5

Of course THAT meant going to the Old- Timey Ice Cream Parlour. I was getting a little sick of spending every night at Rodrick's work, and I think Grandpa was feeling the same way. He told Mom ice cream makes his gums hurt and he was gonna stay home this time around. I tried using the same excuse, but Mom was dead set on us going. When we got to the restaurant, though, Rodrick was nowhere to be found. The manager told Mom that Rodrick never showed up for work.

That sent Mom into a PANIC, and we got back in the van to go look for him. We drove all over the place, and we finally found Rodrick walking along the side of the highway. When we pulled over, Rodrick got in the van and explained what happened. He said there was a traffic jam on the highway and he was gonna be late for work. So the got into the car-pool lane, where he could go a lot FASTER. But the rule for the car-pool lane is that you have to have at least TWO people in your vehicle.

So Rodrick made it look like Old-Timey Tobias was sitting next to him in the passenger seat. Unfortunately, some eagle-eyed cop pulled him over. The cop wasn't amused and gave Rodrick a ticket for one hundred dollars. Then he found all sorts of things wrong with the van, like a broken taillight and an expired inspection sticker. After that, the cop had Rodrick's van towed and left him stranded on the side of the road. So Rodrick was a HUGE target for all the kids who were stuck in the traffic jam.

Mom told Dad to drive home so she could throw Rodrick's costume in the washing machine. But when we got to our street, there were cars parked up and down on both sides. There were even cars parked on our LAWN, which was pretty strange.

We had to park the van at the bottom of the hill and walk up the street. When we finally got to our yard, you could hear loud music coming from the house. And when we opened the front door, there was a RAGING party going on inside. We had to push through the crowd to find Grandpa, who was out back in our old hot tub. And from the look of things, he was having the time of his LIFE.

Dad kicked everyone out of the house, which took FOREVER, mostly because no one was in a big hurry to leave. When everyone was gone, Dad lit into Grandpa for having a party.