7

But Dad wouldn't let it go. He said now that I'm getting older, I need to start being more "responsible." I've heard this sort of thing from Dad before. The last few weeks of the summer, our neighbor, Ms. Grove, hired me to take care of her plants while she was on a business trip. Well, I did it for the first few days, and then I guess you could say I got busy with other things. When Dad asked me how the plants were doing, I realized I hadn't been over there in at least a WEEK. I went to grab Ms. Grove's key so I could water her plants, but the key wasn't in its usual spot. I practically turned our house upside down looking for that key, but I couldn't find it. It turns out the reason I couldn't find the key was

because it wasn't in our house. I'd left it at Ms. Grove's, and she found it when she got back from her trip. Ms. Grove was pretty mad that her key was in the front door, but the way I see it, she should've been happy nobody robbed her house. She was mad about her plants, too, because unfortunately most of them didn't make it. I suggested that maybe she should buy a cactus or another plant that doesn't need a lot of water to survive. That way, everything would be fine if I lost her key the NEXT time she went on a business trip.

But Ms. Grove said she wouldn't hire me again even if her life depended on it. Then she sent me home without paying, which stinks, because I really did spend a lot of time looking for that key. Anyway, I think that episode is still fresh in Dad's mind, and that's why I'm hearing this "responsibility" thing again. Hopefully, Dad will leave my socks on the television next time around and things won't get to this point. Thursday Well, Dad is really serious about me taking on more responsibility. And the first thing he wants me to do is start waking myself up in the morning.

That's actually a real problem, because I depend on HIM to wake me up. HUP HUP HUP. LET'S GO! That's the way we've been doing it for YEARS, and I really don't see any reason to change things now. Dad said that if I don't learn to wake myself up with an alarm clock, then I'm not gonna know how to do it when I go off to college. But I always figured that would be the way me and Dad would stay in touch.

HELLO! HUP HUP HUP. LET'S GO! Yesterday was the first day I tried to wake myself up, and it didn't work out so well. My alarm went off and all, but the sound just worked its way into my dream. And today didn't go any better. I set my alarm to "radio" and tuned it to a classical music station because I didn't want to hear that annoying beep

first thing in the morning. But the music didn't wake me up, either. The problem is, without an actual human being waking me up, my brain is always gonna find some excuse to keep sleeping. But I think I might've figured out a solution to this alarm clock situation. I found one of those old-style windup clocks in the storage room today, and those clocks make a huge racket when they go off. I tested it out to see if it still worked, and sure enough, it did.