where are the other 96?!

Like an old lady or something, I've been having lower back problems. It started getting acute when I was skiing an average of 50-100 km a week in training for a ski marathon that I sort of did, in a manner of speaking, back in February. Long cross-country ski outings in the classic style can lead to a sensation that your lower back is being slowly penetrated with sharp hot knives.

Now that ski season is over and I'm no longer putting my back under such strain, I've been waiting for the lower back problem to vanish. It hasn't. I actually went to my chiropractor for the first time in almost a year and he diagnosed the problem, which I paraphrase for you here:

"You have very strong arms and legs, missy, but your back and abs are made of pudding."

So to strengthen my pudding muscles, I went out and got a ball to sit on at work, and I went to my gym and got prescribed a certain set of exercises, on the ball and off, to turn the pudding to refridgerated butter. No, frozen butter. No, frozen BRICKS. Yeah!



Doesn't she look happy with her bushy little eyebrows and perfectly erect spine, like her pudding muscles could be used to support a construction crane or some such?

My ball is red. It looks a lot like this:



(A book you should go read if you haven't already.)

I also got one for my mom, and another one to have at home. A friend of mine saw the three red things inflated in the back of my car and cheerily asked "where are the other 96?"