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the basket came to me, I made a big deal of putting the dollar in the basket to make sure Holly could see how generous I was. But when I put the money in the basket, I realized Mom had given me a twenty, not a single. I tried to grab the basket to make change, but it was too late. All I can say is, I better get some points in Heaven for that donation. I've heard that when you do good deeds, you're supposed to be all private about it, but that doesn't really make a whole lot of sense to me. If I start hiding my good deeds, I'm sure I'll just regret it later on.

BUT WHAT ABOUT THAT SQUIRREL I HELPED WITH THE BROKEN LEG? SORRY... I MUST'VE MISSED THAT. Like I said before, the Easter service is superlong. One of the songs was going on for about five minutes, and I started looking for ways to entertain myself. The way that Rodrick keeps himself busy when he's bored is by picking at this scab on the back of his hand that he never lets heal, but I'm not really interested in going that route. Manny has it made in church. Mom and Dad let him bring all sorts of stuff with us to keep him entertained. Believe me, Mom and Dad never let me bring anything to church when I was his age.

Mom and Dad always baby Manny, though, and I'll give you an example of what I'm talking about. Last week Manny was at preschool, and when he opened up his lunchbox his sandwich was cut in half, not in quarters, the way he likes it. Manny threw a huge temper tantrum, and the teachers had to call Mom. So she left work and drove all the way down to Manny's school to make the extra slice. Anyway, I was thinking about this at church, and all

of a sudden I got an idea in my head. I leaned over to Manny and whispered— Well, Manny completely lost it. He started bawling, and everyone in the church turned their heads our way. Even the minister stopped talking to see what was going on. Mom couldn't calm Manny down, so we had to leave. Instead of walking out the side door, though, we walked right down the center aisle. I tried to look as cool as possible when we walked past the Hills family, but it was pretty tough. nkledc. considering the circumstances.

The only person more embarrassed than me was Dad. Dad tried to cover his face with the church bulletin, but his boss spotted him and gave Dad the "thumbs up" on the way out. Wednesday Things have kind of been tense around the house since the mess the other day. First of all, Mom was really mad at me for calling Manny "Ploopy," so I had to remind her that she didn't have any problem when Manny said it. So Mom banned the word for everyone, and she said that if anyone was caught saying it, they'd be grounded for a week. But of course it didn't take long for Rodrick to find a loophole.

This isn't the first time Mom has banned us from saying certain words in the house. A while back, Mom made a "no swearing" rule, because Manny was picking up new words left and right.