If I Were In Charge of My House
(Inspired by Judith Viorst)
If I were in charge of my house
I'd cancel watching Mickey Mouse on TV
And drinking any type of soda
Eating lots of fast food, and also
Everybody's tummy hurting.
If I were in charge of my house
There'd be everyone doing work,
Everyone eating healthy food, and
If people watch TV they watch Disney.
If I were in charge of my house
You wouldn't have your little cousin bothering you,
You wouldn't have your brother on the computer,
Or, "It's time to sleep."
You wouldn't even have anyone bothering you.
If I were in charge of my house
Reading would be playing
All annoying people would be gone
And a person who sometimes does something wrong
And sometimes doesn't stay very strong
Would still be allowed to be
In charge of my house.
By Myself
(Inspired by Eloise Greenfield)
When I'm by myself and I close my eyes
I'm a word in a story, I'm the world filled with glory
I'm a room full of drills, I'm a pan that can grill
I'm the notes in a song, I would never get a question wrong
I'm a sun turning bright, I'm a room full of light
I'm a whatever I want to be, and anything I care to be
And when I open my eyes, what I care to be is...
ME!
A Restaurant for Toads Only
I hopped up just like a toad when I saw a black and yellow one hopping right in front of me. I love catching toads with my friend Amanda. She is a good luck charm. When I find toad with her, I find lots of frogs and I even find two toads! Toads are very rare. But when I just find them by myself, I find either one frog or none! I usually don't find any toads while I'm toad hunting by myself. But the first time I ever went toad hunting by myself, I found a really cute toad. But my aunt told me that the toad was poisonous, and I've never found a toad ever since. With Amanda, I have lots of fun. When we find toads we put them in their little home. Amanda has a box full of mud for all toads. We make restaurants while the toads get used to their new home. We put bright red bricks around. We have wood for tables and chairs. We even have a tiny piece of wood for the restroom! At last, we put the food on the tables. For their food, we have pancakes, juice, and soup. For pancakes, it's just mud shaped into circular shape. Amanda makes the juice so I have no idea how to make the juice. For the soup, we put everything except living things in it.
We sometimes play with Amanda's dog. The big, black girl eats the toads so we have to put the toads up when we play with her. After we play with the dog for about an hour, my mom comes and tells me I have to leave. I say by to Amanda and leave. It's super fun playing with my best friend Amanda. If she did not decide to be my friend, then I wouldn't have ever thought of trying to catch toads. I'd think catching toads is not that cool as I think it is now.
The Best Thing
"I don't feel good," I kept on saying that day while I was in writing class. When my dad came, I ran to the door and opened it. I dropped my face and rubbed my stomach to tell my dad I didn't feel well. I ran back and sat until it was time to leave. I was done with all of my work.
The next day I layed on the couch sleeping. My mom woke me up and said it was time for lunch. Today there was my brother's secret recipe to make steak. It tastes salty with a slight bit of pepper and onions. It smelled spicy and juicy, but that didn't help my stomach. After lunch, my dad said I should go outside and have some fun. So, I went outside. I felt a little better, but my stomach still hurt. I tried catching some toads. I saw a toad that was brown with orange dots and scampered after it. But in the end, I ended up letting the toad hop away because it was too fast. I came back to find my brother on the couch watching Wimbledon on T.V. I sat beside my brother and watched too. The people were playing tennis. It was tied 59 to 59. I figured out that they had been playing for 8-9 hours. After a while, I got bored.
"What can I do?" I kept on asking. I was starting to feel really bad. By dinner, I totally felt like I was about to throw up. I ate very little. Just about two bites of my brother's steak and a little bit of rice. After dinner, I forced myself to play a little bit of piano. When I was done, I changed into my P.J's and put my head on my pillow. I put my blanket on me and started sleeping the second I did that. I dreamed that my stomach got better. I woke up very early to hear something crumbling under my pillow. I was too drowsy to look, so I went to sleep again. The next time I woke up, the crumbling noise was still there, but my pillow was gone. Worries of my pillow quickly passed as I saw that my parents took it. As I sat up, I saw that the crumbling noise was just a paper. There was a note on it. This is what it looks like:
Donna,
Everything will be fine.
I promise.
After I read it, the paper felt like silk in my hands. That's a really good paper, I thought. I immediately thought that this note was from my brother. My sister was only five. She couldn't spell the word everything. Of course I didn't write it. I didn't think my parents wrote it. But my brother wasn't someone who does these things. I woke my mom and dad up. They looked at the paper. None of them said that they wrote it. It looked really cool. The words were red. Every corner was dotted with blue. There was even a heart on it! That was the best thing I could ever get from my brother.
Peg Kehret
I think Peg Kehret is honestly the best author ever. She uses details to describe, describe, describe! The book is about how Peg Kehret is a little girl who gets polio. It was cool to know what polio felt like. I was really surprised. When she got older, she married someone named Carl Kehret. Then she decided to be a writer. There were no computers back then. They used typewriters. Imagine Peg's fingers flying over the keys like a flying bird. She wrote and wrote but always got "dejections." I was so upset that I cried. But one day, she tried to write a novel. People said it was impossible to publish books these days. But Peg turned the book in. She screamed so hard that I cold even hear her when she figured out that the book had been published. That was when she was 50. I think she should've published her first book when she was 20-30 because she writes brilliantly. She also talked to other people about her writing. But she quit after a while because she thought that talking to people wasn't waht she did best. She thought writing was what she should do. She lived in a motorhome. They found a tiny, baby kitten and found a place to bring the kitten back to health. The other day, they found another baby kitten and did the same. The two kittens fought together every day. They kept Peg and Carl awake every night. Peg still kept on writing books. Lots of kids wrote letters to her, mostly for projects. She loved writing back. I wonder if I can ever write a letter to her. I'd like to tell her that I love her book, Five Pages a Day: A Writer's Journey. It encouraged me to write a lot more than I used to. I will like this book forever. I love everything about the book.
A Time When Someone Said Yes
I slid down on the couch while watching T.V. I love watching T.V. but my parents don't let me watch it that often. But today, I really wanted to watch it. So in the morning, I did my Wordly Wise from 9:00- 10:15. Then I played for just about 10 minutes. By then, it was 10:25. I scrambled on top of the seat of my piano and played for two hours. Usually, I play for one hour, but today I really wanted to watch T.V. My mom said it was time for lunch. I washed my hands, gobbled up my food, washed my plates, which I usually don't do, and went on the computer. No, I was not going to play games, I was going to print a math worksheet. When I finished, I played for just about 20 minutes until I went up to my mom and dad. I didn't want to start out asking if I could watch T.V. So this is what I said.
" Today I was really good right? Ummm. Can I watch some T.V?"
" Sure. Why not? You've been good today," came the reply."
" Yes!" I said quietly.
My Closet
" Stop falling on me!"
"Hey! You stop falling on me!"
"Ugh!"
This is my closet. The "people" arguing are really the clothes falling down. As you see, my closet is pretty messy. My closet is like a million clothes piled on top like a Christmas tree. If you can imagine that, then you know what my closet looks like.
A Time I Wanted To Leave But Couldn't
I dashed into the car so quickly that I almost fell down. I was so excited because my friend Tidie was going swimming with my sister and me. Tidie is a Chinese girl with shoulder length straight black hair. She has glasses. She was wearing a one piece orange swimsuit. She's in 6th grade. My dad drove to the pool while we were telling jokes and laughing our heads off. I was thinking, wow! This is definitely going to be the best day ever! But, boy was I wrong. When we were there, we walked in front of the big black gate. My dad took a white card out of his pocket and scanned the card on the scanner. The door unlocked. I ran in, but with a surprise. I didn't see anyone in the pool, except a lifeguard holding a stick in front of her. She was walking in the water. "Where's all the people?" my dad asked. "Well, some stuff got into the pool. We're cleaning it up right now, " came the reply. The person that replied was the woman in the water. She had blond hair and a blue swimsuit that said LIFEGUARD. There was a new water park nearby, so we went over there. This is an image of what it looks like. There were two frogs. Each frog had a pair of handles on it. Wherever you moved the handles, the frogs mouth will spray water. There's this half circle spraying water towards the middle. For the rest of the place, water was just spraying up from the ground. There was a place that looked really cool. Water poured into a bucket. Whenever it got full, the bucket would turn over and all of the water would splash on the kid standing below it. It was so cool that I just ran everywhere with my eyes closed. Once, I bumped into my sister and she started crying. I sent her to my dad and said sorry to her. After that, I didn't seem to like the park that much anymore. I wanted to leave, but Tidie loved the spraying frogs and was having a contest with someone else to see who sprayed more. That was a time I wanted to leave but couldn't.
" You can come to!" I told my sister. We went outside to my backyard. In front of us was a big playground. It was very old because my dad built it just for me when I was a baby. I really liked the playground. I couldn't believe my dad built it just for me! But beside it was something better. It was a trampoline with a blue trimming about 1 foot long. I zipped the zipper open, and climbed on. I waited for everyone to get on and zipped it back up. Remember, I thought, my dad gave it to me a few days ago as a birthday present. I have to take care of it.
I asked what game they wanted to play. They wanted to play trickester so that’s what we played. Jerry was going first, then it would be my sister, ten t would be Andy, then it would be me.
Jerry just did a cartwheel. I wasn't surprised because Jerry's great at that .Then it was my sisters turn. She was small so she just waved her arms in the air, jumped, and said/ yelled yeah. When she finished, I knew what Andy was going to do. He always jumped up and tried to do the 360 degrees turn. In the end he'd fall down. Sure enough, that’s what happened. Next, I went in the middle. I couldn't do the splits yet, but I would try to do what I wanted to do. In my mind, I knew it would hurt a lot. I walked to a corner, ran to the middle, jumped, and tried to do the splits.
"Owww!I did the splits! Ahhh! Jerry, call the police! I broke my bones!" I ran inside and gave myself an ice pack .Now that was something I would never forget!
Before I was Born
Before I was born, my brother was born. He had short black hair about 1 centimeters long each. He had bright brown eyes and smiled a lot. My mom and dad thought that the name Jason would be perfect. Jason was born at St. Luke's. He usually ate with a mini spoon that had his name on it. He bought it at Gerber food. It fit in his tiny hand while he ate baby food.Now my sister still uses the spoon. I used to use it too when I was small. He drank from a baby bottle. It was passed down to me, then my sister. He had many bibs that had many beautiful pictures and words on them. He slept in a crib that had a blue mattress on it. The crib was wooden brown. He used a regular white pillow to sleep. He had good friends and grew up really fast. First, he turned 1, then 2, then3, then 4 then 5. He played in different places and had fun. He was having a good life, but he always wanted to have a little sister or brother. And it never happened. He only played with his friends. As he got closer to 6 years old, I was born.
Where I'm From
I was born in the Methodist hospital. When I was born, everyone saw the birthmark on my ankle. It was darker than any other part of my skin. Because I was tiny, the birthmark was small but very clear. It looked like a Texas map. I love the Texas on there. But as I get older, it looks more like an arrow. The Texas represents where I was born, Houston.