I'm back for a while

[ClingingToHope]

Working a night shift -- which is really easy. So I'm catching up. This is the busy time for my scorekeeping gig. I'm at the high school 17 times in the next five weeks.

It's my favorite job though. If I won the lottery tomorrow I'd quite the newspaper and keep the score keeping job. Getting paid to watch basketball is fun for me.

Finished paying my portion of D14's Europe trip in 2015 to XW. That's what the UPS gig was for. Now, I'm going to try to help D14 save up $1,500 over the next year and a half for the trip so she can have a good time. It's two weeks with stops in Germany, Spain, France and England.

Dropped five of the quick 10 pounds that I put on during Christmas. Playing more basketball. It's a little nerve wracking because a serious injury would hurt me financially, but basketball always has been my "runners high" and I've missed it.

This weekend was an interesting exercise in letting go. D14 wants to tryout -- along with several thousand others -- for The Voice in Chicago. She has a 7 a.m. tryout Sunday morning and she wants to stay at a motel nearby so she doesn't have to get up at 4 a.m. to get ready.

It's my weekend so I'm taking her. D11 doesn't want to tag along and I was working on options when she told me in the car that XW told her she could stay with her and go bowling -- with fiance's family -- Saturday night.

Well, I hadn't asked for help and I didn't like XW meddling in my weekend. I try to NEVER do that on her weekends. That's hard to explain to D11. She just thought, "it will be fun."

In the end, the options I had lined up weren't going to be as good as the bowling offer and I couldn't make myself not let her go bowling. Had the bowling offer not been offered I had a good setup for D11. I'll have to let this one go.

Plus, there's an annual Martin Luther King tournament that I have to work and that means more time away on Saturday and Monday. The great thing about the scorekeeping gig is I control the schedule so I usually don't schedule myself on weekends the girls are over. But this will be an extra $180 cash and with the annual Wisconsin Dells trip in two weeks I couldn't pass it up.

Girls have Friday and Monday off so D11 is having friends over Thursday and Friday night, so it's not a total loss.

Booked one of my summer weekends. The time share is a good thing. It's going to be a very good summer. Not as expensive as last year. But still good. We're doing a Michigan trip with the professor and her daughter after July 4. Two days in Wisconsin (timeshare) two weeks after that and four days in D.C./Virginia in August (timeshare).

Things are still going well with the Professor. Her 11-year-old doesn't really like my 11-year-old. She likes my 14-year-old. But it makes things awkward. Still, we're doing the July trip together because there'll be enough room for everyone to spread out.

The funny thing is for years I was the sophisticate in the relationship. XW just wanted to sit on a porch at a trailer at a campground with her mom every summer. And she ended up trading me in for a biker guy who just wants to sit around a campfire and drink beer all day. I wanted to go places, see things, meet people ... get out of the chair. I get bored doing the same thing.

The professor's family are all travelers. Her two sisters have doctorates. One is an attorney, the other a medical researcher. So the professor jokes she is the "black sheep" of the family.

This trip we're taking in July is to her parents' "cottage" on Lake Michigan. The "cottage" sleeps 10.

We had lunch today and she was telling me about the family trip they are planning. Her sisters and her parents. They can't decide whether to do something in the U.S. or overseas.

I just smiled. My parents are long gone. There are no deep pockets in my family. I'll never be able to take the girls places that her daughter has already seen. They'll have to do that for themselves.

It's a weird feeling. It's the comparison trap. My daughters have been to Disney twice. We take annual trips to the Dells. They've stayed in suites while staying on Michigan Avenue in Chicago. I'm proud to say despite the divorce that they don't hurt for experiences. Everyone plays the hand they are dealt. This is a good reminder.

D11 got her grades today. All A's and B's. She's still in special ed half the day for her ADHD so it's hard to tell where she stands with her peers. Next year when she hits seventh grade is going to tell a lot.

D14 got a 4.1 GPA. Her two B's were in honors classes. Right now she's extremely focused. She has her heart set on UCLA. There's a long way to go until that decision is finalized, but she's already a much better student than I ever was.