When I asked my mother, she said, “Well, it’s like a diary only different.” That helps. She was going to explain more, but Mrs. Furtz (the lady who just moved in across the street) called to say that my brother Dennis was throwing eggs at her house, and my mother went berserk so she didn’t finish telling me. How am I supposed to write a journal if I don’t even know what one is? I wouldn’t be doing this anyway, except that Mrs. Zollar asked me to. She’s an English teacher. She asked us to keep a journal this summer and bring it in (in September) to our new English teacher. So, new English teacher, I guess I better say who I am. My name is Mary Lou Finney. I live at 4059 Buxton Road in Easton, Ohio. I have a normally strange family. Here’s our cast of characters, so to speak: Sam Finney (whose age I am not allowed to tell you) is the father. He is a pretty regular father. Sometimes he likes us and sometimes we drive him crazy. When we are driving him crazy, he usually goes out in the garden and pulls some weeds.