Air on the Side of Caution

So that phrase just caught my brain when I read it, more so than the other varied misspellings in the pseudo-medical article I was reading. Yes, I am trying to find information on my mysterious abdominal pain. The doctor route hasn't really led me anywhere except to a lot of dead ends and tests that turn out "perfect". The latest theory is muscle strain. I'm a firm believer in every latest theory until the tests tell me that I'm wrong, and Airing on the Side of Caution is my new motto.

I want to take a moment to mourn a tragic loss: I seem to have killed my laptop hard drive in a valiant attempt to back it up like a good computer owner. I think it was like exercising a heart that is already too far gone - the thing came back to life briefly, but couldn't hold it together. I secretly hope that I can find a way to salvage something that might have been really important, but then another part of me secretly says "well, this is what you get for waiting to back it up" and also adds "and really you will be fine without any of that stuff". And to my great surprise, I am tending to agree with the latter. I expected that I would be distraught when this happened. Maybe it will hit me later when I remember what I lost. Anyway, let's just take a moment to think about those fleeting bits and bytes that we use instead of biological memory, and how thrilled I was to get that heavy little laptop of joy.

The Good Kind of Change

So it's been a while. Yep, long months of change and progress. Moving into new things, new ideas. Old ideas that I'm starting to think about again. New forces pulling me in directions I need to go.

So here's a bridge, surely symbolic of the transitions that await me. Or maybe it's just a nice bridge that I wanted to take a picture of, so we stopped on the way back before we crossed it again. But even that means something. It means that my sweetheart likes me and doesn't mind pulling over to take pictures. Or to look at moose, which we did also on that trip - my first real live close-up moose experience! And no camera, because I didn't want to miss seeing them while I unzipped the bag and turned things on. It was cool.

It was also literally cool, because we were up in the mountains/hills and twenty degrees cooler than it was in town. Yes, it is surely summer. The hot kind.

So about those changes. The reason we have a picture of this bridge, which is way over by Flaming Gorge Dam, is that we were day-tripping out of Vernal, where my honey is learning to be a really good, money-making truck driver. We're seeing each other on the weekends now instead of every single day. I am happy to say that despite this, we are still moving forward with our relationship and none of my fears of tragic loneliness and disconnectedness have come to fruition.

Instead, I am finding myself thinking about things I didn't let myself think about for so long: marriage, houses, and all that. Future things. Hopeful things. And I've been taking small steps toward my other goals: I let my mom read my story during her visit, I've started the painting from my dream image, I've got Qt on my computer at home so I can build interfaces for personal programming projects. I'm crossing that bridge of hesitation and doubt, feeling more joy and pride. It's really awesome. Really.