I hate to admit this, but since I’ve been on maternity leave I watch waaaaay to much TV.  Now, I watched waaaaaay to much TV before, but this is getting ridiculous.  I can actually feel IQ points slipping away (good thing I was a super genius to begin with so I have a few to spare – hardy har har).  I figure there’s a couple of reasons why this has happened: a) I’ve been working full-time since I was 18 and have never in my life had so much time off and I haven’t figured out how to fill in the time and b) I have a beautiful baby who likes to eat too much when she breast feeds so to prevent her from throwing up all of her meals I feed her for shorter periods of time but more often.  As a result, I end up on the couch in front of the tube for most of the day.  The weather hasn’t helped.  We’ve only had two days since Lark was born where the weather was warm enough to take her outside for a walk. Needless to say I’m starting to get a little tiny bit o’ cabin fever.  All work and no play makes Alysia a dull girl.  What’s a girl to do?  Start a blog of course!  So, I thought I’d at least put some of this TV watching to use and provide a little break down of some shows that I watch.  My motto for the day is “I watch the crap so you don’t have to.”    

• Shows to watch to fall asleep to while the Baby Naps - Any news programming from 7am to 10am.  Although I watch Fox13 most of the time to catch the weather, sometimes I do alternate between the national shows like Good Morning America and The Today Show.  I’m couped up in my house and we’re in the middle of the worst recession since the Great Depression and I just had a baby.  The last thing I want to dwell on is the reality of the state of the world.  So I choose to use it as background noise to fall asleep to.  Sometimes I’m lucky and the fashion and cooking segments make it into my dreams.
• Daytime Talk Shows - Holy gravy boat Batman!  There are so many talk shows out there and only so many hours in a day!  So I only watch 3 sometimes 4 or 5.  Oprah & Dr Phil are my standards that I usually don’t miss unless KUTV channel 2 decides it needs to preempt them with college basketball (Puke!) or breaking news like a traffic jam or something.  Oprah is a quality program.  I particularly love her Friday shows this season where she has a panel of guests and they talk about what went down during the week.  Plus she actually provides useful information regularly like shows on aging, managing finances, being healthy, cooking, etc. Dr. Phil is not a quality program.  In fact, I can’t say that I really like Dr. Phil.  I find him self indulgent.  He has this need to involve himself with headlining stories, like the Britney Spears’ meltdown and now his favorite of late is “Octo-Mom.”  Does he really get involved because he thinks he can help, or because it’ll get his name out there and more people will watch his show?  Hmmm… methinks the latter.  And any informational programs he may have, his ulterior motive is to sell either his own books or his friends books.  Yet, I can’t help but watch.  It’s like a train wreck.  He bugs me, yet I must watch.  I’m not sure why.  I must enjoy being bugged.  If I had more hours to watch, Ellen would be on my must see list.  I haven’t seen a show of hers I didn’t enjoy.  I did catch the episode where she had her wife on the show.  They’re an incredibly cute couple.  Moving on… 
• Junk Food For The Brain - God I love Days of Our Lives!  This has been a staple of mine since I was a teen.  Well, there was a period in the 90s where I didn’t watch, but with the invention of DVRs, I rarely miss an episode.  Why oh why you ask?  Because the show doesn’t require a lot of brain power and after a long day of doing financials, office politics, etc. watching a show that I can just have on that doesn’t require any thinking is a beautiful thing.  And if you do happen to miss a month of episodes – never fear – you can pick up right where you were because they will still be in the midst of the same story line.  And it’s amazing how quickly the children age, nearly 5 times the normal rate!  For example, Sammi Brady had twins mid-2008.  These twins are now 3 years old and in preschool.  Wow!  But really, it’s a great show to wind down to from a long day of work. 
• Nighttime Talk Show - The Graham Norton Show on BBC America is by far the funniest talk show I’ve ever seen!  He’s had me laughing so hard, I’ve nearly peed my pants on several occasions!  I’m surprised no one has stolen his format here in the US.  Give it time and someone probably will, but I doubt they’ll be able to do it nearly as well as Graham Norton.  I particularly enjoy the segments where he takes audience members and puts them into embarrassing yet hysterical situations.  For example, on a re-run I saw this past week, one of his guests was Nigella Lawson.  He had a guy from the audience dress up like Nigella and make a dish as Nigella fed him directions.  One of the ingredients was a Swedish delicacy of rancid fish that Graham had shown a YouTube video of someone eating earlier in the show to illustrate how truly disgusting the fish was.  He had the audience member smell the fish, but he wasn’t mean enough to try to get him to eat it.  One of my favorites is on another show, Graham was having a little talent show and there was a guy who looked like an overweight office worker who did a really cool dance to the original James Bond theme.
• Guilty Pleasures - Most of what is on Bravo these days are complete guilty pleasures.  I can’t miss an episode of The Real Housewives of New York.  If you watched the latest episode this week (and if you haven’t, I strongly recommend it.  It has a highly entertaining cat fight), I’m on team Bethany.  Kelly is a complete narcissist who thinks she’s a bigger celebrity than she is. Oh, I could go on and on… Anyway… I love Top Chef, Project Runway (which is moving to Lifetime this summer, aka the “rape and abuse” channel as affectionately titled by my husband Martin – What the f&$* ???), and Millionaire Matchmaker.  But the best guilty pleasure of all, which also happens to be husband cringe inducing… America’s Next Top Model!  Ladies, if you’re wanting some downtime from your hubby… just turn on this gem and they will flee the room faster than you can say Tyra. But what’s not to love?  Fashion, makeup, catty model wannabes, Mr and Miss J… it’s all there, again what’s not to love?  I could have a new guilty pleasure if there are re-runs as I only caught the last two shows of the season:  RuPaul’s Drag Race on VH-1.  I love drag queens and I loved what I saw of RuPaul’s show. It’s a cross between America’s Next Top Model and Project Runway where at the end of the program the two drag queens who did the worst in the challenges have a lip sync-off.  How brilliant is that????  OH!  And I have to include VH1′s Rock Of Love with Bret Michaels.  Poor Bret, three seasons and still can’t find Miss Right.  I was really bummed when he broke up with Amber from last season since she seemed like a very well put together woman who had a brain and used it.  The show’s fun to watch, but I think Bret should find another avenue for finding true love, ‘cuz the women in the final 3 – I don’t see any of them working out.  Perhaps he’ll come to the same conclusion and it’ll be a shocking end to the season.
•  Reality TV - Right now, my favorite Reality TV shows are The Amazing Race, Survivor, and BBC America’s Last Restaurant Standing.  I missed the first few seasons of The Amazing Race, but now I’m hooked.  I think Martin would kick ass on Survivor, but I can’t talk him into trying out for the show.  And I love the premise of Last Restaurant Standing where a top chef, Raymond Blanc, gives several couples a restaurant to open and by giving each couple challenges and evaluating how well their restaurants perform in those challenges, he ultimately decides which business he’s going to keep open and become a business partner with.  I also like that the competitors don’t spend their time beating up or talking smack about the other competitors.  It’s a friendly competition which you don’t see very often anymore.     

Well, that’s all I’m going to say for now.  Believe me, there are many many shows I’m watching that I haven’t mentioned here.  But I only have a month left of maternity leave and thank goodness Lark is starting to become more alert and interactive, so a TV intervention or rehab will not be necessary.