Happy Father’s Day
This blog started nearly a year ago with a story about a wedding and a sporran, and how I couldn’t get one round me.
My own kilt was a definite no no that day. Not a hope. Even the roomier kilt I had borrowed from my (formerly) well-upholstered mate Ali to attend my nephew’s nuptials was a real eye-popping pinch.
Being at that wedding last July was a sweaty, humiliating experience, and I was uncomfortable from start to finish. That was the day I spoke to my pharmacist nephew Naz about getting on Mounjaro.
On Thursday just past I said goodbye to my son, as he set off for his school leavers’ ball, after his graduation ceremony at Greyfriars Kirk - (the one made famous by the faithful wee dug Bobby, and the Covenanters too for that matter, but I digress.)
After nearly a year on Mounjaro I not only got into my own kilt, the one I got for my wedding 23 years ago, but it was, in truth a wee bit too loose. Which was gratifying.
After the ball the boy flew off yesterday to Paris to go InterRailling for a month round Europe with his pals.
Because I start work at 6am I wouldn’t see him before he set off, so, in front of his mates outside the historic church, I gave him a couple of words of fatherly advice.
“For f**k sake, please call your mother; make sure you look the other way first when you cross the road, they drive the wrong way over there; do not piss your money up a wall on day one; don’t be a clever dick in a bar or a club or someone *will* smack you; and just…take it easy.”
I think I told him I love him, that I am proud of him, I hope so.
And that is that, both of them, son now and daughter a couple of years before him, gone.
And it is very hard to think about that. Just two minutes ago they were babies in the bath together.
What happens now?
Well, one door closes and another opens. For the boy, I hope it is the summer of his life and I hope he has an adventure to remember . He will soon be at university alongside his sister and I hope he keeps there the academic focus which has seen him do so well until now.
For me? I am not so sure. I am very near the end of my year on Mounjaro, but I feel there is still lots more work to be done, kilos to cut, and muscles to build.
If truth be told I want to continue on the medication for a while longer, just so all my stats progress from red to amber to green. I am scared of sliding back to where I was. Very scared.
But I am conscious I have made progress, and that, I am probably less hard work to be around than I was. Maybe, maybe not.
I have had a couple of very productive weeks in the gym, usually two sessions a day and walking around Edinburgh at weekends, but still my fragile psychology and constant need for affirmation (exhibit A: this blog) is such that I did a very weird thing on Friday.
I did a very big workout and then a long long steam, and then I jumped on the fantoosh scales at my gym *full in the knowledge * that my heightened post-workout body heat and damp feet would trick the foot and hand sensors that the scales use into giving a false positive reading.
And so it was.
I am not sure what it says about me that I *know* not one of those results is accurate… but that I took some encouragement from it regardless.
However, much much more important than this false affirmation from shonky scales was the message my lad wrote me for Father’s Day last week.
That is real, and as you can imagine, it was pretty wild reading that, and I count myself very lucky.
So yes, the goal now is to press on, keep it all ticking over, and chisel away at myself, in every respect.
Onwards.