now. Chickenshit is what I would say. She might as well have said sugar Dora your daddy isn’t dead. Why he’s just up at the North Pole working away on scooters and train sets like a good elf should. Why he’s Santa’s favorite helper! But they get some comfort out of the made up stories. And if that helps them get along maybe I should not poke fun. But it is hard for me not to see the humor. I think they were pleased about my decision to keep to myself. If a girl was staying in my house that I did not want there I certainly would be pleased as punch if she announced one night at supper that you will only be seeing me at meal times unless we happen to pass each other on the way to the toilet. Then it got my goat when I had to ask for somebody to help me get a new round of clothes. I was growing again. Nadine took me to the store and I told her just to let me out with some money and I would get exactly what I had to have. It would seem like logic for me to wear the clothes Dora did not like anymore but neither me or Dora wanted to do that anymore. When she slung such a nasty fit when Nadine suggested that idea I figured I must have sent that red checked suit back to them with a stain. But it was fine for me not to wear Dora’s throwbacks to school. I have my own style of dressing. The way to shop when you have a limit on money and youdon’t want to be bothered every morning picking out and matching up items in your wardrobe is to buy everything alike. Before you leave for the store you check the back of your neck collar to see what size shirt, sweater, and dress you are. Then you reach back and roll the top of your drawers back and write down that size too. That will also be your britches size. Then you look on the inside of your right shoe. Generally there will be a chart in the shoe department where you can figure out about the socks. But you will probably need socks only every third trip or so. They stretch with your feet. Then you go to the girls department and tell the lady you need the sizes bigger than the ones you have in your hand. You follow her to your racks and say for her to leave you alone now please. Also if you wear bad looking clothes to shop in the lady will think you are a little thief. I get distracted trying to shop and look very honest at the same time. And you pick out two of everything just alike except different colors. But get colors that go good together like green and yellow or navy and white. Not a orange or purple you will feel like a fool in. I always take a long time to try it all on and make sure I feel right. Then I pay for it and make sure I got my receipt in case something falls apart. I even sent the warranty in on my microscope. I paid good money for it even if it was the junior model. They ought to build things to last. When I get back to where I am living I lay all the clothes on the bed and admire how it all matches. When Nadine took me shopping that day I bought the most beautiful dress I had ever seen. I mean that. I saw it in with the ordinary dresses and I said this is the dress for me. And the price was right so I bought it and it is still hanging in my closet even though it comes up to my tail. I have growed right much since then. It is a dress you catch somebody’s eye with. It is like nothing you have ever seen especially when I put it on and gazed in the store mirror I said Lord I could fall in love with my own self. It has a row of lace around your throat. Not too much. Just enough to set your face off pretty. And then the dress is green like pine trees down to the waist where it fans out in a navy blue skirt. The sash is reason alone for somebody to want that dress. Already hooked on to the dress with a bow you do not have to worry with. It is the kind of dress that decorates you in the front and the back both. Even when I am walking off I thought while I watched myself turning in that dress somebody could look at me and smile. That dress was the