Pay to post?

I used to be a voracious message board reader and poster, for years I even "worked" off my AOL costs being a message board host.  These days, I don't seem to bother with message boards, and when I do peruse them, I tend to be a very sporadic reader.  I've been looking for a weight-loss surgery community message/bulletin board for a while, that was not on Obesity Help.

Just now, I found one.

"an online compassion driven social space evoking feelings of comfort, understanding, knowledge, warmth, acceptance, trust and happiness for those who have undergone weight loss surgery or those struggling with weight control."

I signed right up, logged in, and got this message:

"Please Purchase a Subscriptions Package: We require that you purchase a subscriptions package before you are granted full access to this forum."

Well, excuse me.  Granted I *was given a "Free Seven Day Trial!," I did not get access to the forums and got an error message because I refused to choose a PayPal payment or "payment in the mail."

"Sorry, an error occurred. If you are unsure on how to use a feature, or don't know why you got this error message, try looking through the help files for more information.  The error returned was: You did not select a payment method. Please go back and select one before continuing."

Apparently, I missed the initial page, where this is stated.  The reasoning behind the fee?  No ads.  So, the members pay $5.00 or more (on the YEAR plan which is the cheapest, $60.00) a month to use a message board without advertisements.  (That's a lot more than the two cents a day from a Google Adsense hit - I suppose.)  I wonder how many registered members are on that board - two hundred - and at at least $5.00 a month?  For a lay-person running a gastric bypass support site - that's a nice chunk of change, I suppose.  Of course it's not the only source of income from that site - she's got other ways to pay her, like an online boutique - but that's a legit storefront, you're getting a product.

Okay, so I guess there's something missing out there if my peers are paying someone to support them on a message board.  Although I'm off to look right now - does anyone know of other weight loss surgery message board communities run by peers, specifically that do not charge a fee?  Let me know - you can email me:  [email protected].

Otherwise, I'm off to look for free message board hosting, right?  ::sigh::

Celebrity Gastric Bypass

I just found this little bit of gossip - while many of these folks have had WLS - I thought for sure Kirstie Alley was all Jenny's gal, no?

Gastric Bypass Among Celebrities

The reported high risks of the surgery and drastic results has brought a large amount of public scrutiny and interest in the procedure. A number of high profile individuals have also brought publicity to the procedure. Some of the more noteable patients of the surgery include:
*Randy Jackson
*Diego Maradona
*John Popper
*Anne Rice
*Al Roker
*Roseanne
*Anna Nicole Smith (Rumored)
*Carnie Wilson
*Star Jones Reynolds (Rumored)
*Kirstie Alley
*William Moody (Paul Bearer)
*Rep. J. D. Hayworth (R-AZ)

Low-Carb? Sure.

Following a path from my Statcounter, I found my face on Livin' La Vida Low-Carb, Jimmy Moore's blog that touts the low-carb lifestyle as he lost a bunch of weight that way.  While in general I would agree with most of the low-carb lifestyle - as I lost my weight whilst eating "mostly" low-carb, I feel insanely guilty seeing my face on a post over there right about now.  From Livin' La Vida Low-Carb:

"But is there a "better" way to eat during post-WLS to maximize your weight loss and help you maintain long afterwards? Well, the answer to that question was introduced to me the first time I met my friend and fellow blogger.....


Beth is a fun-loving, fat-no-more woman excited about life after WLS

Beth and her husband lost (get this!) over 300 pounds after they both decided they wanted to lose weight for the sake of their health as they planned to start having a family in the future (and congratulations are in order to the ..... as they are expecting a child in mid-October -- it might even be a Halloween spook like my brother Nathan was! HA!). You can read all about Beth's amazing weight loss journey by visiting her Melting Mama blog. What you will find there is a woman who is not only committed to her weight loss, but understands the importance of livin' la vida low-carb to keep her weight off.

YOU HEARD ME RIGHT -- the BEST diet for anyone to be on after they have had WLS is LOW-CARB! Period. End of story. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. While I don't have any personal experience with WLS since I lost my weight completely naturally with the Atkins diet, I do have quite a few readers at my blog who have had the surgery and say the doctors are very much in favor of a low-carb nutritional approach."

Jimmy, dude.  I fear that as I read your post, I was eating pretzel sticks.

I'll reinterate, I'm not dieting right now, since I'm carrying a fetal suckage that seems to be growing faster than my ass is widening with eating said pretzel sticks.  I'm on hiatus, and won't be following any sort of diet until this baby arrives.  Then, I'll combine the benefit of nursing (an immediate usage of about 500 calories a day!) and a moderately lower-carb diet.

As for now,  if it doesn't make me puke, I eat it.  This will end, in approximately 3 months 18 days and 15 hours.   I'm not counting.

Also,  for having weight loss surgery, let me also reinterate that I Did Not Choose It to have babies.  IF anything, I was hoping to become less, uhh, fertile.  I already had half a scout troop at home, see?  My motivation for having the procedure was to get healthy to raise the family - and be a lot more active with them, and to stop a very obvious familial cycle of obesity.

Fat, Fetus and Frappucino.

There's been a big shake up here.  I've recently switched computers AND I'm no longer using AOHell.  With the loss of AOL, I've lost my ginormous list of "favorites" that I've become so accustomed to using every day.  While AOL was aiight, (I mean, we did have it for, uh, more than six years) I don't like paying for it so much.  I was receiving free AOL, like Food Stamps for the Internet!  I only got a freebie plan because I used to host message boards back in the AOL Communities before they went all web-based and killed us off.  They continued my free plan for quite a while - it's been at least two years now, but this month, I got a big flaming message about "An Issue With Your Bill."  AOL tried to bill a credit/debit card from probably six years ago, I suppose the fact that we change that kind of thing all the time, it was no good probably five years ago.  Now we're in the world of random email and whatnot, and it's hard to get used to.  I hate admitting this, but I miss my AOL.  I don't have nearly any email anymore besides spam - and I no likey the Verizon set up or the Yahoo.  I don't know what I'll settle on using, but one thing is for freaking sure.  I Heart Having My Own Computer.  I am now portable (I tried out my wireless capability today, like, whoa) - AND - I can instant message my husband from the same damn couch.  ::insert eyeroll::

Anyway - I haven't been checking my Statcounter site lately - so I just dug it up and couldn't remember the password.  I figured it out, and checked on the keyword hits.  No doubt, the number one reason y'all come here is for a Starbucks Frappucino, but, coming in a close second:  Fetus Pictures AND morbid obese conception tips. 

So, to help you:  Here's some fetus pictures.  And more:  Fetus.  But, Googling Fetus is not recommended.  Why?  Because you find things like THIS.

As for morbid obese conception tips?  My tip - have gastric bypass surgery, and try NOT to get pregnant afterwards.  Bam.  Pregnant.

Only because it makes me twitch.

But You Must Act Now.  Click on the link that resembles this in the right hand sidebar.  I want you to know I have nothing to do with WHAT shows up in those links.  Especially the ones that read like THIS:

"Buy the the only effecttive weitgh loss products Clenbuterol and Cytomel are most effective products, available without prescription."

Water on the brain.

I've been a bad blogger lately.  Being pregnant does things to you.  I'm starting to resemble Patrick from Spongebob Squarepants, and I don't mean just in body shape.  My brain has packed up and left the cranium.  I am now certain that this is nature's way of preparing you for parenting.  A few months ago, all I wanted to do is go to work, make money, move on.  Now, I have the irrrepressible urge to stay at home, cook food in a crockpot, clean the house, and, uhh, finish the laundry.  I absolutely loathe going to work.  I am miserable while there, and I've already become a burden to them, because I've already got restrictions on my working hours, and I'm quickly going down the squeaky wheel route since I may need more restrictions since I'm not feeling well.  My hours have been cut "back" to eight hour shifts - which translates to a typical day being 12:30-7:30pm.  This is actually harder than just doing the 9:30am-7:30pm, because now I'm physically doing more in a day than I was - since I've still got to get everyone to school, then I'm doing house-stuff until it's time to go.  I functioned so much better at my last job with the 7am start.  I'm a morning person.  I crash harshly by 3pm.  I'm asleep (at least in a sense) by 7pm, so you can see why the 7:30pm part is harder.  I've got to find an alternative way to make some money.  I can't *not* have any income, at least not right now.  If the husband got promoted or fortune fell out of the sky, it would be do-able.

I did get a proposal to write for a health/nutrition/vitamin blog, but not really for income, but it could help a wee bit with getting this blog paid for by more exposure and clicks.  I'll definitely give it a whirl - if not just to keep me from quitting blogging, because I'm really going to need this in a few months when I'm working hard to get BACK to my weight goal.

Suggestion box is open, girls.  What can a girl do to make some dough?  I'm an anti-salesperson, and pyramid schemes make me puke.  I'm good at unselling and finding typos.  I like working with a computer and staying home.  Oh, and my goal is to make enough money to cover the mortgage each month, even if I don't physically pay that bill with my income - it's just the "is it worth it?" ratio I have in my brain.