[Life] Update 2: Can I Be Real A Second?

Let down my guard and tell you how I feel a second?

Yeah, there’s not going to be any pen or short story blogs until October earliest. It’s not a good time or place right now.

Loki is declining. He’s in pain and having difficulty walking. He can’t put weight on his right, front paw. His breathing is labored more than I want to admit. He tries to be normal – wants to go on walkies and such, but he’s really slow. He can’t go far. He’s not eating as much anymore – we’re hiding his pills in gooshy food. He doesn’t jump up when we move (which he’s done since he was a puppy). We think we have about a week left with him. It’s so not an easy decision. It breaks my heart. I’m totally not ready to say goodbye. There will be little time to grieve.

FenCon is in two weeks. And now it’s just a train speeding down the track. I’m not so much as co-guiding it as hoping it doesn’t crash in a fiery ball of chaos. We have had people cancel (no harm, no foul) due to the pandemic. We may have some out-of-staters not come because of recent political decisions that half our state doesn’t agree with (no blame there). Not sure how this is going to turn out. Hoping, for my part, I’ve made good decisions. It’s been a long haul on this one. Looking forward to being “just” a division head and author guest.

We don’t have a dog sitter for Freya – and it’s going to be weird anyway because she’s never been an “only dog”. Fortunately, I am working from home for the most part so I’ll have next week and most of the week after to be home with them before and…after.

The pandemic continues to wreak havoc on EVERYTHING. Breakthrough infections. Our area is less than 60% fully vaccinated. My day job continues to be sucked into the vortex of this, hurricane season, and September being National Preparedness Month. Everyone expects my department to have all the answers to everything. But we have some new team members, so that’ll be good. Planning some time off in the next few months, so hopefully I can make brain space. So PLEASE???? PLEASE, get vaccinated. Please, wear a mask when you’re in a public place.

I started a weight loss program (yes, in the middle of chaos and stress) with one of my doctors and fired him from that last weekend because I could NOT do what he was prescribing. I went to him to begin with to make sure I didn’t have a medical reason for putting on weight (and I could’ve – one of the meds I was taking, which has been changed, can cause weight gain). I don’t. But his response and the dietician he sent me to was a super strict, restrictive, 1200 calorie/day almost no carb diet that made me cry more than once. I tried to tell them and explain my life — the answer? Carry a protein bar with you (and oh, not that one you picked, that’s bad). Um… fired. I have a complicated family history and relationship with food and this was going to put me over into disorder.

There were some good tools. I’m keeping those – kind of like with writing advice. Seeing some results. But mostly I’m not obsessing over when/what/how I can eat — which was what was making me cry and freaking me out. Trying to train myself away from judgement words. “Oh I was ‘good’ at lunch.” Or, “Oh, that was a ‘bad’ choice”. Stupid societal constructs. I have a calorie goal RANGE (and it’s not 1200).

So this is me. Raw. Uncensored. Struggling still. Hoping to see a tunnel light soon that’s not another train. Hoping I’m making all the right decisions, but probably not.

Tags: Life, mental health, real