InDesign won't relinquish command

My problem is that InDesign is too smart and tries to make too many decisions without me.

Issue 1:

I have text in frames throughout a document. As I go through line by line altering the kerning and word breaks at the column edge (editing for aesthetics and readability), sometimes the changes I make affect lines behind me (upstream, so to speak).  This in turn makes me have to go backwards and look for errors that this has caused.  Is there a way to manually override this, so that any changes I make will only alter downstream text? Or better yet, will only affect text I've highlighted?

Issue 2:

The last line of a paragraph is sucked from column 1 to column 2, even though there is ample space for this line at the bottom of column 1.  When I increase the size of the text box, to allow the line to be pulled back to column 1, it won't go until the text box is large enough to incorporate the first line of the next paragraph (and the blank line between the paragraphs).  So rather than having a full paragraph in column 1 and the next paragraph beginning at the top of column 2 I get a single orphaned line on either column.  How do I tell InDesign to let me choose which lines go on which column?

Please help!!!