Red crosshairs won't let me place a line

[arhooley]

I want to connect two shapes using a line.

While I'm dragging one end-point of a line, suddenly a little red
crosshair shows up that I can't get the end-point anywhere near, and a
red margin around the whole drawing lights up and the end of the line
snaps to one of those bizarre margins.

I can work around it by creating connection points, but I'd rather just
put lines wherever I want.

What's going on?

 

[Mark Nelson [MS]]

Go to Tools > Snap & Glue and turn on Glue to Geometry. That should let you
connect anywhere without making connection points. You can also turn off
dynamic glue there to prevent the full-shape highlighting.