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PICK THIS ONE! YOU'LL LOOK SO RUGGED! I don't really understand why Mom was so upset. Most of the stuff that got ruined was in the basement for a reason, and that's because we never USE it. One of the things Mom was really sad about was a "spoon carousel" Gammie gave us five or six years ago. I think we were supposed to collect a spoon from every country in the world, but we only got up to Canada.

I did feel pretty bad for Mom when she found out one of the family photo albums got ruined. A few years ago Mom got into scrapbooking, and she spent a lot of time cutting out pictures and doing these really fancy photo pages. But there's one page in that album I didn't like, because Rodrick always teases me about it. It's the one where I had a breakdown before a pony ride at the state fair.

Rodrick always says I was scared of the pony, but that's not true at all. I was scared of the guy HANDLING the pony, but Mom cropped HIM out of the picture. Speaking of Rodrick, the flooding didn't seem to bother him at all. In fact, I'll bet if I hadn't woken him up he would've kept sleeping even if his bed floated up the stairs and out of the house.

The rest of the day was pretty awful. The water in the basement kept getting higher, so we had to make a bucket relay line with some of Manny's sand pails. Dad called from his hotel room to check in on us, and Mom told him what happened. Dad said he was really sorry he wasn't home to help, but something tells me he's OK with the way things worked out for him.

I would LOVE to trade places with Dad right now, because he's got a clean room and a king-size bed all to himself. Mom told me and Rodrick that since the basement was flooded, we're gonna have to share MY room. She said it would be good for both of us to get used to having a "roommate," because it was practice for college. Me and Rodrick shared a room this summer for a weekend. We had to spend a few days at Gramma's while Mom and Dad took Manny to a kiddie amusement park. Gramma has a guest room, so I figured one of us would sleep on her couch and the other would get the guest bed. But Gramma said the guest room was "occupied," so

we couldn't sleep there. She'd given the whole room to sweetie, the dog we gave her. But you'd hardly know he's the same dog, because Gramma feeds him so much he looks like a tick that's about to pop. Gramma said me and Rodrick could sleep together on the pullout couch she has in the living room. But that couch is covered in plastic because she doesn't trust us kids not to spill something on it. So me and Rodrick spent a whole weekend sleeping