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January 22, 2000 --- 5:08 PM EST

Ok, I suck. Why? Because I am afraid.

We were at one of the cul-de-sac playgrounds out back in the apartments again.

Paul is clanging all over the monkey bars, hanging upside down, and running across the top of them and doing flips and wearing himself out general. Meanwhile I am laughing and too chicken to join in because when I stand on the platform not 3 ft up in the air and look down I get dizzy and freak out. That's why I suck. I have this irrational fear of heights that is sometimes there and sometimes not there.

It's my parent's fault. I know it is. Because when I was three they took me to Hong Kong so we could meet extended family and play tourist and they made we walk across this big long bridge thing way up high spanning a river and junk between two mountain ridges. This bridge stretched for a loooong way. It was one of those wooden and rope bridges that flap in the wind. And it was windy! The ropes were creaking and the wind made the wooden flooring of the bridge ripple like waves!

I crossed it hanging on to my Dad's leg while my mother snailed along more than 50 yards behind. Even she could hardly take it at twenty-six, and they expected me at three-years-old to take it?! Meanwhile my goofy Dad is like practically dancing across it, laughing, and yelling back at my mother and teasing me stuck to his leg.

I made Dad walk dead in the center because when he was walking along the edge I caught a glimpse of a river waaay down there and it was tiny like it had been drawn with a pencil. This did me in. So I shut my eyes and just clung to the edge of his plaid shorts with both hands and kept walking with my eyes screwed up until he told me we were across and on solid ground and I could open my eyes. I had been walking blind for a long time. Then he bought me a juice drink at some stand and we sat on this rock waiting for my mother to finish crossing the bridge. We waited for a long time. We finished the drink and just sat around... still waiting for Mom.

Before that trip I used to want to hang out with Dad on the roof of the apartment building we lived in then and I'd fearlessly climb up the ladder up to the roof. He let me up there once and I laid flat on my stomach while my Dad had hold of my ankles to make sure I wouldn't fall because I said I had wanted to look. I thought looking down six stories at the cars on the road was the coolest thing. Then my mother got mad when she found out and I was banned from the roof and my dad put a lock on the trapdoor that went up there.

Then we took that Hong Kong trip, and I started being afraid of heights and suddenly living six stories up wasn't so cool anymore!

Now I can't even face standing three feet off the ground to fling myself across some dinky monkey bars on a playground. I don't even like standing on the step stool to get things down from the cabinets over the fridge. I do it, but I am not happy about it! On our honeymoon Paul wanted to look out the window and make me see, but I just closed my eyes and tried to ignore him telling me how tiny things were down there.

Back to the monkey bars

So while he was hanging upside down trying to cover his belly telling me how he used to try to hide it in elementary school when he hung upside down like that because he thought it was indecent to flash all the other kids his stomach, I tickled him until he started turning red. He was screaming about losing his balance and how he fell out of the monkey bars once as a kid and it really hurt his neck and he didn't want to fall out again and did I really want him to run around with a wobbly, broken neck for the next three weeks?

I was merciless and kept tickling until he started jerking and twisting around trying to grab me so he could bite my leg. How rude! I punched him in the stomach and ran up to the next platform to the double slide.

This morning I found my sneakers hidden in a wad of laundry and I put them in the foyer. Then he woke up and stole them and hid my shoes in the bookcase. After eating toast, I found they'd gone missing again, so I retaliated and hid one of his shoes in the oven and the other with the LPs. He presented me with my shoes and I released my own hostages out of the oven and the wall unit.

Back and forth. His turn. My turn. His turn. My turn. Each of us is hell bent on winning The Shoe Incident that started the other day. So this monkey bars business was just another battle in that little war. So far today?

He smacked me with pillows. I shoved my icy cold feet into his back. He spun me too fast on the merry-go-round. I intentionally bounced too hard on the springy teeter-totter and made him fall off the little elephant he was sitting in. He pretended to be nice and held my bike for me to get on and then kept taking it away every time I tried to straddle my seat.

So of course I had no alternative to but to bide my time and get him when he was defenseless on the monkey bars later. I was actually trying to pinch his nipples and yank his shirt off, but he caught one of my arms so I had to resort to frantic one-handed tickling to get my other arm back and then scampering off before he managed to do something bad to me in return despite hanging all lop-sided and upside-down!

He joined me on the adjacent slide and we slid down in unison, to the sounds of much snapping and crackling and at the end our arms got too close and we both yelled "Ow!" and jumped off.

Unexpected turn of events in the war of The Shoe Incident!

The yellow plastic double slide won! What a dark horse! Came out of nowhere!

It zapped us both with this mega dose of static electricity that brought tears to my eyes and had him hopping up and down yelling "Argh!" We stared at each other, glanced at the slide, then scrambled madly onto the bikes and raced away as fast as possible while the slide just sort of... smirked.

Anyway, we biked some more but had to eventually come home to get drinks because we were very thirsty. We had tried to get a drink from the fountain at the pool only to discover that the pool doors now have combination locks an the Home Owner's Association neglected to tell us what it was. Now when I go pay Judy next month I have to ask her what the heck it is.

"I am half tempted to just jump the fence despite the fact that it's rude," Paul mused. He stood looking at the inviting water fountain not eight feet away on the other side of the gleaming white pool fencing. He started glancing around to see if anyone else but me was looking at him and started getting that gleam in his eye.

"You are getting to old to be jumping fences," I chided. "Don't do it! We live here!"

"You can never be too old to jump a fence!" he declared and walked off in one of his patented I-Am-A-Misunderstood-Husband huffs.

I started laughing, thinking that Paul definitely would have been one of the Boys On the Lawn.

Next order of business for the bikes then, are water bottle cages. Now that he is home Paul says he might not want to go out again but I might want to go, so if he isn't going I'll go alone and then we will go to Target or something and try to find water stuff for the bikes.

He said he found a trail up by Mt. Dora that might do. The problem is that we need a loop. Not a straight ride that's 30 miles, because then we'd have to come back, and I can't do 60 miles! A straight ride that's 15 miles so that we end up with 30 miles down and back is ok. Or a 30 mile loop so we end up where we started at the car. Ok. Twenty to thirty would be good right now, on flat terrain. Here the state is on our side -- Florida is nothing but mostly flat! Soggy in some places, but flat!

The problem is trying to find one that fits our desires. Either they are too short (5 miles and under) or too long (40 miles+) or too rough (not enough experience on terrain). So... still hunting.

We biked the playground field and through a cut through some woods so we at least got some grass riding in. Slowly we are working out our "regular route" around here on base. I thought I saw this long stretch of sand out by one of the warehouses so we might have to go investigate and add that to the route. Two long grass sprints, a sand sprint, lots of road, what other kind of ground is there around here?

~Astrophe