What’s it all about?  BALANCE

• For gymnasts, it’s training vs. homework … and staying on the beam of course
• For parents of gymnasts, it’s managing the family as a unit (especially during meet season).  We could easily substitute the word ‘juggling’ instead
• For musicians, it’s trying not to play too loud or too soft
• For everybody, the more we have going on, the easier it is to lose it

Back when our youngest daughter was about to go into 7th grade, she wanted to be homeschooled so she could balance her schoolwork and her gymnastics schedules better.  I was game to give it a try, and as soon our homeschooling activities began, all of my spare time went out the window.  It came down to juggling gymnastics schedules for both Kelly and Keri, homeschooling Keri, and working part time.  Out of necessity, I stopped doing things like working out in the yard, and I pretty much stopped cooking, too.  The girls always ate something nutritious before they went to the gym and again when they came home, but family meals were few and far between.  Sound familiar to anyone? 

Anyway, both girls retired from competitive gymnastics during their high school years, and instead of catching up on yardwork then, as well as all of the other things around here that needed finishing, I followed my heart & started a home business: Musical Designs.  The girls have both gone on to college (Kelly graduated last year and got married a couple of months ago.  Talk about being busy)!  Needless to say, while we’ve kept up with the basics like mowing the lawn and staining the deck, etc., it’s been years and years since we did any of the extra things like plant flowers or lay pine straw.  Oh well!  We’re working on it little by little, so maybe one of these days … -:)  

Like I said: balance.  Hard to keep – easy to lose.

We have a daschshund (did I spell that right?) who is 16 years old, and last weekend she developed something called “peripheral vestibular syndrome”.  This basically means that – among other things – her sense of balance went out of whack.  For the first couple of days, she had no idea if she was moving forward, backward, up or down; the world as she knew it was suddenly spinning all around her.  She walked in circles a LOT and fell over a lot, too.  She’s much better now, thankfully, but still loses her balance every now & then. 

And there’s that word again.