My back got to feeling better late last week, so I’m back to working out daily with my Wii Fit.

No, wait, let me be even more specific: I’m back to working out an hour per day for five days in a row now, thanks to my Wii Fit. And that doesn’t count the time I spend playing Raving Rabbids, one of the funniest games I’ve ever played, or the time I spend playing hardcore-yes-I’m-grunting tennis on Wii Sports.

You know how exercise is supposed to give you more energy? I’m still waiting for that part to kick in. I’m tired! Every morning when my alarm clock goes off, I am so tempted to hit the snooze button and go back to sleep. The only thing stopping me? My arms are too freakin’ sore to move quickly enough to reach the dang thing before that incessant buzzzzzing wakes up everyone else in the house. So, I drag myself out of bed, turn the alarm off, and groan as I shuffle to the bathroom.

Working out barefoot hurts!
First lesson learned — okay, second lesson, since my first one involved not getting too over zealous doing the hula hoop game — Crocs work just fine on the Wii Fit balance board. This was an important one, since my feet were killing me for the first week. Picture a large baking potato bouncing up and down repeatedly on two grains of brown rice and you’ll understand why. So, after weighing in on the balance board, I now slip on my Crocs for my workout. Ah, relief!

Avoid the Wii Wobbles — Wear a good bra!
Next lesson: a good sports bra is worth every penny you pay for it. Seriously. I tried exercising in my regular bra for the first few days and rubbed my right nipple raw in addition to stretching out the elastic on my shoulder straps. Two super-strength sports bras and one tin of Udder Cream later (yes, really, it’s good stuff!) and I’m no longer wincing when I step into cold air, if you know what I mean.

Yoga is NOT a substitute for stretching.
Stretching before the Wii Fit workout is imperative, even if you plan to start off with yoga! Now, despite being overweight, I’m a fairly limber person to start with. I can still do front splits with either leg leading, for instance, and as far as touching my toes… well, I can almost put my elbows on the floor. (Yes, my husband is appreciative of both skills, thanks for asking.)

But I’m also 41 years old, and certain parts of my body are definitely unused to bending, twisting and gyrating, so I’ve taken to stretching for 5 minutes or so before beginning my workout. I have little doubt that the lack of stretching is somewhat to blame for last week’s back injury. I also have little doubt that stretching is the primary reason why I’ve shaved my Wii Fit age from 47 when I first started (ugh) to 34.

Learn to love the jackknife.
My abdominal area is definitely in the most need of help. After 6 years of spending most of the day blogging, I’ve lost whatever abdominal and back strength I used to possess and it shows. Oh, I’ve done crunches and bicycles sporadically over the years, but even when going at them regularly I’ve seldom seen any improvement in the bulge beneath my belly button. Two weeks of doing the jackknife exercise twice daily (20 reps each time) has changed that. Yes, it hurts. But it hurts in a good way… and I am glad to be fitting into a size smaller jeans today because of it.

As an added benefit, the combination of the jackknife and torso twist strength-training exercises and yoga’s triangle pose is great for stimulating the body. (That’s yoga-speak for “you’re finally going to shit out that gum you swallowed in second grade.”) Yes, it’s possible that has something to do with the smaller-size jeans, but who am I to complain?

Don’t have a Wii or Wii Fit? Hurry — Amazon has them in stock!

• Nintendo Wii Console
• Wii Fit

That old saying “You can never be too rich or too thin” may be wrong after all. See, just as money doesn’t buy happiness, being thin doesn’t guarantee it, either. In fact, it appears that women are happiest with themselves and their lives when they’re size 14.

In a poll of 3,000 women, size 14s rated their general happiness higher than any other female shape, with a quarter saying they liked their appearance.

Almost half said they were completely happy with their career, while a third rated their love lives as the best possible.

Satisfaction levels for size 8s and size 16s were on par, while women size 6 were only slightly happier than women wearing a size 20. But unfortunately the survey doesn’t reveal the reasons why a size 14 woman would be happier than her more slender counterpart.

I can guess, though: size 14 women aren’t afraid of having a cookie or two; they’re simply smart enough not to eat the entire box.

Have you heard about Michelle Duggar, the Arkansas woman who just gave birth to her eighteenth baby?

Eighteen kids. Holy crap!

As my son hops, twists, stomps and races around the house this morning thanks to a “snow day”, I’m sitting here realizing that I’ve got over two more weeks of this non-stop noise now that his Christmas vacation has started early. It’s only 11 o’clock in the morning, but I’m already wishing for a Valium and a cocktail to calm my frazzled nerves.

Then I read about Michelle Duggar’s brood and imagine that noise, chaos and incessant demand for attention multiplied eighteen times. Talk about nerve-wrecking! Then again, perhaps that kind of stress explains why a woman who’s popped out that many kids doesn’t have the hips and abs of a woman who’s popped out two entire baseball teams.

Of course, I can’t begin to imagine how they can afford it, and I’m not talking simply about feeding that many mouths. Can you imagine what she must have to spend on incontinence products?!

Every time I think I’ve whittled my obligations down to ensure I’ll have time to exercise daily, every time I get the motivation up to actually diet, every time I rid the house of all fattening foods and temptations, something comes up to screw with my efforts.

A couple of months ago it was family health problems that meant I was pulling double-parenting duty, a situation which left me with little time and even less interest in exercising. Then it was a busted knee.

Now? It’s a cold. Or the flu. Or maybe it’s the plague. Whatever the hell it is, it’s got me laboring for breath like a mesothelioma patient while my temperature roller coasters from barely 97 to well over 102. Repeatedly. All freaking day long.

And, of course, I can’t remember whether I’m supposed to starve a cold or feed a fever — just as my body apparently can’t decide which it has. Which is fine, since I don’t have the slightest interest in food, anyway. All that hand-to-mouth action wears me out.

So, basically, I’ve been living on Nyquil all weekend long with the occasional supplement of hot tea, hot water with lemon and hot toddys when the Nyquil alone isn’t enough to knock me out. (Yes, that does happen.)

One would at least think all of this feverish sweating, followed by all of the teeth-rattling shaking when the chills set in, would be good for burning calories.

But have I lost weight? Oh, no. No, I have not.

Somehow, my manicure miraculously survived housecleaning and cooking two separate Thanksgiving dinners. Frankly, I was rather surprised since I’m notorious for chipping a nail at inopportune moments… like 15 minutes after the salon’s closed for the weekend, or three minutes before I’m due at an event where I’d hoped to look pulled together.

My husband — for whom nail maintenance consists of a monthly chewing — just couldn’t understand my smug gloating. In his mind, the time and money I spend getting my nails done is just a waste. “Why do women bother?” he asked.

So I explained to him that at some point in ancient history — shortly before my mother-in-law was born, I believe — lacquered nails on a woman were a sign of her husband’s financial prowess. If a man was wealthy, his wife could afford to keep her nails painted and hire servants to do all of the menial labor. Then, at some point, men decided they looked hot so women of all income levels began painting their nails.

Ditto with suntans. Pale skin was, for centuries, what distinguished well-heeled women from their menial laboring counterparts whose daily drudgery exposed them to harmful rays and, thus, turned their skins tan. A woman so wan she practically glowed? Why, that was a sign that her husband was wealthy enough to keep his woman pampered. Then, as with the lacquered nails, men decided that tans were hot so women of all income levels began tanning.

Heck, I told him, a woman carrying excess weight was historically considered attractive and proof of her husband’s affluence, too. Consider the ample endowments of Ruben’s plus-sized painting subjects. Extra amplitude on a woman signified that her husband could food — lots of food — to keep her fed, and also servants to perform work so she could keep that extra padding packed on.

“So,” my husband said, “what your saying is that between your nail appointments, your fear of direct sunlight and your never-ending efforts to lose weight you’re actually retro?”

“Exactly, though I prefer to think of it as vintage,” I told him. “But, you know, I’m only doing this to make you look good.”

Talk about an ego-booster! Today I ran into an acquaintance whom I hadn’t seen for a couple of months. Like me, she’s been struggling to lose weight, although her efforts consist mostly of whining about it in between bites of Ben & Jerry’s.

First thing she said was how envious she is of my 16-pound weight loss.

Second thing? She wanted to know if I’m taking diet pills, just starving myself or did I stumble onto some great diet secret.

Truth is, I have. It’s called Sensa, and I’ve been using it since early October.

What’s the trick? That’s the great thing: there isn’t one. You simply sprinkle it on your food, and that’s it. The taste-enhancers in the product trigger olfactory and appetite satiation quickly, which means you feel full on less food. And that, my friends, means you eat fewer calories. You know, like they’ve been telling us dieters to do all this time.

Stuff works.

Big time.

Ever since the day it came out, I’ve been begging my husband for a Wii. Oh, I know I could just go out and buy one on my own (assuming I can find one for sale), but I know that unless he agrees to the purchase he’ll never play it.

And I want him to. I really do. Because I want to kick his ass at boxing.

Not that I’d tell him that, mind you. No, I’m working the angle of, “Gee, honey, there are all sorts of fitness-oriented games coming out for the Wii. Think of how much fun you’d have watching me jump around doing them.” Which, because he knows me well, he translates to: “Gee, honey, c’mon. I really want to kick your ass at boxing.”

Which, come to think of it, might explain why we still have only a PlayStation. And why, no matter how much I beg, he will NOT play EyeToy Kinetic with me.

What with all of the women wearing Empire waist or baby doll tops these days, it’s getting hard to know who’s pregnant, who’s bloated from PMS, and who’s just making a fashion faux pas.

So one might think I’d know better than to ask a swollen-bellied woman standing next to me in the elevator, “When is your baby due?” But considering that she was wearing a top identical to one I’d worn while 9 months pregnant with The Big-Eyed Boy, and she was carrying a Tarjay shopping bag filled with crib bedding, I thought it was a fair question to ask.

Not surprisingly, she didn’t think so and let me know, in no uncertain terms, that she was not only fat but downright tired of people discriminating against her for it. “Women are supposed to have a womanly shape,” she practically screamed in my face.

And since I do not take kindly to being screamed at, much less by strangers, I couldn’t resist snapping back: “Of course they are. But it looks like you ATE a whole other woman to get a shape like that!”

Thank goodness I got off on the next floor.

For the past week or so, my knee has been a bit suicidal. I can tell this because the dang thing keeps getting hurt: first, when I tripped on our deck after what we’ll kindly describe as “one too many” cocktails. Again when I slid on our wet yard while trying to navigate downhill. The third time when the thing gave out from underneath me as I walked down the stairs. Then the clincher: Monday night when my husband opened a door that hit me in the backside and sent me sprawling… right onto my knee.

In other words, I’ve been in various stages of pain for days now. Self-medicating didn’t work since, as I pondered while sliding down the yard, it’s not such a smart thing to have a couple of cocktails to dull pain that had been caused by too many cocktails in the first place. Ice didn’t work. Even staying off of it didn’t work. So yesterday I broke down and went to the doctor because she, after all, has the good stuff.

The verdict: I’ve fractured my knee cap. We’re not sure which fall did it, but there’s no doubt that the thing’s fractured.

The prescription: some niiiiiiice pain killers, a directive to keep the thing elevated and iced, and a cane. Or crutches. My call.

Yesterday I gave the crutches a try. My husband, being the penny pincher that he is, suggested we just borrow some crutches from a friend of his. While that sounded like a good idea at the time, the fact is the man’s considerably taller than I am… and so are his crutches. So, in addition to having an aching knee, I also now have very sore armpits.

Today I opted for the cane and, while it works rather nicely if I need to change channels on the TV without a remote or tap my cat’s behind to keep myself amused, it does not help much when it comes to keeping weight off of my foot (and hence keeping my knee from hurting).

But that’s fine. Really it is. Because, as I mentioned, when it comes to pain relief my doctor has the gooooood stuff. And now, so do I!

While laying here on the floor of my office pondering the pain-relieving beauty that is Tylenol with Codeine, I couldn’t help noticing that J&J makes the stuff. I hadn’t realized that. Then again, when it comes to pain medications I’m typically in too big a hurry to take them to notice much about their manufacturing.

Anyway.

Did you know that in addition to making a variety of products we all use (Tylenol, Band-Aids, Baby wash, etc.) J&J is committed to protecting the environment? One area of particular interest is their efforts to minimize paper and packaging. While the company did completely eliminate PVC in its packaging, let’s face it: those regular bottles of Tylenol are STILL heinously over-packaged. Especially when you’re in pain.

Which, by the way, is another reason why I love the prescription stuff.

I’m back from a visit to my mother’s house in Texas where, despite her 20+ year career as a nurse and her friendship with a woman who’s had Celiac disease for over 30 years, I still got glutenated.

In all fairness, it wasn’t for a lack of effort on my mother’s part.

Those who have to live without eating gluten learn quickly that dining out is a luxury we just can’t afford. It’s not a matter of money; it’s a matter of physically needing to avoid gluten, even the smallest trace amounts that can, through inattentive kitchen practices, lead to several days of misery. At home, that’s not a big problem for me: I love to cook and my kitchen has been wholly cleansed of gluten in all of its forms.

So when I arrived at my mother’s house the first thing I did was take her to the grocery store. Yes, even H.E.B.’s in Austin offer plenty of gluten-free alternatives: they stock a wider variety of gluten-free flours than my hometown’s store does, and their fresh produce is to die for compared to what we get at the commissary. Seventy-five dollars poorer, we headed toward my mother’s house where I planned to spend five days cooking our meals just so I could avoid ingesting gluten.

And that’s when my oldest brother, the one whom I’m so fond of, called to invite us out to eat.

Oh, the Thai restaurant where we dined had gluten-free options listed on their menus. They even offered Tamaris sauce, a wheat-free (and lower sodium) version of shoyu… “soy sauce” for those of you unfamiliar with Asiatic cuisine. But halfway through my utterly yummy dish of pad se ew (a name which has since become ironic), I started feeling the symptoms that indicate gluten contamination.

My stomach rumbled. My abdomen ached. My forehead began to sweat even as every joint in my body lit up with pain that felt like someone was jabbing ice picks into my sockets. I grew mentally confused. My hands shook. Every inch of my body itched intensely, and suddenly I felt a nearly uncontrollable urge to lay down on the floor of the restaurant and nap.

But in my family — an imminently Southern-schooled clan — one does not admit to such things.

So I sat there.

Suffering.

As it happens, this dinner occurred the night before my mother wanted me to attend her church so she could introduce me to all of her friends. A church which, I might add, features 2+ hours main services followed by a doughnut-and-coffee-oriented 2+ hour Sunday school.

That so didn’t happen for me, much to my mother’s dissatisfaction. Having stayed in the bathroom, miserable, until darned near 4 a.m. I just wasn’t capable of attending the 9 a.m. service. Pity.

It took the next entire day for most of the gluten to work its way out of my system. And that night my older brother came up with yet another restaurant recommendation.

“Oh hell no,” I told him. “You don’t seem to understand: eating out hurts me.”

That’s when I realized that my brother, whom I adore, couldn’t possibly understand what’s going on with my Celiac disease. See, he keeps thinking his “low carb diet” is much the same thing: you avoid grains and you’ll lose weight. That’s why, as he sat there munching one day on tortilla chips and another day scarfing down Schlotzky’s (because he had a great coupon), he thought of a gluten-free diet as, well, a diet: something one can enjoy cheating on.

On my last night in Texas my brother invited me over to his house for dinner. On the menu? Sandwiches. Having already been glutenated repeatedly on my visit there — and with a cab coming to take me to the airport at 3:50 a.m. — I knew I couldn’t survive another night of being exposed to gluten, even if he promised not to put the meat he’d sliced for me on one of the freshly-baked rolls he’d just set on the same counter where he was carving the meat.

Next time I visit my family — which is going to be sometime in mid-October — I know two things will have happened: (1) I will have worked off 10 lbs. if only to tease my brother about how “cheating” on his diet has derailed his own weight loss plans; and (2) I’m going to be staying at one of the Laughlin hotels where I can not only order gluten-free foods sent directly to my room but I’ll also be able to drink all the martinis I want without listening to my mother complain.

Ah, family. Ain’t they grand?