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Most of my gifts this year were books or clothes. The closest thing I got to a toy was a present from Uncle Charlie. When I unwrapped Uncle Charlie's gift, I didn't even know what it was supposed to be. It was this big plastic ring with a net attached to it. Uncle Charlie explained that it was a "Laundry Hoop" for my bedroom. He said I was supposed to hang the Laundry Hoop on the back of my door and it would make putting away my dirty clothes "fun."

At first I thought it was a joke, but then I realized Uncle Charlie was serious. So I had to explain to him that I don't actually Do my own laundry. I told him I just throw my dirty clothes on the floor, and Mom picks them up and takes them downstairs to the laundry room.

Then a few days later, everything comes back to me in nice, folded piles. I told Uncle Charlie he should just return the Laundry Hoop and give me cash so I could buy something I'd actually use. That's when Mom spoke up. She told Uncle Charlie she thought the Laundry Hoop was a great idea. Then she said that from now on I'd be doing my own laundry. So basically, it ends up that Uncle Charlie got me a chore for Christmas. It really stinks that I got such crummy gifts this year. I put in a lot of effort buttering people up for

the past few months, and I thought it would pay off on Christmas. Now that I'm responsible for my own laundry, I guess I'm kind of glad I got a bunch of clothes. I might actually make it through the whole school year before I run out of clean stuff to wear. Monday When me and Rowley got to our bus stop today, we found a nasty surprise. There was a piece of paper taped to our street sign, and it said that, effective

today, our bus route was "rezoned." And what that means is now we have to walk to school. Well, I'd like to talk to the genius who came up with that idea, because our street is almost a quarter of a mile from the school. Me and Rowley had to run to make it to school on time today. And what really stunk was when our regular bus passed us by and it was full of kids from Whirley Street, the neighborhood right next to ours. The Whirley Street kids made monkey noises when they passed us, which was really annoying because that's exactly what we used to do when we passed them.

I'll tell you one reason it's a bad idea to make kids walk to school. These days, teachers give you so much homework that, with all the books and papers you have to carry home, your backpack ends up weighing like a hundred pounds. And if you want to see what kind of an effect that has on kids over time, all you have to do is look at Rodrick and some of his friends. Speaking of teenagers, Dad scored a pretty big