SchlegelRock

OK, this is a request to you to tell me your favorite blogs that you read.  Currently I’m mostly reading friends sites and haven’t ventured out into the big wide blogging world.  That changed recently with Cake Wrecks (which has a hilarious one on there right now) and now with a couple of new sites.

The first one is another one from Clisty.  Keep ‘em coming please.  It’s thepioneerwoman.com  Now the name of this site turned me off at first but I thought I’d give it a try. It’s a really quaint, witty, hip site about a woman who lived in LA then fell in love with a rancher who she calls Marlboro Man and now lives on his cattle ranch.  She takes fabulous pictures and I haven’t checked it out but she has a whole recipe section too.  Clisty says it can get a little boring but I’ll check it out.

Then, Summer sent me a link to a company that makes greeting cards with “Mormon” sayings in them. lineuponlinecards.com  I hope they meant for these cards to be funny because they tickled me.  One of the ones that caught my attention was: “Wishing you ANOTHER YEAR to make the most of your PROBATIONARY STATE”.  I wish I knew what the makers motivation is.  How seriously they take themselves.  I definitely wouldn’t subscribe to this one but I might check in every once in a while to get a chuckle.

Summer also sent me, seriouslysoslessed.com.  It’s a spoof on Mormon mommy blogs.  When I first read it I was totally put off by it because I thought it was serious.  ”Modest bikinis!?”  But then I caught on.  Now I think it’s dang funny.  The nice thing is the site is sponsored so they currently have a pretty nice give away going on.  You should check it out.

Please send me links to your favorite blogs.  I’m having so much fun extending my blogging circle.

I don’t know what dance style this one is I just know the song got me.  ”You cut me open.  And I keep bleeding, keep, keep bleeding love.”  Man, how incredibly raw and visual is that?  It’s a wife who doesn’t want her husband to go off to work again and in the end he actually takes her beating heart out of her chest and leaves.  It’s so sad to watch but beautifully done.

Sorry for the poor video quality.  I searched and searched for a good one and this is the best I found.

Well, this whole experience didn’t start out as a makeover but it ended as one.  So let me give you a brief history here on my weight loss.  You’ve all probably been wondering how I’ve done it so here goes.  First I was on so much medication that my body totally shut down and I wasn’t able to eat.  Then once I was able to eat I was in the habit of not eating so I didn’t.  I’m totally serious when I say I very rarely get hungry.  And when I do get hungry I just get cranky.  I still have no draw to actual food.  I’m kind of OK with all of this to be honest.  It doesn’t really bother me that I don’t eat.  I know it’s not healthy but I seem to be doing fine right now so I’m good.  Before anyone gets too alarmed, I do eat,

 just not very much.  On top of that, I increased my activity level by running and recently biking.  I don’t count swimming yet because I don’t do it consistently and I’m still scared to get in the water.  So all told, I went from 187 lbs to 140ish (I haven’t weighed myself in about 4 months).  Pretty cool, huh.  I’m happy with the results.  So that is a size 14 to a size 6.  It’s hard to believe that I’m a size 6.  When I try on clothes I always take an 8 with me just in case.

So that was the first step the rest of it happened just within the last week.  I have been wearing an old, saggy, too big bra.  Oh, this thing was awful.  Just disgusting and misshapen and horrible.  So I decided to go bra shopping on one of my free days and got the best makeover money can buy.  Turns out I went from a 38 GG (that’s right GG, as in Ginormous Gazongas) to a very manageable 34 D.  How spectacular is that?  My new bras lift me up and give me the most beautiful cleavage I’ve ever seen.  Thank your lucky stars I didn’t take a picture to show you.  The girls look that good.  Drop Scott to the floor good.  Oh yeah.  That’s how Alisa got her groove back.  All that from Macy’s.  Thank you Maidenform.

Then, Reul Parent called and asked me to give a talk on Sunday.  You know what happened then?  Scott said, “You need a new outfit, don’t you?”  Uh, yeah, I most certainly do.  So I spent my next free day at Target shopping for a new outfit.  I got a cute one including shoes and brought it home to show to Scott.

You’ll never guess what happened then.  Scott said something to the effect of, “Alisa, If you’re going to buy nice clothes I’d rather you didn’t buy them at Target.”  He actually told me to go to JCrew and buy a skirt and then get some better shoes.  So I got a skirt from JCrew and a really cute pair of shoes from Nordstroms.  Someone pinch me.  Is this actually happening?  Now I still have to give the talk on Sunday, but I’m gonna look wicked hot doing it.

Thanks Scott.

Tru and I were walking home from the bus the other day and he all of a sudden got very animated and was asking me to stop.  I was totally perplexed and asked him why.  He said, “I want to climb that pole.”  Oh.  My first instinct was to tell him no (Pretty sad huh?  No is always my first instinct.).  Then I thought, “What the heck.”  So we stopped and Tru climbed the Stop Sign down by his bus stop.  He got almost to the top but started to slip when I finally got my phone out to take a picture.  Thank goodness we stopped.  He was thrilled and I was thrilled not only to watch him do something so cool but to see him so happy.

Then, no kidding, we got in the car and in front of me the car had a sticker on it that said “Cullen College of Engineering.”  Wasn’t I just asking you the other day if I would ever see a sticker that reminded me of Edward?  Now I know it should say College of Medicine but what if it’s Jasper’s school?  Who’s to say Jasper doesn’t acquire and affinity for engineering?  The bottom line is, I am ridiculous enough that this made me happy. (The Cullen’s are the good vampires from the Twilight series.)

And just now Truman ran out to the living room and said, “Mom, you’ve got to see this.  It’s so silly.”  So I went in to the bedroom with him where he was watching Mythbusters and he showed me a clip from the intro to the show where Adam says, “I’m making a rocket out of meat!”  Tru was so excited he said, “A rocket out of meat!”  He thought that was fabulous.  He came out again and asked me if we could try it.  I was sad to squash his dreams but I told him probably not.  Unless the Scouts has it as one of their activities, hint, hint, I really doubt I am going to personally involved in that project.  And that’s not for years to come.

Anyway, just a few things that made me happy recently.

I’m really sorry for the late notice on this one.  I seriously didn’t think anything new was going to be on this early.  Thank goodness it’s already booked on Tivo or I might have missed it tonight.  Terminator is one of my favorite shows from last season.  I’ve only watched the Terminator and Terminator III movies so I’m not totally versed in the Terminator universe but  I think the show sets place around the time of Terminator II.  John Connor is about 16 and not only has a robot (or whatever they call them) come back to kill him, a smoking hot robot has come back to save him.

Now, this warning is not for those of you who gave me a hard time about my Dark Knight warning.  It’s not for you.  It’s for those of you that have trouble with violence or suspense or any kind of conflict.  This show is not for you.  The whole show is based around conflict and struggle and blowing things up.  That’s why I like it.  It fills a deep need inside me to see things blow up or get pummeled.  So if you don’t want to watch it maybe your husband would.  I would definitely suggest this to any guy.

On a very different note, I watched Hole in the Wall last night and was very bored.  Same thing happened with I Survived a Japanese Gameshow.  Just didn’t do it for me.  I’ll stick with Wipeout.  My kids did enjoy it though so you might want to get your kids hooked on it.  I’ll definitely Tivo it for my kids.

Just wanted to give a heads up that tomorrow (Tuesday) night there will be two new episodes of Wipeout back to back starting at 8 on ABC.  I can’t wait!  They’ve got some new events that look like a blast to watch.  To see my favorite contestant so far check here.  As always, “Good night and big balls.”

We headed over to the Schlegel’s on Saturday to wash the fast car.  All of a sudden I looked up and Tru had taken his shirt off just like Scott.  Without asking or anything.  If it’s good enough for Dad, it’s good enough for him apparently.  The funny thing is Tru looks just like Scott so it’s silly to me that he would be the one to do it.  Like it’s not enough to look like him, he’s got to be like him also.  The other two left their shirts on.  They didn’t even seem to notice the shirt off theme that was running around.

Stephenie Meyer posted her Breaking Dawn Q&A.  It’s really fun to read.  She explains why she chose the name Renesmee and why vampires can/cannot get pregnant, etc.  I loved reading it.  It gave me some great insight into her thinking.  Did you take anything away from it?

So when I sat down on Tuesday and wrote about Oli going to school I was a little lonely but totally in control of myself. That started to change when I picked him up from school and he was totally distraught. He looked like he had been tortured for 2 1/2 hours rather than playing with new friends. I asked him if he had fun and he said, “No.” We talked about going back to school on Tuesday and he said he didn’t want to go. He spent the rest of the day in between pouting and throwing fits. It totally threw me for a loop. Majorly catching me off guard. I felt like I had made a terrible mistake sending him to school. My poor baby!

Well, that set me up for panic attacks. I made it all the way until 7pm before the first one hit. Luckily (or unluckily), I have a lot of practice dealing with panic attacks. So I sat on my bed and let the waves of panic wash over me. I can deal with the physical symptoms of a panic attack pretty well. For me, that’s the easy part. The hard part is when Satan jumps in and tries to get me to hurt myself. What a jerk. Totally kicking me when I’m down. Telling me, “This will never end. You’re never going to get better. You’re going to feel like this for the rest of your life so you might as well end it now. Scott’s better off without you anyway. You just bring sorrow and pain to him. Someone else would treat him much better than you possibly can. They could take care of your kids better too. They wouldn’t have to deal with all of your episodes. etc, etc.” He just goes on and on until I feel like I’m losing my mind because there’s a really stupid, gullible part of me that believes him. Then on the other hand Scott has told me before that he would lose it if anything happened to me. And I think of my kids and what it would feel like to grow up with a mother who killed herself. How it would give them an opening I would never want them to consider. The icing on the panic cake is that I have flashbacks to my hospitalization when I have an attack. It makes me want to vomit how real it feels. In the end, I win. But not without suffering a great deal.

So I’m sitting in my bed having my third panic attack and I lose it and call my mom to come sit with me. I don’t know if it was just having her in the house, or what, but I didn’t have another panic attack after she got here. Thank goodness. I felt really fragile all day Wednesday but in control. I even made it out to the bakery to get myself a pick me up. There’s nothing like chocolaty baked goods to help ease the pain.

Now we made it to Thursday and Oli still didn’t want to go to school. He went though. I talked to his teacher when I picked him up and she said he had a great day and was shocked when I told her he was reluctant to go to school. That’s a huge relief. It makes me think that given a few more weeks Oli will be a pro at going to school. Then I wont have to feel guilty about sending him and enjoying my time to myself. And truth be told this is why we wanted to send him to school at 3 in the first place. We had a feeling he’d have a hard time with it. Which is silly because it totally caught me off guard when he did. I know, I’m ridiculous. But what would you do without me writing about my ludicrous experiences? Seriously, what would you do?

This dance is from my second favorite choreographer Sonja Tayeh.  She was brand new to the series this last season.  This is a battle of the sexes.  Very sexy.  Love Courney’s look.  They did a great job with the costume and hair.  Do you like this one?

If you know what that stands for this post is for you.  In my lonely state this morning I turned on The View to keep me company and lo and behold there was the whole New Kids on the Block crew.  They’re together again!!!  Oh happy day.  Now unfortunately for me I’m not a NKOTB fan.  But I assumed some of you were, so I wanted to share the happy news with you.  Of course, I’m totally out of the loop on all things musical so you may have known this for a long time now.  Apparently there’s a new album, The Block (you can buy it on iTunes).  If you want, you can go to their site and see the video for their new song Single.  You can also check out their tour dates.  That’s right ladies, they’re going on tour!!

Personally, I don’t think any of them have aged well and I’m not sure anything fabulous is going to come of this, but I’ve been wrong before.  So if you’re a NKOTB fan go support your boys.  They need you.  Then let me know what you think about their new album or the reunion or the tour.  Just let me know what you think.  I’m dying to hear a fans perspective.

And I know I’m posting right on top of the kids again.  I just can’t help myself, I get so excited, so make sure you look below at Oli’s first day of preschool.

Well, it actually happened.  Oli is in school and I’m sitting in a deathly silent house all by myself.  I’m ashamed to say, I’m a little lonely.  I’m sure I’ll get over that though.  This is supposed to be my workout time but I’m obviously squandering it on less strenuous activities.  Oli was excited about school until this morning.  He kept saying he didn’t want to go because “We’re going to do bad things at school.”  What does that mean?  I don’t know.  He wouldn’t explain.  Then he didn’t want to go because we didn’t buy him new school shoes like the other boys.  Whoops.  Kind of dropped the ball on that one.  It must be confusing for him to see the kids in their uniforms and new shoes and not think he needs the same.

Scott stayed home to take him to school with me and it was just so weird.  He’s my baby.  He’s not even four yet.  The kids been running around the house the last week making baby noises and totally reverting about a year.  The nice thing is, I totally trust the teachers and the school that he’s going to.  We started there with Max and except for a few minor run ins with the office staff we’ve had a great experience with them.  The main thing is, the kids have had a great experience with them.  Not one complaint from either of the older two.  Not one.  They loved their teachers and going to school.

So in case you’re wondering, he’s going to Community Preschool.  I would highly recommend it.

OK, if you know me really well you know that I L-O-V-E Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  Buffy is the ultimate fighting machine.  She’s surrounded by a group of friends affectionately known as the Scooby Gang.  I watched the entire series last year and loved it from start to finish.  I just threw it on Netflix and watched it while I ran on the treadmill.  There were some days when I was so caught up in it I’d watch several episodes at a time.  Before you gasp and think how horrible that is, you think about when you get caught up in a great book and all of a sudden a couple of hours go by.  I know you’re guilty of it too.  And Buffy is as good as any book.  I’m thinking that when all the current shows go in to reruns again I’ll start Buffy over. 

I’ll let you know if I decide to and we can have Buffy nights together.  I know you’re skeptical but give it a chance.  The writing for the show is amazing and has really quick wit and banter.  And even though there are a lot of demons and living dead it’s really not scary.

So what’s prompted this little post is that Scott found an article for me that a Buffy animated series may be in the works some day.  It just reminded me how much I love Buffy and how I wish I had been in on all the hype back when it originally aired.  Did any of you watch Buffy back in the day?  Did you watch it together at someone’s house?  Did you want to be a slayer?  Did you have a crush on Spike?  Oh, I’m so jealous.

OK.  I’m giving you guys a full days notice on this one.  I just saw it advertised last night.  The idea is Tom Arnold narrates over scenes of couples getting married hard core redneck style.  There have been demolition derby weddings, greased pigs, ATV mattress tosses, etc.  My Big Redneck Wedding is a fabulous show.  Now they’ve taken it to the next level.  Here’s what CMT has to say:

One lucky redneck couple is in for the surprise of their life when Tom Arnold takes their redneck wedding plans and turns them into the Biggest Redneck Wedding Ever. As Elaine and Bruce plan their strictly-budgeted wedding near a Florida mud bog, Tom sneaks around town after them using his charm to rally the townsfolk to help make everything bigger, better and redder than ever. And when he learns they don’t have a minister, he even gets ordained online so he can perform the ceremony himself. From a gigantic beer can archway at the altar to a reception filled with redneck games, cooked critters and a mud themed tower of wedding cake, it truly is the craziest, the muddiest and the Biggest Redneck Wedding Ever.

I’m hooked.  I’ve got Tivo all set up (by the way I had trouble finding this.  It’s listed under CMT’s Biggest Redneck Wedding Ever.)  It’s on Saturday at 8pm on CMT.  Now if you don’t catch it Saturday, don’t worry.  CMT is replaying it every day at different times for the next week.  It would seem they’re a little desperate for shows, what do you think?

I have really high hopes for this show.  Really high hopes.  Tom Arnold is a really great host.  Very funny.  I’m a little worried though because the couple doesn’t look that redneck.  They’re totally posing in white, button up shirts.  That’s not redneck.  Where’s the camo?  And the mullet?  And the guns?  These people look like posers to me.  I guess I’ll just have to wait and see.  Check back into the comments in a few days and I’ll tell you what I thought of the show and you can tell me what you thought of it.

I wont give the full story but it looks like Midnight Sun (the book from Edward’s perspective) has been indefinitely put on hold because copies of it were leaked prematurely.  Stephenie Meyer has released a partial manuscript for Midnight Sun on her sight.  I haven’t seen it yet.  My computer wont open the file.  I need Scott’s help on this one so it may be a few days.  If you read it let me know what you think.  I’m really sad that this is happening.  I was really looking forward to the book.  Whine, whine, whine.  If I don’t get the file to open though with Scott’s help someone is going to have to let me camp out at their house and read it.  It’s a long one too.  So who wants a house guest?