I've discovered that heights bother me less at night / when it is dark. Today I cleared pine straw off the roof, using an extensible pole with a rake-like attachment while standing on a ladder leaned against the roof. The sun set before I was done, so I continued while wearing a headlamp (yay LED bulbs which can shine bright for hours without using the batteries up).

Usually doing the side above the garage feels scary to me. But today in the dark, notwithstanding the flood lights and headlamp, it didn't bother me. Doing this task after dark has another benefit - not having the sun glare in my eyes.

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It reminds me of an amusement park ride I was on as a child. I'm not sure, but it must have been Space Mountain at Disneyland. It was like a roller coaster, but indoors and in the dark. Normal roller coasters terrify me due to my fear of heights. But this ride didn't bother me and was fun.

Two months later, and my neck is still doing that weird cracking thing every time I twist it in the right way. Fairly often during the day, I feel the need to do a quick twist of my neck to make it crack and momentarily get rid of that feeling of stiffness.

I'm getting so used to it that I've even started doing it while other people are around, at work. Today it occurred to me that I should take a video of myself doing it, to see how bad it looks/sounds. Because maybe it's something I really *don't* want to be doing around other people.

So I just took a video. Yegadz! It sounds awful! I should really go to a doctor or something. Except that I can't imagine a regular doctor being able to do anything about it. Heck, my spine has been cracky like that all my life. But when I stretch/unstiffen my back, it's good for a while. It doesn't keep on cracking like my neck can do. Maybe a chiropractor could do something to help, but the few times in the past when a chiropractor has adjusted my neck, it was scary! It makes me tense up... I'm afraid they might break my neck. So yeah no, I don't want to go to a chiropractor either.

It doesn't make sense to me, why my neck would have started doing this all of a sudden, without me having suffered any injury or trauma. If something had happened to cause it, surely I'd remember it? Unless it came from falling asleep in a bad position, maybe.

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These exercises may help:
How To STOP Your Addiction To Cracking Your Neck

It goes like this:

Last night:
Check TV guide to see what's on TV.
PBS is showing "1916 - The Irish Rebellion. The story of the Easter Rising rebellion...."
Do a search on something related to that. Irish Volunteers, etc.
Skim various pages.
Start wondering if the U2 song "Bloody Sunday" refers to the Easter Rising.
Do a search.
Oh. There are a whole bunch of Bloody Sundays.
One of them: Stanislawow Ghetto Bloody Sunday massacre, a massacre of 10,000 to 12,000 Jews before the Stanisławów Ghetto announcement.
Read about horrors.
Ghettos, concentration camps, mass killings, mass graves.
Click links; read about more horrors.

I never can wrap my mind around it. In a way, I don't want to. That's why I try to avoid the topic. But for my own sanity, I want to understand it. How could such things happen? How could people come to commit such atrocities? I'm terrified of it happening again. I'm terrified that it is happening, constantly around the world, in smaller versions. How can I be safe? How can I be sure that I'd never be involved in such a thing? What control do I have over the things my government is doing? Am I really any different from the average German civilian back then?

And it also puzzles me, in reading some things, as to why the victims didn't fight back more? Some parts I can understand. If soldiers come for you and your family with guns, yes, you're likely to do what they say rather than to be shot to death right there. Maybe going where they tell you to go, will let you survive in the end.

But I have a hard time understanding the mass shootings. Surely it can't be that 10,000 people would stand together in a crowd, letting themselves be shot to death, for hours on end, as some of those articles imply? Surely they would have surged forward against the shooters, knowing that death was imminent anyway? Were the shooters up on walls? Wouldn't piles of dead bodies would have gotten in the way of further shooting? Did the shooters take breaks so that the bodies could be moved out of the way? Were the Jews so starved and demoralized by that point, that they welcomed death? Who would want to remain living in a world like that?

And it wasn't only Jews being killed. There were mass killings of ethnic Poles too, by both the Nazis and the Soviets. And masses of people being deported to Soviet labor camps. How could mass killings be so common back then? How could people so callously disregard life? Was it a state of mind? That to have revolutions and change society, you need to kill the existing society that stands in your way?

The German side of my family came from the area right near Poland, so that's another reason I'm often drawn to reading about these kinds of things.

After over an hour of that, I managed to make myself to switch gears, and return to doing my taxes.

Today:

Read an email about local events.
One event is "South Carolina survivors and victims of the Holocaust".
Am reminded of that first page I read last night. I bring up the page again, and read it again. Again trying to wrap my mind around it. Yesterday wasn't the first time I'd read those kinds of things. But as many times as I read them, it seems I'll never be able to come to terms with them.

Clicked some other links related to the history of Germany before World War II. Republic, unification, Holy Roman Empire, Kingdoms, duchies... All of history seems to be full of wars and fighting and horrors. I've always hated history.

Here I sit, in my peaceful house, in front of my computer. Relatively clean, fed, clothed, and warm. Even if I'm not particularly enjoying life, it's not particularly bad.

But the world is full of horrors, and I'm quietly terrified that someday they will strike me personally, and this relatively peaceful world will be blown to bits.

Meet the Camel Cricket aka "Spricket".

Most years we'll get occasional roaches in the house. But there were a few years where we kept getting those camel crickets instead.

I've also seen quite a few of them in the crawlspace under Forestfen's house. It's a definite shock when you're crawling* around the dim and cramped crawlspace with a flashlight, to come upon a bunch of them on the wall in front of you. But they're not as scary as other bugs; in the crawlspace they tend to stay still or only move very slowly.

*or rather as I do it, moving around while in a squat, to avoid getting dirt all over myself. If the space is so low that I'd have to wiggle on my belly to traverse it, I'm not likely to go that way. Even having to crawl on my knees in places tends to trigger sudden claustrophobia. But as long as I can keep a squatting position, I'm usually ok.

I turned the wrong burner on, and ended up blistering the handle on one of my new pots :(
I feel a bit dyslexic when it comes to the stove controls in this house... every once in a while I turn the wrong one on. The layout/design of the knobs is not intuitive and I have to peer at them each time to determine which is the right one to use. And yet still get it wrong sometimes.

Oh please please, let me never start a fire.

When I am alone here at night in bed and I hear some noise in the house which I can't place, I still occasionally get afraid, thinking it might be an intruder like in 2001. My heart starts thumping and I feel shaky, wondering what to do. Is it safest to stay in my bedroom, with the locked door between me and whatever might be out there? Or should I investigate in order to calm my fears? If so, what weapons should I take? My tae-kwon-do bo? Yes, it could be awkward to use in close spaces, but I'd probably be more comfortable hitting someone with that over stabbing them with a knife. But still, the the sharp and deadly looking pocket-knife Qiao gave me? Yes, I can take that in my back pocket too. The 6-year old never-tested can of mace which I still keep by the bed, too, I didn't even think of taking. I suppose even if it is still potent, it would be dangerous to use indoors - it could get into my own eyes too. My cellphone, I didn't even think of turning it on, in case I needed it fast.

But apparently the noise was just coming from the neighbors.

I've decided that the label "submissive" really doesn't fit me well. Rather, I'm a bottom with some submissive tendencies who enjoys psychological D/s play. Not as easy to say, but... better descriptive.

I don't want D/s to be the basis or crux of a relationship. I want friendship, partnership, companionship, and affection to be the basis. But I like D/s as play, as something fun, something which affects me strongly and makes me feel good. I believe I even need it, to enjoy a relationship. When I say "play", I don't mean it can't be serious, and significant, and even painful at times. But I don't see myself as being constantly submissive. As part of the play, I might even want to act rebellious sometimes. But sometimes, I might not want to play at all.

I don't want someone who will treat me like a sub all the time, but I do want someone who might treat me like a sub at any time.

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I want to be loved for who I am.

When I close my eyes at night, I want to feel sheltered by someone's concern and affection for me.

When I wake, I want to feel that the care & concern & affection is real and tangible, not just something I pretended/invented in order to fall comfortably asleep.

I want to love someone for who they are, not just for the affection they show me.

I want someone who can inspire that wonderfully euphoric feeling in me that has something to do with D/s.

I want someone with whom I can feel comforted by their physical touch and presence at least as often as I resort to comforting myself by thinking about it when I am alone.

In other words, I want to spend more time with my partner, than I spend yearning to be with them. But I guess there would need to be some times of yearning, in order for me to recognize how much they mean to me.

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I was trying to think of the word to describe a particular relationship, like between my master/soulmate and me in one of my fantasies. The kind of relationship where the one has power over the other... in the fantasy, it was absolute power - life & death; power to read my thoughts and emotions; etc. In real life, I guess it could be a lesser power... But where, like in the fantasy, the other person can look at me (straight through me) in a way that makes my insides drop... makes me lose balance, feeling that power of theirs over me. A wonderful feeling of belonging, of fear, of excitement, of acknowledging their power over me.

I can't think of the word for describing that particular kind of relationship.
Disciple, no. Minion, no. Dominant/submissive, not necessarily. Master/slave, no.
Master/something... maybe. Master/pupil, not necessarily.

When I was young, I used to envision master/apprentice relationships as that kind of relationship. I had read books about apprentices where the master even had the power to have the apprentice put to death, if they were displeased enough with them. And then there was Star Wars, where Darth Vader was the Emperor's apprentice... oh, that was so cool.
But nowadays, the term apprentice just means to me someone who is being taught things. It doesn't so much imply the master having power over the student.

And for the relationship I'm trying to think of the word for, the "master" wouldn't necessarily even have to be teaching the other person anything. It wouldn't even need to be a consensual power-exchange relationship, just one where the one person has some kind of significant power over the other. Such as a captor and captive. It seems like there should be some word for that. Maybe it will come to me.

Went on a weekend trip to visit a family friend. She talked me into going on a scary amusement park ride with her... "Come on, do this with me; we can both face our fears, my fear of being closed in and your fear of heights". The kind of ride where you get into a cage-like thing that is lifted up high and spun around so that you go upside down. She handled her fright by yelling out things such as, "Jesus, you're my man!" I handled mine by keeping my eyes shut and trying to breathe deeply. But it wasn't really all that bad... after it was over, and I was safely back on the ground, anyways. And I did even open my eyes a few times during it.

I also went on the carousel-swing thing twice - I usually like this ride, even though it challenges my fear of heights too. The first time I went on it, there was a cool-looking guy in the seat/swing next to me, and he said "Hey, man!" to me, which made me feel good and made me wonder if he recognized me as a female or not. I wonder if I look cowardly when I shut my eyes during rides like that.... I don't see other people shutting their eyes. Of course, I wouldn't, would I? Or maybe I just look frightened. Or maybe I look bored, or asleep.

In the evening, we went to a Zapp concert. By mistake, actually, but it was quite good. Parts of it, at least. I didn't enjoy some of the slower songs, and the religious preacherly part. But they performed very well, including their dancing. Apparently their band has a troubled past.

My mom and I also visited a couple who had a pig, an Irish wolfhound, a Great Dane, and koi. Oh, and a big fluffy cat.

i'm afraid.

i don't want to live in a fascist country.
i don't want war.
i don't want to be afraid of the police.
i don't want to be a sheep.
i don't want to live in a country where millions of people think getting rid of democratic ideals and freedoms is a good thing.

i don't understand why people do these things...

i don't want to live in a country where you can get into trouble at a presidential rally
just for wearing a t-shirt saying "Protect Our Civil Liberties".

i don't want to be afraid like this, that the election won't even be a fair election.

i don't want to think about things just getting worse and worse.

but i don't see what's going to stop it.

and maybe living in turbulent times, with something to fight against,
is more interesting and challenging than living in a peaceful idealistic world.
but i don't want it.
because it won't really be interesting and challenging, it will be dreadful.
it is dreadful already.

but why should i dread.
big fucking deal.
what will be, will be.
what is, is.

i don't want all the other things which have been going on, to go on, either.
sigh......

you know what? this is a bad place. yep. whatever.

people make me uneasy, when i can't understand their motives. when i can't picture the world through their eyes. when it doesn't make sense.

and it's an interesting thought... that people make me uneasy, too, because i fear my lack of ability to communicate myself to them.