I think I would be OK on a glass floor? My fear is connected to being off-kilter, so a stepladder is way scarier to me than a tall building.

There is a go fund me link for them that should be added - it is over $20K, so maybe not a link, but a note recognizing that not all people suck. It looks like maybe some of the funds will go to the org that trained the guide dog.

Thanks -- someone else sent me some links, too, so I should go post an update.

There's a psychological term for that -- visual cliff -- and they test babies (and other baby animals) for it by setting up a glass-topped table so it's as though the table ends. Below a certain threshold of brain development, babies will crawl over the edge with abandon.

A couple years ago I walked over a big grate -- the kind you see in parking lots -- only to find out when I looked down: somebody had left a light on in the shaft about 50 feet down.

I may even have yelled out loud. It was a very sturdy grate that trucks drove over all the time, so it wasn't any kind of dangerous. I leaped to safety and stood there for a while with my heart hammering.

Whereas I'm all, "Dude, that is cool."

Fear of exposure can be unlearned, you know. Not that anyone other than a climber or a professional tree-cutter or linesman would want to, I suppose. But if I stop climbing for a while and then go back, I have to retrain myself so that I don't freak out when I'm up really high on an overhang.

The Mackinac Bridge (http://www.mackinacbridge.org/), a five-mile long bridge that connects the two peninsulas of Michigan, has grating instead of pavement on the two inner lanes. When I was a kid and felt the car drive over it, the grate was just a noisy, vibrating annoyance. Then I went under the bridge on a boat and looked up. You can see the cars driving over the grate--and from the water (or a few feet above it) it doesn't look like they're driving over much of anything that would hold up a car. I've been a fan of the outer lanes ever since.

I think if I'd worked my way onto it voluntarily, I wouldn't have spooked like that, but because of the semi-dark twilight, it wasn't until I was several steps onto it that I looked down.

OTOH, I've been totally unable to walk out on (very short and safe) RR bridges, stepping on the ties over the gaps.

Note to self: brains weird.

My heart was beating like a triphammer in that little enclosed overhang walkway at The House on the Rock, and that had an opaque floor and visible beams/support structure. Not my cup of tea.

Though the big overlook at Lookout Mountain didn't bother me, probably because of the solid rock underfoot.

Man, I would love to walk out into that thing. I want to do the Grand Canyon Skywalk too. I get scared but I can make myself walk over it/out into it, and once I'm there it's cool. I'm fine as long as I'm upright and my feet are on something solid.

Richard Branson planning a glass-bottomed plane for Virgin.

AhahahahahahaNO.

A few years ago, my family went on a cruise, and in the casino, which we had to walk through a lot, the floor had a few of these deep pits filled with various gambling-related stuff, with glass over the top. If you looked down, you saw a few feet of empty space before the stuff began. Every single time I walked over one of these things, I'd stumble a bit. I have no fear of heights at all, but the lack of floor where there had been floor a second ago just confused my brain.

Kate, I'm glad you had a goodish ER visit. Also, I'm definitely glad that Rose is responding to the medications.

Okay. Going to make PJs now.