Here's some more of my story...PLEASE COMMENT!!!

I lay on my bed staring at a crack in the ceiling. I'm not really in the mood to unpack. I let the sweltering heat engulf me. I close my eyes and think of my home in Seattle. It was a little apartment in an old hotel. Me and my mom lived there even since my dad left when I was only 7 years old. I remember that day so clearly. I was very close with my dad when I was little, we would go places together, he took me to school every morning, I told him everything and I would cry for about an hour every time he had to leave on business trips. Things have changed since then. I used to call him every day and send him emails telling him all about what was going on in my life. But when I was about 12 I stopped calling. He tried to keep our relationship together, but eventually he just gave up.

I saw him for 2 weeks every summer and as I got older I started dreading those 2 weeks more than any other time of the year. I would fly down to the heat of Georgia and help my dad with chores around his little farm. We hardly spoke to each other for those 2 weeks. We had gone from best friends to awkward comrades, our visits forced upon us by my mother.

I open my eyes and look back up at the ceiling. I feel my eyes begin to water. I never cry. My dad always told me; "crying about it won't solve anything." I tried to stop the flow but I cried anyway. Tears leaked out of the sides of my eyes and down into my hair. I drew a rattly breath and sniffed.

"Libby! Dinner's ready!" I heard my dad yell up the stairs.

I sat up and looked in the mirror on the little cabinet. I dry my face and hope my eyes aren't too red. I walk down the stair into the small kitchen.

"I thought we'd eat in the dining room tonight" declared my dad. "After all it's a special occasion I suppose."

I nodded and followed him into the dining room. It's a rather dark room, it used to scare me when I was little when I came down here. I always thought that there might be monsters lurking between the chair legs. There's a long wooden table down the middle with wooden chair all around it. The window facing the front of the house is open to let in the fresh air. I sit down and let the smell of tomato sauce and deliciously seasoned meatballs waft up my nose.

"Smells good." I said.

"This used to be your favorite," said my dad as he serves me a heaping portion of noodles and a ladle of homemade spaghetti sauce along with 3 huge meatballs.

"Some things never change I guess," I said.

He smiles and hands me the plate.

"We canned these tomatoes last year together, remember?" he asks.

"Oh yeah," I said. That was another miserable experience that came with visiting the farm, canning. Fist picking the fruit or vegetable you wished to can in the hot sun all morning long then the actual canning process in the kitchen which involved boiling water to sanitize the jars and make the room so unbearably hot that you just wanted to dunk yourself in a bucket of ice. My dad had no air conditioning except for noisy fans like the one in my room. In the winter, although it never got that cold, he heated the house with a wood-burning stove so nights could get pretty chilly even with the space-heaters.

He sat down across from me after serving himself a plate of spaghetti. We ate in silence not really knowing what to say to each other.

"Big senior next year!" said my dad. "Exited?"

"Not really," I said staring down at my plate.

"Never know," he said.

That was about the longest exchange of words that we had over the course of dinner. He asked me a few questions about school, my friends, my mom and other things that I replied to with short 1 or 2 word answers. After dinner while my dad was washing dishes (he said he wouldn't make me help clean up on my first day here but that that would soon change) I plugged my laptop into the wall and checked my email. I was glad my dad had wireless, he probably installed it for me before I came. I had two unread messages. One from my friends Emily and Vikki who had emailed some pictures from our sleepover we had before I left. Most of them were just pictures of us distorting our faces in strange ways and sticking our tongues out, but there was one nice one of the three of us laughing at something. I decided that I would print it out later and get a frame for it so that I could remember my friends from back home. The other email was from my mom (go figure). She asked how I was and all the other typical mom stuff. I shot back a quick response and went back downstairs.

My dad was watching T.V., when I came into the room he said "Hey Libbs, want to watch a movie?"

"Sure," I lied.

I sat on the recliner across the room from where my dad was sitting on the couch. We found some old black and white movie that was thoroughly uninteresting, but I watched it to make my dad happy. After the movie, it was only 10:30, but I told my dad I was going to go to bed.

"Good night sweetie. I love you," he said when I got up to go to my room.

"Ok," I said.