Maintaining My Balance

I had a lot to balance at school today:

• keeping an eye on yesterday's number path,
• trying to have a "regular" day,
• organizing our mentoring project (3rd and 8th graders working together to "deadhead" hundreds of daffodils around the campus
• setting up my laptop to Skype on the SMART board with a student who is visiting family in Holland

• completing projects to be ready for Friday's Grandparents Day

I thought these earrings that I made last summer would inspire the right kind of balance--flexible, not rigid; moving, not static. When I got home, I wandered around in search of a good photo spot, and settled on the wisteria vine the climbs a post onto our deck.

As I snapped my photos, I was thinking about a joke I heard on the radio comparing wisteria with the Middleton sisters: attractive, sweet smelling, and climbing with determination. I don't envy either of them the balancing act they've undertaken.

But when I went inside, I discovered a whole new balance challenge. When John left this morning, he took our little shop vac with him, full of stink bugs for a colleague's middle school science project. I decided to set up soapy-water traps on our window sills and encourage the stink bugs to drop in.

In our bedroom, this is simple. The windows are easy to reach. And stink bugs are pretty cooperative: they avoid predators by flipping and dropping, often right into the waiting soapy water.

But our living room windows are high--maybe 16 feet from the floor. So this afternoon I found myself balancing high on a ladder (not too high... but high!), using a broom to sweep the bugs toward the bread pans containing soapy water. (They required some balancing, too: on the way up the ladder, on the window ledge, and moving the set-up from window to window three times before I gave up to cook some supper.)

I have a bucket full of stink bugs to dump in the morning.

Tomorrow when we get home, the windows will be full of stink bugs again.

Balance is key.