Lattice Work

I'm afraid of ladders. I don't climb them much myself, and I cannot be nearby when anyone I love is on one. It's a (not entirely) ridiculous fear, I guess, but it's one I somehow can't--or won't--control, so Mark does a lot less ladder work than he used to around the house. Once he was working on the parapet roof of our (three-story) house with a ladder set up on the (first story) porch roof outside our bedroom window. He asked me to brace the ladder for him and I was so overcome by anxiety that I not only couldn't hold the ladder, I actually had to leave the room--in the end, Mariah held it for him instead. I tell a much shorter version of this story in my blog post over at Inside Higher Ed today, as a way of getting at a new metaphor for career success: the lattice. I've never climbed a lattice, but I'm beginning to think I'd like to try...