Just Grace Goes Green (15 page)

Tomorrow is Gwen's birthday. When you know you are having a birthday tomorrow you automatically have a great day today,
because you can't help but be filled with excitement, even if your parents are not there.

WHAT IS SO GREAT ABOUT TODAY FOR MIMI

Mimi had a great day yesterday and some of that feeling is still left over with her today. She said that last night in the middle of the night when she got up to go to the bathroom, she saw that Willoughby was on the floor beside Gwen's bed. She said that she thought that this was a good sign and that maybe Gwen was getting ready to give him back. When someone is feeling good about something it is not a
good idea to say that you think their reasons for being happy are not good ones. That is why I didn't say that maybe Gwen just dropped him by accident.

WHAT IS SO GREAT ABOUT TODAY FOR ME

Tomorrow is going to be a great day and I can't help smiling when I think about it. Gwen is going to love Owly and give Willoughby back to Mimi.

I was feeling so happy that when Miss Lois asked for volunteers to go first to present their conservation projects, I put my hand up. Tomorrow is going to be our day for that.

WHAT CAN MAKE A DAY SEEM TO LAST FOREVER

Thinking about tomorrow and still being stuck in today.

WHAT HAPPENED THAT WAS INTERESTING

Gwen asked Grace F. if she wanted to come out with us for the birthday dinner. Grace F. was really upset that she couldn't do it. She was already going to have dinner at her aunt's house for her cousin's birthday. She said that flaming volcanoes sounded a lot more exciting and fun than macaroni and cheese, which is what she was going to be eating.

WHAT ELSE HAPPENED THAT WAS INTERESTING

Nothing.

Miss Lois tried to get us all excited about our projects some more, but I was already completely full with excitement about tomorrow, so I stopped listening to her.

MY DRAWING

WALKING HOME FROM SCHOOL

Somehow Mimi and Gwen and I got to walk home all by ourselves. Sammy was not around, for which I was glad. Too much Sammy was not something I was completely used to or happy about. We talked about our recycling project a little bit, but mostly we talked about Gwen's birthday.

When we got to Mimi's house we all went and looked at the present from Gwen's parents again. Gwen said we could hold it if we promised not to shake it too hard or

guess out loud at what we thought was inside. She was 100 percent wanting to be surprised and 100 percent not wanting us to ruin it with our guesses.

DINNER

I could tell what we were going to have for dinner the minute I walked into the house. Mom has this silly way of asking Dad to order sushi for dinner. He always does the ordering because Mom says he does a better job with saying all the food names in Japanese.

When Mom wants sushi she plays her special sushi song on the CD player. I don't really know what it's called but the main part of the song says, "I'm turning Japanese oh yes I'm turning Japanese I really think so." It's
kind of like their secret code. Mom plays the song, Dad hears it and orders the food, the doorbell rings, and then we eat dinner. I for sure couldn't tell Sammy about it or he would start thinking my parents were spies too!

WHAT I FORGOT

After dinner I went to my room, and as soon as I walked in I knew that I had completely forgotten to do my conservation chart yesterday. Now I had to find two things to do, which was going to be impossible because I usually even have trouble with the one thing.

I went downstairs. I was hoping that Mom and Dad were in the basement so I could turn off the lights in the kitchen and the living room, but they weren't. Dad was reading a paper and Mom was in the kitchen cleaning up the sushi stuff.

Mom was about to throw away the stuff from dinner, but I stopped her just in time. Sometimes great ideas just happen in a second, without even any warning. That's my favorite kind!

Saved paper bag from the garbage by using it as wrapping paper. Used plastic decorations from sushi dinner to decorate package. That's two things to make upfor forgetting yesterday.

GOOD NIGHT, NOBODY

Mimi and Gwen were not at Mimi's window, but Chip-Up and I waved anyway, just in case.

TODAY IS THE DAY

Mom said I couldn't have French toast for breakfast because there wasn't any bread left, because I had been eating so much
French toast lately. That was kind of disappointing, but not a big enough sadness to even hurt the day.

Mimi's dad drove us to school with all our stuff for our plastic bottle presentation. It's a good thing that Miss Lois said we could do it in the art room—that way we could use all their cool supplies and we didn't have to bring in even more stuff. Mimi's dad kind of wanted to stay and watch, but Miss Lois has a rule about parents being in the classroom. The rule is No Parents in the Classroom, so he just had to go to work like normal.

OUR PRESENTATION

It took a while for all the regular morning school stuff to be finished, but finally we were all allowed to line up and go to the art
room. Miss Lois had let Gwen, Mimi, and me go earlier, so everything was set up and perfect. All the kids wanted to know why they were taking their lunch boxes with them. Ten o'clock in the morning is not the time to eat lunch, so it was kind of confusing.

Miss Lois was a big help getting everyone organized. Teachers go to school for that kind of thing, so she knew exactly how to say the right thing in the right order to have it all work out. When we went to the front of the room to do our presentation, everyone was sitting in a chair looking forward with a water bottle on the desk in front of them. Only Robert Walters was looking down, and that was because he was trying to sneak-eat some raisins. Miss Lois caught him though. She has eagle eyes for catching eating in the classroom when you are not supposed to.

I was a little bit nervous, so Mimi said she would go first. Mimi and I took turns telling everyone the facts about plastic bottles, and then Gwen told them about the art project of decorating their water bottles so they would be excited to reuse them every day. All they would have to do is rinse them out every night.

At the end of the talking, Mimi lifted the cover off the display we had made. Miss Lois had to tell everyone to please calm down and sit down because they all thought it was so excellent and were getting out of their seats to see it better.

The only bad part of the project that we didn't think about was the using-glue part. Glue takes a long time to dry. We all had to leave the decorated water bottles in the art room and couldn't have them back until tomorrow, when they were 100 percent dry.

There was lots of whining and complaining, but Miss Lois said it would be helpful to the earth if we could just all use the water fountains for one day. I thought that she would maybe be mad at us about it, but she said, "Team one has done an excellent job. Who wants to go next?"

Sammy and Max volunteered, and that was probably because Sammy wanted to be sure to do his project before Gwen had to leave and go back to her old school. Plus, they had been collecting a lot of cans in Max's garage, and Max's mom said she was
getting tired of tripping over cans every time she wanted to use the car. Max said he was worried that she would throw them out if they didn't use them soon.