DB Gang, thank you for keeping me in your thoughts. I still follow many of your threads daily and you all remain close to my heart. I suppose it's time for an update.
Family. S14 has been a bit distant since the start of the new year. I don't think I've posted too much about the blowouts we've had, but it started with him being deceptive at the end of last school year (lying about grades, falsifying report card online, etc), went on to me grounding him and giving him extra assignments, him passively refusing to do them, and culminated with him blowing up right before the school year began. Things were pretty escalated and his mom asked if she could be the one that manages grades and homework this semester to allow things at my place to cool down. I was ok with that. Right now I am pretty disgusted with some of my son's behavior (lack of accountability, victim mentality) and it has come between us. We are fairly disconnected. We still eat together and spend a little time together, but there is definitely a shift. I am not prepared to be closer as long as he's prepared to lie and manipulate things, and I don't see him growing past that yet. And I'm not going to beat my head against the wall trying to teach him. Life can do that. If I'm teaching him it's mostly in the way of showing him that he can't treat me like a chump and expect that I will take it. Still getting him xmas presents of course, we will go to a show in January that is a Beatles tribute. We went to Ringo a few months ago and it's nice to have a few good times that pierce the distance between us.
D11. Trying to make each day count before she too becomes a teen. We're having fun playing pool, she is hitting the balls really strong. Got her into a pool league, took a minor miracle to get XW ok with it (it's every Sunday so needed XW to be ok with it on her weeks) but I magically got it to work. D11 is new to competition so she's very tentative and lacks confidence. She doesn't know how good she is, like a baby lion that doesn't realize she will be king of the jungle. We played a tournament last Sunday, her first ever. It was 'adult/youth' scotch doubles, so we took turns shooting. She made a horrible mistake and lost us our first match in a double elim format. Then she hit a gear and we won 6 in a row to end up in 2nd place. The coolest part was the team we played for 2nd had a girl on the team who my daughter is enamored with, she looks up to her and thinks she's really good. Well, we beat them every game, my daughter made staggeringly strong hero shots in each game to win it for us. I'm glad she gets to see that she can compete and win if she works hard and delivers her game. Most of all it's fun that we get to hang out and hit balls together.
D8 is doing well too. Reading together, doing puzzles. She likes puzzles so as a xmas gift I have a personalized puzzle coming with a picture of her and a little note from her dad on it. Still waiting to see who she becomes as right now she's still following the lead of her older sister and hasn't quite hit her own stride yet. But we're doing lots of little things so she'll have chances to find out. November was her birthday, we went out for breakfast at IHOP, then we played a crane game. I always say no, so on her birthday I got 10 $1 bills and let her swing away at the stuffed animals all she wanted. LO AND BEHOLD, SHE HOOKED ONE! First time I've seen it. It made her day. I'm so happy for her. Then we went to a used bookstore and good a couple of cool books. Just thought I'd share, cool day with my daughter.
XW. I'm so far past "meh" I couldn't catch the bus back to meh. Pretty awesome. I think she's graduating her nursing program (NO idea what type of degree or what kind of work she can now do, I'm all the way out on her life) soon and might become a home health aide. When I heard that I remember genuinely thinking "Good for her" without any desire to see the karma bus hit her nor any longing to have anything to do with her. Meh is awesome. I'm done paying her in May, I can almost taste the finish line!
Work. Speaking of Meh, that's where I'm at with work. Slugging away. Never good enough to relax, never bad enough to lose sleep. The bank I work for really screwed up in 2016 and it's been dismal since, but they expect their sales stars to magically rescue them by hitting unrealistic goals (even when those goals caused all of the problems originally...). Whatever. I'm getting paid enough to pay my bills, and I'm producing enough to not lose my job, at least today. So it's all good. And I like helping my customers.
Pool. Playing a lot. Went to a FL tournament and got beat badly. Did ok at a regional event in WI. Going to a 10 day tourney in January (Derby City Classic, Louisville KY). US Open 9 ball in April 19. MN State Championship 1/5-1/6. Some other regional thing end of this month. Probably feather in a few more events. I'm hitting them pretty good. Really want to play better, but still playing well enough to enjoy the game and put up a good fight. I guess I'm excited that I'm filling up my tournament calendar, in the past I've averaged about 1 pro event a year, next year I want to hit 5-6. That's a new thing for me and I'm excited to have a legitimate opportunity to acclimate and perform. I really love the game. When I'm done posting this I'll go practice again. Oh, and I got a beautiful 9' diamond pro-am table, it's exactly what we play pro events on and it was a beast to get installed (one piece slate!). It's a real joy to have that table. Gotta get back to it!
Not terribly exciting, I just do my job, raise my kids, and then practice my pool.
Oh, one thing- I have a buddy that just joined the forum. Username rerediss. Just posted today for the first time. If any of you want to lend a hand to a newcomer please take a look. Juju, I'd love it if you could bop over, he's dealing with a WW who is nowhere near remorseful (she's still in the 'can't I have both of you' phase), I think you could be of value!
I did learn something about myself from that. I realized I referred him to this site, not CL's. While I read CL and enjoy much of her content, when the chips were down I still found value in him standing by his marriage and working on himself. Plenty of time to dump a cheater later on. I know I never regret what I put into myself as the marriage finished burning to a crisp.
OK, wrapping up. Thanks again to all of you and have a happy holiday!!!
Me:38 XW:38 T:11 years M:8 years Kids: S14, D11, D7 BD/Move out day: 6/17/14, D final Dec 15
