thinking out loud...
I’ll try to keep this post short and sweet after the last one. This doesn’t really need a novella, and it’s more to keep track for myself.
However, a little context for context’s sake.
Mid-late 2016 I started a regimen of Prozac for managing my anxiety – a topic for another blog post. There were the usual side-effects for the first month or so, but as soon as they settled down everything was pretty darn awesome. I liked to call myself ‘almost psychologically bulletproof’. The source of the ‘almost’ in that statement is also a topic for another day.
Early-mid 2017, however, I noticed some weight creep that couldn’t be explained by anything other than the medication, as nothing had changed in my diet and exercise regime. I spoke with my GP about it when it came time to renew my prescription, and we agreed we’d give me another couple of months to see if I can get on top of it before we decide whether or not to wean off.
A couple of months later and I felt like a bloated hippo, so we started weaning off. It took two months to wean down to nothing, and it’ll take me another two months to get it entirely out of my system due to the half lives of the active ingredient (fluoxetine) and its metabolite (norfluoxetine), 4-6 days and approximately 16 days respectively.
Right now I feel like the drug is trying to hoard all the fat it can before it’s gone, like a squirrel storing nuts before it forgets where and never comes back.
Given how my new year started, I’d like my first blog post of the year to be about dogs attacking dogs.
(I know the cover picture is actually a police dog in training, involving a human participant, but I couldn’t bring myself to locate pictures of dogs fighting, and I have huge – HUGE – respect for these amazingly well-trained canine officers.)
So what happened today to prompt this, of all possible topics, to kick off my 2018 resolution to write more in my blog?
In truth, I need to go back another day or so.
Something for my dad on Father’s Day.
My Faux Pas.
It’s easy to be a father,
harder to be a dad.
The first a slip with passion,
The other a choice to have.
A mother labours hard
And invests all she has
A father might not know it
Until he becomes a dad.
A father gives a little
A dad gives all he’s got.
A father loves his lover
A dad loves his lot.
My dad is not my father
But he loves me as his own.
He made the choice, you see
To dismiss blood and bone.
This daughter loves her dad
And thanks him for all he’s been,
All the good he’s done for me,
Much of it gone unseen.
All I have to say
On this and every day
“I love you, dad.”
– Amelia Beare
The end of May was an anxious time for me. There was awful (read: tragic!) news about the litter from which I was adopting my new puppy, and the potential for an extended delay in receiving my new little bundle of mischief and mayhem. I was anxious for the breeder having to deal with such wretched issues, afraid for my potential puppy, and worried about missing those vital weeks for bonding and socialising.
Ultimately all these anxieties proved unnecessary – as they so often do. Buddy arrived on time, as pre-arranged in the weeks leading up to the last Sunday of May.