This weekend my dad will be home and he’ll be home for Easter too and I am beyond excited and beyond nervous at the exact same time.  He’ll also be home all of next week and I plan on being with him all week long, hopefully, that’s the key word, hopefully.  My dad and I are so similar and that’s why we don’t see eye to eye, which makes no sense riiiiigghht?  It doesn’t make any sense but that’s just the way it is I suppose and its true every time I see him we have a fight except for when we’re in Florida.  The last time he was home, we got into a huge fight, I cracked some of his ribs, and we threw a couple punches.  YIKES riiiiigghht???  Now we just forget about it because it’s in the past and we focus on the present and don’t worry about it each day is a new one.

My dad was always busy when I was little he was never really around so my grandpa filled the father figure and that’s probably why I have more respect for my grandpa than I do my dad.  He just wasn’t there when I needed him, he shipped out for three weeks at a time, but then he had three weeks off, but he was working on building another story on one of his buildings.  He was never really home but once he was home it was late at night and I was already in bed for the most part.  He got up early in the morning around five and left to go work on the buildings and whatever else he needed to do.

            This weekend hopefully my dad and I will fix my chainsaw and go cut the fallen trees blocking our trails on the wheelahs if most of the snow is gone and hopefully the trails are fairly bare.  I would love to do some trail riding with my dad and fix my golf cart that I broke haha.  I like spending time with my dad we usually have fun I just wish we wouldn’t fight anymore because that’s not fun for anyone.  I wish we wouldn’t fight anymore cause them I would feel more comfortable about moving in with him because if we fight like we do now and im living with him that would be bad.

            I hope that my sister will come and spend the night and then wake up on Easter morning with us, she hunt for eggs, and we’ll all have a good time.  That’s what we usually do on Easter and then later on we go back to my moms and eat dinnah with her my sister, my grandpa, and my aunt.  Then ill either spend the night at moms or head back and spend the night back at dads, I don’t really know yet, but ill cross that bridge when I come to it.  It will be a fun filled day, I get to spend time with my dad, spend time with my grandpa and aunt, eat candy, couldn’t ask for a better day.  

Recently I have made the decision to quit chewing tobacco and it’s going really well.  It’s been one week and one day without any dip, it’s been the worst week of my entire life, I have no energy, and I am irritated all the damn time.  I just wish I was 18 then it wouldn’t be a big deal, but im not, I am 16 and it is illegal for me to dip.  I have a bunch of warnings for possession of tobacco by a minor and had a summons to court, but I did a program that got rid of the summons and I successfully completed it and now I don’t have to go to court.

These two people are the main reason that I needed to quit because he doesn’t want me to be addicted to tobacco like he is and she wouldn’t want to see me doing it.  I always felt guilty when I dipped because I knew she was lookin down at me and shaking her head.  She would be so disappointed in me and I don’t want to disappoint her because she meant the world me and now she’s gone and I know she’s watching me from somewhere sittin on a cloud.  She wouldn’t want me to be addicted to tobacco and that is why I had to quit.

           

The 1^st time I got caught all I could think was what is she thinking right now or what is she doing right now.  I thought to myself she is so disappointed in me and it made me wanna c  Every time I got caught that’s all I could think was that she is so disappointed in me and that I made her upset, it killed me on the inside to know that I had made her cry and disappoint her, but I didn’t because I knew she wouldn’t want to see me cry.

 I did it for no one else besides her, it would be a lot easier if she was still here and I could hear her voice saying, “you can do it nick I believe in you”.  That is the hardest part of quitting, not having her here to support me, having her help me beat my addiction, being here with me and cheer me on as I do so.  I would give anything for her to be here and help me through this rough time in my life, but its never gonna happen and its so hard.  I would give anything for her to be here and hear her tell me how proud she is that im quitting and that she loves me not matter what I do even though she might not love my choices in life.  Now I’ve realized that its time to quit and make her proud and not make her have to worry about me.

            

Over February vacation, my sister and I went to see our dad on his boat in Florida.  We got on the plane at Bangor International Airport a little after 6:30pm, then we had to go de ice, and there were 2 more planes ahead of us.  I was like oh my god this is bull**** I just want to be in Florida right now, then finally after we de iced, we took off.  Around 10:00pm we flew into Orlando, unfortunately it is a 5-hour drive to the boat.  By the time we got in the car, it was 11:00pm because it took a while to get off the plane then we had to go to the bathroom. 

When we finally got to the car, we drank a bunch of iced tea and my dad had like 5 Red Bulls because we couldn’t find a hotel so we had to drive all the way to the boat.  We spent a lot of time gettin off the selected route to fin hotels, so by the time we got to the boat it was past 5:00am.  We went around the house, got onto the boat, and then got everything inside, and then I crashed out on the bed.  I slept most of the day away because I was soo tired, unfortunately that was one of the nicest days we had down there. 

My sister woke me up and told me that my dad wanted to talk to me, so I got up and got dress and headed up the tuna tower.  I was still half asleep, my dad said, “here you steer” I was like holy crap im still half asleep, and now im steering this 52ft boat down theses narrow canals.  Then we had to turn around and it was quite a tricky situation, my dad used the engines to turn us completely around.  I was amazed at my dads piloting capabilities, but then again this boat is nothing compared to the ship with the barge that my dad pilots off the coast of Philly, which is hundreds of feet in total.  We took the boat to the marina that he used to have his boat in to say hi but I was so tired that I went back down into the salon and fell back asleep.

         While we were in Florida we did a lot of fun things, I think the best thing we did was went jet skiing, we went all over the place.  We got out in the harbor, a HUGE cruise ship was just leaving, it created an insane wake, and we went braap braaap braaapin through it.  It was a lot of fun, I can’t wait to go back, and hangout with my dad and just being relaxed and he’s not busy all the damn time.  I had an amazing time jet skiing with my dad, sister, and my dad’s friend Doug; I would definitely do it again.

          Another thing we did was go to theater of the sea and that was pretty cool.  We went on a bottomless boat ride and as we go down the canal dolphins come up in the middle of the boat and do tricks and stuff.  The woman steered the boat with an outboard motor, and she did it with her foot.  There were a lot of cool things the animals did a bunch of amazing tricks that were pretty solid, my sis had a pretty good time.  Although she got grumpy cause my dad would buy her food and she said, “oh so you’ll let your own daughter starve to death” haha. 

Every summer my dad and his crew go down to his boat and they go off shore fishing and catch all kinds of fish I hopefully ill be able to go with him and his crew.  I really wanted to last year but it just never happened, I don’t really know why but it just didn’t.  Last year when we went down I met his chief engineer “Jeff” and he was pretty cool and I wanted to meet the rest of the crew and see Jeff again so hopefully ill be able to go down this summer.

           I wish I could go live with him down on the boat in Florida but he’s gone for 6 months out of the year, it would be fun because everything we did in that one week we could do all the time!!  I miss Florida especially when we have this crappy weather up here in Maine. 

           I had the best vacation in Florida with my dad we did so many fun things that I cant wait to do again next February vacation.