Redneck Yacht Club.

So. Summary of past couple of days: Hell. My mother and I made a trip to visit my siblings (she now is allowed to have supervised visitation with them, and she has another court date in two weeks), cue a two day long emotional breakdown/fight with my stepdad that involved lots of tears and screaming and me sitting in the garage to get some peace.

FAST FORWARD TO TODAY.

Woke up this morning, things were good. Like. Out of nowhere. Everyone was pretending everything was okay. And that's perfectly fine with me, because that's generally how I operate. Pretend the problem doesn't exist.

My mom came in and told me to put my bathing suit on, and I obliged. After getting ready and packing some snacks, my stepdad hitched his giant white & green airboat to the back of our Tahoe, and off we went. We stopped at Wal-mart to buy sunglasses for me, some Chips Ahoy cookies and more food, and met up with our family friend Pepper, who also had his tiny (but fast as hell) green airboat hitched to the back of his pickup.

After thirty minutes or so of more driving, we ended up at Lake Kissimmee, in the backwoods. Close your eyes, and picture the most stereotypical, hillbilly trailer you can imagine, complete with Christmas lights. Now surround it with forest, and a shady dirt road. In the background, there's a lake. But it looks more like a swamp, thick with lily pads and sea grass. And there's a big grassy clearing next to the lake, lined with pickup trucks and ATV's, which is the where they unload the boats.

We unhooked our boat of its trailer, as did Pepper, and we all got on. I described my Papaw's airboat in my other entry, but my stepdad's boat is much, much nicer, bigger, louder, and faster. We drove the boats into the lake, and went speeding across it.

The water was so perfectly smooth, it was like a big mirror. I almost felt like it would be solid if you touched it. And the sky was the perfect shade of blue, with big white fluffy clouds in the distance. And we were going so fast it felt like flying. It was incredible.

And then came the fun part.

We stopped at a small grassy island in the middle of the lake, where there were at least thirty other airboats lined up, and a bunch of people just hanging out; in lawn chairs, on their boats, knee-deep in water, everywhere. When we showed up everyone gave us a warm welcome, even the people we'd never met before. And we all just sat around talking and laughing, watching a few of the idiots race each other and catching up on life.

I met a girl who was about a year younger than me, and her name was Bird. Bird, according to my stepfather and everyone else on the island, is an expert at airboats, even though she's a sixteen year old girl. She could tear one apart and put it back together again if she wanted to. I was so impressed when she walked over to our boat and started talking to my stepdad about parts and things and other airboat jargon. But she was very nice to me, and hopefully I'll see her again sometime this week.

She also had a sister, named Brenna, who was stunningly pretty. She was so pretty I felt uncomfortable in her presence. There was another sister, whose name I forgot, but she was eighteen and just-graduated, like me, and she was quiet like me, and just by looking at her I could tell me and her could've been best friends. But since we're both rather shy, we just went about our separate business, sharing little smiles every now and again. Oh, and we had the same shoes, only mine were white and hers were black.

There was also a boy there who looked like he might've been nineteen or so, who was very cute, for a redneck. He had red hair and freckles but he wasn't dorky looking or anything, had a nice body, and a tattoo of a cross on his back. He smoked Marlboros and was wearing camo shorts. Totally not the type of guy I'm normally attracted to, but there was something about him.

Usually the guys who I'm inexplicably attracted to in that manner are assholes. So I guess it's best that I didn't say one word to him the whole time. Even though he always seemed to be close by, and I thought I caught him looking at me once or twice. But I was probably imagining it. Because boys don't check me out.

At one point there was an old man whose boat flipped and everyone freaked out and rushed over to see if he was okay. He was.

The whole ordeal was so much fun and I'm so glad I got to go. On the ride back to where our Tahoe was, it started raining. And since we were going so fast, the droplets stung my skin.

Then we came home, and ate Little Caeser's pizza and pie and I took a shower and now I am writing this.

I love days like this, I love my life, and I love my blog readers.