I have a feeling that, if done properly, banging one’s head against the wall in frustration might just be an effective method for weight loss. I can’t tell you for certain whether that’s true or not since I’m still a bit too dizzy to actually read what the scale says. And, darn, my forehead hurts.

What’s brought all this on? Oh, perhaps it was the nearly two hours I spent today deleting spam from my InBox and all four blogs. Sure, I’ve got programs that are supposed to filter that stuff out so I don’t have to deal with it, but somehow the spammers always seem to figure out how to slip past them.

Why can’t The Powers That Be who make spam filters can’t figure out that a spammer determined to leave a comment promoting, say, hoodia can easily squeak past the filter by spelling it with two zeros instead of “O”s?

Meanwhile, having waded through all of the adult-variety spam, my skin is crawling. Seriously, I thought I was somewhat twisted, and I do have an admittedly dark side. But compared to some of the crap the spammers are promoting these days, I look like an angel!

If there’s one flavor I could never live without, it’s got to be garlic. I use it a lot, and I do mean a lot. But anyone stepping into my kitchen would know that — even if their nose didn’t tell them — by the twin pair of garlic-shaped sconces flanking the 6 foot garlic braid hanging on my wall. I love the stuff.

Between the walnut pate that I’ve been eating for lunch lately and the flourless chicken picatta I made for dinner last night, it’s a wonder I don’t positively reek of it. Maybe I do and just don’t know it. But if that’s the case then my family does, too, so who cares?

Turns out, garlic is an amazing cancer-fighter, thanks to its ability to cause cells to emit hydrogen sulfide which acts as an anti-oxidant and increases blood flow.

Science suggests that most of us aren’t getting the most out of the garlic we use, though. To maximize its benefits, one doctor recommends keeping garlic at room temperature then letting it sit for 15 minutes between crushing (or mincing or whatever) and use i a recipe.

But how much is enough? Research indicates a minimum of 5 cloves a day, which might sound like a lot but is easy enough to accomplish if you put it in every meal. (I go through around 9 cloves per day in my cooking.)

So here’s my low-cal, flourless chicken picatta recipe to help get you started!

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My fingers resemble Vienna sausages, swollen round little pink things that refuse to type without misspellings. My eyes feel like I’m peering through a big glob of Vaseline on my contact lenses, but even when I switched to glasses the haze didn’t disappear. All day long I’ve felt like I’ve had a hangover, although I only had half a hot buttered rum last night before deciding I was too tired to bother finishing it. I was in bed by 10 p.m. but feel like I haven’t slept in days.

In other words, I did not want to exercise, but I did it anyway.

Oh, I didn’t do anything strenuous, probably not even enough to appease the fitness police much less my physician. I spent 10 minutes doing stretches and yoga, and another 15 doing squats, lunges, crunches and working with hand weights. After that, I stretched some more because it felt surprisingly good.

Then I napped.

Ok, I’m no doctor, but it seems to me that something more than Motrin is called for if I need a nap by 9:30 in the morning. Now here it is, 3:30 in the afternoon, and I’m wondering whether I have time to take another one before I make dinner.

I. Feel. Like. Crap.

Cooking is one of my favorite ways to unwind, which probably explains why I find it so very difficult to diet. After all, chopping vegetables for a salad just isn’t as rewarding as, say, putting together individual Beef Wellingtons with a side of mashed red potatoes with garlic and Parmesan.

Oh, man, I just made myself hungry.

As far as my husband’s concerned, if it’s not red meat it’s barely worth sitting down for. He’d gladly live off PB&J sandwiches rather than actually eat chicken and fish for an entire week, and I can pretty much count on one hand the number of times he’s eaten a salad in the nine years we’ve been married.

So when I told him a while back that I planned to cut all fried food, gluten and sugar out of our diets — while bringing our fruit- and vegetable-intake up to the recommended levels — he immediately went out and stocked up on ready-made “man meals”. You know the kind: congealed, gravy-topped blobs of stuff that calls itself meat and sits nestled in a compartment that ensures it will never touch the tiny portion of limp vegetables that come along with it.

Come dinnertime, he’ll pop a couple of those into our microwave ovens then sit nibbling chips and dip while they cook.

I, meanwhile, find myself standing in the kitchen trying to come up with a way to make yet another salad somehow interesting, then eventually abandon the effort because I’m so darned hungry. While I’m nibbling on a boring green salad spritzed with a low-fat dressing, he sits down next to me and starts sucking down something claiming to be Salisbury Steak which he washes down by drinking egg nog directly out of the carton.

The man has lost nine pounds in the past two weeks eating this way. Nine pounds.

Me? I’ve gained one. Eating salads. How on earth did that happen?

But I’m not angry. Nah, I’m not even bitter. As far as I’m concerned, the more weight he loses, the smaller the grave I’ll have to dig.

When I told my husband that I’d been diagnosed with fibromyalgia, his first reaction was “Oh, so in other words they STILL don’t know what’s wrong with you.” So I sat him down in front of the computer and pointed him to the Mayo Clinic page on it so he could find out a bit more.

I probably should have known better than to actually expect him to read anything, because not 15 minutes later he walked up and said, “OK, so the doctor thinks you’ve got this but she can’t fix it. That sucks. What’s for dinner?”

See, in my husband’s way of thinking if something can’t be fixed — which, when it comes to medical conditions, means actually cured — then it’s not really a problem. Because, as we all know, problems can be solved and therefore something unsolvable isn’t really a problem.

Bless his heart.

Needless to say, I did NOT react well to this attitude. I’ve been fuming, as a matter of fact. Not that he’d know it. I haven’t given him the silent treatment and I’ve still been keeping up with the cooking, dishes and laundry. I’ve just been P.O.’d while doing it but don’t have the energy to deal with a big argument right now.

Today he called from work to tell me that he’s been thinking about how awful I’ve been feeling lately, so he’s bringing me home a “surprise”. Naturally, I started trying to imagine what on earth it could be. Ice cream? No, he knows I’m not a huge fan. Vodka? Wait, I’ve got plenty of that in the house. Maybe he’s going for an all-out splurge and finally picked up the Wii I’ve been wanting for a year now.

Silly me.

He walked in the door with a mostly empty bag from Wal-Mart in his hand, at which point I knew I probably should’ve kept my hopes small. And what did he bring me? Aspirin. A big bottle of aspirin.

“Maybe this will help with the pain,” he suggested with a huge, cat-that-ate-the-canary grin on his face like I should fall down on my knees then and there and praise him for having gone to such magnificent lengths. (It was very much like the time he said he’d found something to help with my year-round allergy problems and came home bearing a lint b gone roller.)

But, really, I don’t want to discourage his first baby steps at being supportive over all of this, so I hugged him and thanked him for thinking of me.

Then I decided tonight I’m doing exactly what the directions on the back of the aspirin bottle advise: I’m taking two then keeping away from small children.

Tonight, my husband’s on Parenting Duty. Me? I’m going to slip into a hot bath with a cold martini and staying in there as long as our water heater can hold out.

I woke up this morning determined to follow my doctor’s advice and get in 30 minutes of exercise. Unfortunately, after a short walk to the mailboxes by my subdivision’s entrance — a mere two blocks — I wound up returning home so tired that I could barely keep my eyes open during homeschool.

Then I started getting a migraine but managed to forestall that by putting a hot towel on my forehead and a bag of frozen peas on the back of my neck. Weird, I know, but it worked — possibly because I caught it early enough.

Just in time for my stomach to start acting up in ways that kept me shut in the bathroom for darn near an entire hour.

I swear, that’s one trifecta I hope not to hit ever, EVER again.

As much as I love winter since everyone looks a bit Chubby under multiple layers of clothing, I absolutely hate winter skin. The dryness, the flaking, the itch.

It’s not for lack of drinking water. I easily gulp 10 8-oz. glasses of liquids a day.

It’s not for lack of moisturizing either: for years I’ve been in the habit of slathering on lotion the instant I towel off after a shower. I’ve been using Dove or St. Ives (whichever is priced lowest at the drug or grocery store), and wondered for a while if maybe I ought to try one of the fancier product lines like Jane Iredale.

Yesterday I remembered hearing an interview with Sophia Lauren, a legendary beauty, who praised the virtues of olive oil as a moisturizer. Hey, if if it’s good enough for the woman considered by many to be the world’s greatest natural beauty, who am I to doubt its success?

Of course, it felt a bit strange slathering a cooking oil all over my body after my shower, particularly since my last memory of using EVOO involved slathering it on our Thanksgiving turkey (whose skin, incidentally, was just as white and riddled with goosebumps as mine was while standing there in my chilly bathroom). Then again, that turkey turned out quite lovely and moist, and my husband and son absolutely adored its skin.

Know what? It worked! I spent an itch-free night and woke up this morning to find my skin still soft and supple. Granted, I’ve got a craving for pasta carbonara going on right now, but I don’t have dry, flaky skin.

For years now, my doctor and I have been sporadically trying to pinpoint the reason for my fatigue, aches and pains. I say “sporadically” because my pain itself isn’t a constant: there are days when even brushing my teeth seems like a Herculean task, and weeks when so full of energy my body practically vibrates.

Naturally, I only call the doctor when I’m in quite a bit of pain but she rarely has an appointment available until the following day. Inevitably, I’ll wake up the next morning pain-free. Isn’t that the way things always seem to work, just like how an awful hairstyle will suddenly look perfect on the very day you’re seeing the stylist to get it cut again?

Finally, lacking all other explanation, my doctor has announced last week that I have fibromyalgia, which I’m pretty certain is Latin for “We don’t know but we know it bothers you.”

Her recommendation? Try a memory foam mattress to help ensure a more comfortable, better night’s rest, and exercise.

Exercise when every bone, joint and muscle in my body hurts? When walking the short distance between my bed and the bathroom produces a long stream of grunts and groans? When I have to actually rest up before making the bed so I don’t just climb back into it?

Great. Just freaking great.

Of course, I’m fully aware that recent studies have shown that exercise reduces symptoms of fibromyalgia, but being told that the best way to combat pain and fatigue is to do something that ordinarily produces more pain and fatigue seems, well, counter-intuitive.

I want drugs, dammit, and not just Tylenol (which I can’t take due to liver problems, anyway). I want bona fide 21st century pharmaceuticals that will wrap my pain receptors in a nice, hazy narcotic-induced blanket of indifference, freeing me of the wincing agony that accompanies every movement when I’m having a flareup.

I explained this in detail, with rather more colorful language, to my doctor. She finally agreed that, yes, she’ll prescribe me something — she didn’t say what — just as soon as I’ve tried exercising daily for 30 straight days to see if that has any positive effect on my pain. And I, being in the midst of one of the worse flareups I’ve experienced in quite some time, am actually thinking about following her direction and working some moderate exercise into life on a daily basis.

I think I might just begin with kicking her ass, then seeing what I feel up to doing after that.

While I was sleeping last night, the Mess Fairies must have raced through our house. Or maybe it was the cats chasing each other. Hard to say.

Regardless, I woke to find my sofa throw blankets strewn across the living room floor, vases knocked over, shredded newspaper throughout the kitchen, and a box of my son’s favorite toys spilled all down the staircase.

Naturally, no one else was interested in helping me pick up the mess, so I wound up spending a good 30 minutes first thing this morning trying to set the house straight.

The good news? I’m pleased to say that, chubby or not, I can still lean over and reach the floor without bending my knees.

The bad news? After repeating that, oh, five or six dozen times, I now feel like my midsection’s been caught in a vise clamp. Talk about an abdominal workout!

I may have to start paying the Mess Fairies (or the cats) to do that on a daily basis until my tummy’s finally flat again.

I’d been doing so good avoiding wheat and dairy products this past week. I’d really felt some benefits, too: less congestion, no stomach problems, and I’d even lost a pound.

Saturday morning, I woke up with a lovely sore throat and a bad case of laryngitis. I get it every winter and spring — it must have something to do with the change of seasons. Needless to say, I didn’t feel up to all of the scrubbing, peeling, and chopping involved with making sure 90% of my daily food intake is raw grains, fruits or vegetables.

So we ordered pizza, and it was wonderful. Cheesy, saucy and loaded with pepperoni. (Yes, that means I ate meat, too.)

Today? I’m so bloated that my fingers are puffed above and below my diamond rings, making my hands look cartoonish. My skin’s broken out, and my stomach feels like I’m carrying a bowling ball around in there.

The only upside to this, as far as my husband’s concerned, is that I still have laryngitis, which means he doesn’t have to listen to me whining about how miserable I feel. Silly man: he forgets I can still text message and email him all about it.