Trapeze lessons on Saturday. I did well, and I felt pretty good afterwards. The place is in DC. After class we walked a couple of blocks and found a nice tapas place. I enjoyed it quite a bit.

I almost had a hissy fit earlier in the day because one of our friends made us late. We weren�t so late that we missed much, but there�s nothing worse for me when someone encroaches on my control-freaky ways.

I�d offered her a ride earlier in the week, once I learned that her car wasn�t totally functional, which, in itself was a challenge, because she�s one of those people who will tell you every single detail around something without actually getting to the point. For example: �Round trip tickets to DC are $X today,� �It�s not easy to get to that restaurant using public transportation,� �It�s cheaper to rent a car than take the train but not as environmentally friendly.�

Eventually it sunk in for me. I am an INFP, that�s P for perceiver, as opposed to a J for judger. It�s never my first instinct to make a judgment about a situation. I wait to be told what the situation is.

So, anyway, after awhile, it occurred to me to ask what�s wrong with her car and then offer a ride. At which point, she started some other song and dance that I couldn�t even begin to interpret, so I left the offer open.

We didn�t hear from her again until we were in the car, still in Philadelphia, but on our way. That is when she called and asked for a ride. She had tried to rent a car that morning without a credit card. No problem, you�d think it would be easy to swing by her place to pick her up. To summarize: It wasn�t that easy.

This is a good example of the kind of thing that I struggle with. Adam smoothed my feathers a little bit while we waited for her for about 40 minutes at a rest stop.

After she was in the car and we were well on our way, and we got there kinda-sorta on time, I felt a lot better. She�s a sweetheart, but she lives in a completely different universe than I do.

Learning to be more flexible would be advantageous to me, and would help me a lot with stress. However, there�s only so much flexibility I can handle.

Adam is in school learning Japanese with native speakers and working with a Japanese professor. This morning I joked with him that if he thought I was rigid and perfectionist, just wait until he spends more time with those Japanese folks. I am only half, you know; then again, my other half in German.

Anyway, trapeze went well. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that I am good at it. I had no expectations going in. The only exception being a moment after having climbed the ladder to the top of the platform, at that point, I experienced sheer terror. I don�t know what my expecting at that moment, exactly, but it must have been pretty bad.

By the end, I loved it, and I signed up for two more lessons. The next day I felt a little sore, but nothing too drastic. Monday, I felt like I went through a mangle. My body felt so beat up. Tuesday, I felt slightly better, but I was still experiencing pain around an upper right rib, near my sternum.

Last week, I had a mysteriously painful and swollen foot, which kept me out of karate, so I wasn�t going to let my hurt rib stop me last night. It hurt a bit, but it didn�t hinder me too much.

I attributed the rib pain to some kind of trapeze injury, but I couldn�t figure out how I injured myself there. The only possibility that I can imagine is that I knee�d myself in the sternum or rib area without realizing it. The other possibility is that I pulled one of the many muscles that cross that area.

Of course, I also imagined all sorts of other horrors, resulting in a slow and painful death. Then I concluded that getting old sucks. Even just a handful of years ago, my body would have handled that. Or maybe back then, I got injured and just didn�t care. Death didn�t scare me. If I felt a pain and imagined it was a cancerous tumor, I�d think, �Good, I�ll get out of this hell hole sooner.�

As I�ve gotten older, I�ve definitely developed a healthier respect for life, which stems from learning to enjoy it more. An unexpected side-effect of that new perspective is that I actually experience more stress because the fear of death has a magical way of creating urgency in dull situations.

Today, I�m feeling a lot better. There is still some pain, but it�s not nearly as intense. My weird foot injury seems to be almost 100% gone, as well.

The past week or so, I�ve been having a lot of vivid dreams. A couple of days ago, I had one that suggests to me that I am experiencing guilt because of some of my dysfunctional ways, which are a direct result of a crappy childhood. I feel guilty because that dysfunction affects Adam.

From an objective viewpoint, there is really nothing about me that�s all that horrible. I torture myself much more than I torture anyone else. At least, I hope that�s the case.

Adam was gone all last week, and that helped me quite a bit. I needed that space to help with my perspective.

Since then, things have been different, but only slightly. It helps that he�s now a student. I didn�t think I�d like it so much. I thought I�d be plagued with stress over the fact that he�s currently earning negative money. On top of that, I thought I would be plagued with jealousy, hearing about his classes and intellectual challenges and scholarly conversations.

Instead, I�m happy to hear about scholarly conversations second hand, and I�m happy to not deal with academic bureaucracy, and the insane demands of professors.

This is only his third day of class, so I guess we�ll see how things go as time goes on. He�s overwhelmed with it all, but extremely grateful to have the opportunity to pursue what he wants to pursue, or even to be able to go to graduate school at all. It�s very, very lucky to have the circumstances in which one can pursue education.

I ordered a bunch of books from Amazon. Most of them are guide books related to hiking. One is about outdoor survival. I read a little bit of the outdoor survival book. It�s practical. It offers advice one can actually use, like, how to get rescued out of a dire situation or (more importantly) how to avoid a dire situation in the first place. This is different from many outdoor survival books, which talk about how one would build a life in a dire situation by building bear traps, and making huts. I don�t need to know the best way to prepare a slug for dinner because I don�t intend to ever need to eat one for dinner in the first place.

I�m looking forward to planning more hikes.

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