer toads. April showers may bring May flowers, but this year they are bringing killer toads to parts of Florida. We always welcome a lot of visitors during Spring Break, but these guys are definitely not helping our economy and their plan is to linger way past April.

It’s quite serious actually. They start out tiny, but they can grow to be a half pound. That’s a lot of toad. They were introduced to Florida to control insects in the sugarcane fields years ago, hence the name cane toad. Well, that didn’t work out too well as they are very poisonous. They can shut down the nervous system of a pet. The venom shoots from the back of their neck, so people need to be aware. The major outbreak is in the Palm Beach area where swarms of them are invading neighborhoods, but these toads are found all over Florida.

This is not the first amphibian that I have addressed on my blog. This post from six years ago covers many of our invasive species. So please, don’t pet the toads, frogs, or alligators (yes, I know this is a reptile but they do hang out in the same areas). You learn a lot of respect for nature down here.

photo

A large army of small cane toads, but they won’t stay small for long. Photo Credit: Fox 35 News

 

This is Post #5 of the Ultimate Blog Challenge to post every day in April.

8 Comments
by Bonnie Anderson on April 5, 2019  •  Permalink
Posted in Current Events, Florida Living, Ultimate Blog Challenge
Tagged , , ,

Posted by Bonnie Anderson on April 5, 2019

https://lifeonthelighterside.com/2019/04/05/killer-toads-invade-florida/

The Great Garbage Can Controversy

We made a very unexciting purchase recently – a purchase that we didn’t exactly agree on. It’s not like there was a huge discussion though. We bought a new a garbage can.

I thought our garbage cans were acceptable. I even asked the guy on the truck and he said he’d seen a worse. But Bob likes to replace things before they disintegrate, so he decided a new one was in order.

I really do appreciate Bob not waiting until things are dilapidated before replacing them. That was the same reasoning he used when he bought me my car, so I should just shut up about it. But I knew he would go off to work with a view of our garbage cans in his rear-view mirror, and I would be faced with the question: How does one throw away a garbage can?

It’s not like I could put one inside of the other. I already had the word from the garbage collectors, who are experts at such things, that ours was not necessarily garbage material. Even though the very name garbage can could be interpreted as such, but I digress.

So, I decided to listen and wait for the sound of the truck coming down the street. They usually collect around 10 in the morning, I’d just rush out and meet them. Of course, that day they came at 4 in the afternoon, so I spent most of my day jumping up and running to the door to see if they were coming. It was like I was a kid waiting for the ice-cream man. Finally, they came and the disposal of our trusty, old can was complete.

Shiny New Garbage Can – Isn’t it pretty?

But that opened up an entirely new situation. Every time I’d take the garbage out, I would put it in the remaining old can, the lesser of the two evils, which Bob kept. The new one was so nice and shiny. It didn’t even smell like garbage. It seemed wrong to treat it like it was any old garbage can. I wanted to keep it nice for as long as possible. I didn’t realize how weird this was until I went to throw garbage out and saw that Bob had placed the new can to the front and he had put garbage in it. Can you imagine a person doing such a thing? He had reduced the older, beat-up can to back-up.

I stood there staring. How could I let him throw trash in it? To treat it like garbage? I could not. I reached down and switched the bag to the old can. This went on for over a week until I finally confronted Bob about it. “Why are you putting garbage in that beautiful new can?”

“What are you saving it for? It’s a garbage can,” he said.

And it was. He filled it with too much garbage for me to switch to the other can. It was over. The garbage smell had arrived. Try as I may, I couldn’t save it.

I looked at him and said, “I just can’t keep anything nice around here.”

 

This is Day 4 of The Ultimate Blog Challenge

15 Comments
by Bonnie Anderson on April 4, 2019  •  Permalink
Posted in marriage, Ultimate Blog Challenge
Tagged , ,

Posted by Bonnie Anderson on April 4, 2019

https://lifeonthelighterside.com/2019/04/04/the-great-garbage-can-controversy/

Hello There!

Welcome to Day 2 of April, aka April 2. I am excited to be part of the Ultimate Blog Challenge during this month. That means 30 days, 30 posts. I’m hopeful to meet some new friends while continuing to put fresh content out to my regular folks. So, first off, thank you to my regular readers for keeping with me and encouraging me. It means a lot.

This is where I jumped ship (metaphorically, of course).

Secondly, I want to introduce myself to the Blogging Challenge people. I started blogging eight years ago, that was way back in 2011 (thought I’d do the math for you). The blog was basically the same type as it is now except it was named Ship Bound for Tarshish. It took me a couple of years to realize how weird that name was, not to mention how hard it was to spell, so I jumped ship and became Life on the Lighter Side.

I was motivated to write a humor blog because I was weary of the heaviness of the world getting all the attention. I wanted to offer something to lighten people’s load – a momentary laugh or encouragement, if you will, because there really are a lot of things out there that are funny, amusing, and uplifting. I wanted to keep looking up and encourage others to do the same.

Trying to remember to look up, even if it’s dark out

So, you can look at my blog as a bag full of feathers to tickle your funny bone with the occasional hot air balloon thrown in. (If you want to know more about me, you can click here.)

I had barely started blogging when this crazy thing called the Ultimate Blog Challenge was announced and my good friend and fellow blogger Debi Walter of The Romantic Vineyard fame encouraged me to do it. So, we both dove into the deep end of the pool and did it. We even accomplished all 30 posts and met some amazing people. Some of those folks we continue to be in contact with to this day.

I hope you’ll check back with me this month as I have a lot to share with you (I’ve been storing up). See you tomorrow.

 

 

This is Post #2 of the April Ultimate Blog Challenge.

18 Comments
by Bonnie Anderson on April 2, 2019  •  Permalink
Posted in Ultimate Blog Challenge, Writing
Tagged , , , ,

Posted by Bonnie Anderson on April 2, 2019

https://lifeonthelighterside.com/2019/04/02/hello-there-april/

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