Balance Acts

Life always seems to be balancing like a clown on a ball juggling.  This morning's news on Yahoo showed photos of yet another sink hole, this one in Germany.  One photo showed a car barely still in the garage teetering on the edge, that is a balance act.  Half of the other garage was in pieces and I'm guessing that was the car they had mentioned in the news article as being swallowed up. I can only guess at the emotions going through the homeowners in that particular neighborhood.

I'm wondering what we humans are doing to the Earth to cause these sink holes.  We aren't blameless.  We are the ones that give the go ahead to dig into the earth to install pipelines, roads, and cables.  How often do we give back to the Earth when we take?

I'm not blameless either.  I've done careless stuff.

Today my spouse is doing his own balancing act.  He came home for lunch, swears he made a sandwich but I saw no mess in the kitchen after, hurried about looking for missing items for his Class-A inspection.  We finally located the dress belt.  He had put it in a special sack so the buckle wouldn't scratch as much.  He still had to change out the buckle.  Sighs.  With only fifteen minutes left to get back to work we had him in the car and his uniform of the day, ACUs, on the passenger seat next to him.  He really looked sharp.  I even got him to stand still for a few minutes to take a couple of photos of which I shared with our family via email today.

While helping in the search for the missing dress belt I managed to get my FRG contact list, call the FRG leader to give her an update of those that shouldn't be on our list, forward out the latest information, send an introductory email and grab a late breakfast.  Having several tabs open at once does make the emailing job a tad easier.  We women are good at multi-tasking.  I can only imagine how some are able to do all of the above and still hand a child or two or three.  Kudos to the ones that can do it all.  I'm still learning.   By the way, FRG stands for Family Readiness Group.  I'm learning all about the FRG with being a POC (Point of Contact).

I rather like being involved with my FRG.  It gives me a chance to voice my concerns, help with decisions, and give back to our soldiers while staying in the know about the current events happening in our brigade.  During the last deployment it was really comforting to have the spouses of my FRG to lean on if needed.  I've actually made quite a few good friends through the FRG.  It is true we spouses don't have rank.  However, the soldiers do have rank and we have to be careful to not upset that balance with remembering that little fact.

When we were setting up the barracks for the single soldiers homecoming this past Summer I had a pillow fight with a higher ranking soldier's wife.  She and I enjoyed it as long as I didn't mess up her hair.  LOL.  But when my husband found out who it was he nearly freaked.  Rank does matter to him and it should as my behavior could get him into trouble.  Because the pillow fight was just a bit of fun he was in the end okay with it and a tad amused too.  Who wouldn't want to cut loose a little after helping make up more than forty beds, baskets, half that in showers and rooms.  It was a long day and more than a little tiring.  We even decorated.  Its all part of giving back and keeping that balance in life.  These soldiers gave so much and its good that we showed how much their sacrifices meant to us.


On a side note, trick-or-treating went well at my house last night.  Two children actually knew the design on my pumpkin and commented on liking it.  I shouldn't have been surprised but still I was surprised and proud.

Ritual was entertaining.  We had a nice fire, lots of candle and a darkness to show off the flame.  The quarters and cross quarters were called in then released at the end.  We ended with our normal departing words.  Many hugs and well wishes followed our departure.  I was pleased to see old faces and new ones all anxious to participate.  Its always a nice sight to see our re-deployed soldiers coming back to chapel.