Diary of a wimpy kid 06 cabin f dinoberk

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Saturday NOVEMBER

Most people look forward to the holidays, but the stretchbetween Thanksgiving and Christmas just makes me a n-ervous wreck If you make a mistake in the first elevenmonths of the year, it's no big deal But if you do some-thing wrong during the holiday season, you're gonna payfor it.

It's too much pressure to be on your best behavior for awhole month The most I can really handle is six or sevendays in a row So if they moved Thanksgiving to the weekbefore Christmas, it would be fine by me.

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The thing that REALLY makes me nervous is this wholeSanta issue The fact that he can see you when you'resleeping and knows when you're awake really creeps meout So I've started wearing sweatpants to bed becauseI really don't need Santa seeing me in my underwear.

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embarrassing moments.

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It's not just Santa I've got to worry about, either Lastyear when Mom was going through some old boxes, shefound a homemade doll from her childhood.

Mom said the doll is called ``Santa's Scout'' and that hisjob is to watch how kids behave and then report back toSanta at the North Pole.

Well, I'm not a fan of that idea First of all, I think youhave a right to privacy in your own home And second,Santa's Scout gives me the willies.

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But it probably doesn't matter anyway, because my old-er brothold-er, Rodrick, is constantly feeding Santa's Scoutbad information about me.

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the sink that's really embarrassing, but Mom won't let methrow it out.

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The reason Manny was so upset was because someonehung his favorite ornament, this candy cane he really likes.So Mom took it off the tree and handed it to Manny tohang up himself.

But Manny wanted his ornament to be the FIRST oneon the tree, so that meant we had to take all the deco-rations down, just so he could get his way.

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Monday

Right before Thanksgiving break, there was a contestat school to see who could come up with the best anti-bullying slogan, and the grand prize was a pizza party forthe winning team.

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The whole situation spun out of control, and eventuallythe vice principal had to step in to stop it from turninginto a full-scale riot.

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The day before Thanksgiving there was a big anti-bullyingassembly, and everyone in the auditorium was looking atDennis the whole time I kind of felt sorry for him, so Itried to make him feel better.

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Well, the Tell-a-Teacher station just ended up being aconvenient place for the bullies to hang out and find theirnext victims.

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kind of thing at my school In fact, one of the reasonsI try to stay under the radar is because I don't want toend up getting stuck with a nickname like Cody Johnsondid.

In kindergarten Cody stepped in some dog poop at re-cess, and ever since then people have called him ``Dookie.''

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The teachers always say that when you're getting pickedon, you should tell an adult I think that's a good idea, butit didn't work out so well when I was getting bullied.

There was this kid who lived in the neighborhood nextto mine, and for some reason everyone called him ``NastyPants.''

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The thing that really stunk was that me and Rowleyused the woods in that neighborhood as a shortcut toget to school So we started having to go out of our wayto avoid getting harassed by Nasty Pants.

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After getting chased a few more times, I decided I'dhad enough, so I told Dad about the situation I was afraidDad was gonna say I needed to toughen up and deal withthe problem myself, but he surprised me Dad said thatHE had problems with a bully at my age and he knew justwhat I was going through.

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thing to do was pin a kid's arm behind his back and holdit there until he cried.

Dad said that the kids in the neighborhood told theirparents about Billy and they all went to Billy's house toconfront his mom and dad Mr Staples made Billy promiseto never pick on anyone ever again, and Dad said Billyburst into tears and might have even wet his pants.

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Dad knocked on Nasty Pants's door, and we waited forone of his parents to open it.

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I guess I should've described Nasty Pants to Dad, be-cause it took him a while to understand that the kid whocame to the door was the one who was causing us all thattrouble.

Dad talked to Mrs Pants, and she told Dad her son wasonly five and that he just gets a little wound up some-times.

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So recess is basically like a prison yard.

I heard the school was having trouble paying the insur-ance for the playground, so every time there was somekind of accident or injury on a piece of equipment, theeasiest thing to do was just remove it.

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We lost the monkey bars when a girl named ChristineHiggins climbed to the top and then got too scared tocome down.

The teachers aren't allowed to touch kids, so they hadto call Christine's parents to come and get her.

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Without any playground equipment, there's really noth-ing for us to do But the teachers won't even let us sitdown, because they say we have to stay ``active.''

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cated Last week somebody found a miniature car buriedin the sawdust that looked like it had been there for years.

The car had three missing wheels, but people were sodesperate for entertainment that they lined up to playwith it while others kept lookout.

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If you ask me, I think people are getting too carriedaway with all this safety stuff I went to Manny's peeweesoccer game, and all the kids had to wear bicycle helmets.

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being gone is that now I actually have a chance to startdoing well in school.

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to take a test.

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Earlier this year we had a math teacher named Mr S-parks who used to stand on his chair every time he want-ed us to remember something important.

But once when Mr Sparks was trying to get us toremember a math concept, one of the legs on his chairbroke and he fell.

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A few people started cheering and clapping They must'vethought Rowley was protesting all the new rules by skip-ping instead of running, but the truth is, skipskip-ping is justsomething Rowley likes to do.

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I will admit that I never exactly got the hang of skipping.In fact, I was the only kid in first grade who couldn't doit.

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Thursday

The thing that stinks about having Santa's Scout watch-ing my every move at home is that I can't get away withthe things I used to do during the holidays.

A few years ago Mom and Dad put some gifts underthe tree a week before Christmas, and it was driving mecrazy not knowing what they were.

One of the gifts had my name on it, and I was prettysure it was a video game I made a tiny little tear in thewrapping paper to see, and sure enough, it was a game I'dasked for.

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put the box back in the wrapping paper and taped itclosed.

But I started to get paranoid that Mom was gonna pickup the present and notice it felt lighter, so I opened it backup and put one of Rodrick's heavy metal CDs inside thebox to make it the same weight it was before.

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my present in front of Mom and Dad, Rodrick's CD s-lipped out and rolled onto the floor.

The day after Christmas, Mom took the CD to theGame Hut and chewed the clerk out for selling her ma-terial that was ``inappropriate'' for kids.

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But Mom keeps her e-mail on the computer in the k-itchen, and it's hard to get onto her account when San-ta's Scout is watching me like a hawk.

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A few years ago I forgot to write out a wish list, and Ipaid the price for it Mom was pregnant with Manny, andshe wanted me to get ready for having a baby brother.

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I have to admit, after a few months I got really attachedto that doll.

Since I didn't have a pet, it was kind of nice to havesomething to take care of for once.

But one day I came home from school and I couldn'tfind Alfrendo ANYWHERE I searched the house fromtop to bottom, but there was no trace of him.

The only thing I could think of was that I dropped Al-frendo at some point and somehow didn't notice.

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Then I wrapped the grapefruit in a dish towel, and forthe next three months I pretended it was my doll.

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In fact, I still worry about that to this day It's the reasonI always check to make sure my window is locked beforeI go to bed at night.

I'm a little embarrassed to say this, but I actually gotattached to that GRAPEFRUIT, too But after a while itstarted to rot, and Dad traced the weird smell back tomy Alfrendo decoy.

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In fact, I've been playing Net Kritterz every free secondI get The basic idea is that you have to feed your pet andkeep it happy And if your pet is happy, you get tokens soyou can buy it clothes and furniture and stuff like that.

I've played so much that my pet Chihuahua has a mansionwith an indoor swimming pool, a bowling alley, and about150 different outfits.

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how to change the name she registered with.

Mom says I take better care of my virtual pet than I domyself, and I guess I can't argue with her there Over theweekend I played for sixteen hours without even takinga break to go to the bathroom.

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The problem is you can only earn a certain number oftokens, and after that you have to buy them with realmoney Unfortunately, I don't have my own credit card,so that means I have to beg Mom and Dad to use theirs.And it's not real easy to convince Dad to break openhis wallet so you can buy a fancy outfit for your virtualpet.

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put on the rest of my wish list I could actually use a lot ofdifferent things, because a couple weeks ago when I spentthe night at the hospital getting my tonsils out, Manny soldhalf of everything I owned.

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So I called up Rowley and asked him to come over, eventhough I was still a little bothered by the whole skippingthing.

When Rowley got to my house, we sat down in frontof the TV to play video games, but Mom said we had toshut off the machine and interact ``face-to-face.''

But one of the things that makes my friendship withRowley work is that he doesn't MIND watching me playvideo games.

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Mom sent me and Rowley down to the basement, andthe two of us tried to figure out what to do I'd askedRowley to bring some DVDs with him so we could stayup late watching movies.

But he only brought HOME movies, and you couldn'tPAY me to watch THOSE.

Mom brought us down some ``Wacky Sentences'' books,where you fill in the blanks to create funny phrases.

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It was really driving me crazy So we switched roles,and I came up with the words instead Rowley startedby asking me for the name of a sport, so I said ``volleyball.''But he told me it's ``bolleyball,'' with a ``b.'' So then wegot into this huge argument about what letter ``volleyball''starts with.

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Rowley accused me of having an outdated dictionaryand said that's why ``bolleyball'' wasn't in it, so then we gotinto an argument about what year volleyball was invented.By this point Rowley was really getting on my nerves,and I realized we'd better change gears or we were gonnaend up in a fight, as usual.

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I decided we just needed a break from each other, so Icame up with an idea I told Rowley we were gonna seewho was braver, me or him, and we stepped out the slidingglass door.

Each of us had to walk into the woods and write ourname on the tree fort we built last summer And who-ever chickened out was wrong about volleyball and hadto call the other guy ``sir'' for the rest of his life.

Rowley seemed to think that was a fair deal.

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Once I finished my ice cream, I walked around the sideof the house, rubbed some dirt on my face and clothes,then came running out of the woods.

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Anyway, that break was just what the doctor ordered,and the rest of the night was argument-free.

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I don't think Rowley totally understood that you're justsupposed to shake hands with people, either, because whenthe woman in the pew behind us said ``Peace be with you,''Rowley gave her a big wet kiss on the cheek.

After church we dropped Rowley off at his house, and Iwas glad he was gone and that I could go back to playingmy game.

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at least two hours of commercials a day, it makes himhappy and you get twenty bonus tokens.

Then I asked Mom if she wouldn't mind spotting me tenbucks because the Net Kritterz store just started car-rying trampoline shoes and I was pretty sure Gregory'sLittle Friend would really like to have them.

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I told Mom I didn't have any money of my own andthat's why I kept hitting up her and Dad But she saidthere were plenty of things I could do to earn some Shesaid it's supposed to snow tonight and I could go out andshovel our neighbors' driveways tomorrow.

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I wish the school would give us something useful to sell,like candy bars or cookies The Girl Scouts are lucky, be-cause at least they get to sell stuff people actually want.

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But Rowley really got stiffed He sold $150 worth ofbeans and got a Chinese finger trap as his prize It actuallyworked like it was supposed to, but Rowley couldn't gethis fingers out, and his mom had to cut it off when hegot home.

Last year the school tried something different Theyhad us sell raffle tickets, and whoever won the rafflewould get a spring yard cleanup from the seventh-gradeclass.

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The new thing the school is doing is these Walkathons.The idea is that we'll walk around the track at school acertain number of times, like one hundred or two hun-dred laps, and get our neighbors to sponsor us for eachlap we complete.

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The reason the school put on the Walkathon in Septem-ber was so they could pay for a billboard near the townpark.

I couldn't figure out why the school didn't just skip theWalkathon and have the kids clean up the town park in-stead But I guess if the seventh grade was involved, theymight've completely trashed it.

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I thought about whose door I should knock on first, butit wasn't easy Mrs Durocher lives right across the street,but she's a little too affectionate, and I usually do my bestto avoid her.

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cause his teeth aren't very straight Unfortunately, thefirst time Dad met Mr Alexander was on Halloween,and Dad must've thought his teeth weren't real.

So I decided to skip Mr Alexander 's house, too.

There are people who live on my street that I haven'tspoken to in years When I was about four, Mom andDad had a cocktail party for some of the couples in theneighborhood, and I went downstairs during the party touse the bathroom.

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When I was done I found Mom and told on Mr Harkin,and I'm sure he felt like a jerk.

So I'm not about to knock on the door of some guy Iratted out when I was in preschool and ask him for money,either.

Today I realized there's just too much history betweenme and the people in my neighborhood, so I decided to goone street over to Prentice Lane and start fresh.

I walked up to the house on the corner and knocked onthe door But I recognized the lady who answered Shewas Mrs Melcher, one of Gramma's friends from Bingo.

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shoveling people's driveways and that I'd be happy to dohers for five bucks.

But she told me she never gets visitors and invited meinside to chat.

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But all I could think about the whole time I sat therewas how much money I could've been making if I'd justknocked on someone else's door instead.

I must've been in there for an hour before I was finallyable to steer the conversation back to the subject of meshoveling her driveway But Mrs Melcher said her son wascoming by in his pickup truck any minute and he plows herdriveway for free So that's an hour of my life I'll neverget back.