What Eyepieces for Meade ETX-90?

I have Meade 26mm Super Plossel and 9.7mm Plossel eyepieces for my ETX-90. The 9.7mm seems to be too much eyepiece for the scope(?), at least in my suburban Chicago location. Any advice to bridge the gap between these two eyepieces. I am looking for affordable eyepieces. I also have the Meade shorty Barlow.

Thanks

In what way does the 9.7mm eyepiece appear to be "too much" for the scope?

As for affordable eyepieces, I just picked up a set of SkyWatcher's UltraWide eyepiecs (AKA: Orion Expanse, etc.) to replace the plossls I had. I must say that while the eye relief doesn't appear to be as long as claimed the eyepieces do produce good images and are very comfortable to look into. You can't really tell that they're Synta products