Animals build a lot of different kind of homes. Birds have nests, foxes and wolves find a den, some fish have sort of a den underwater too. Some birds live inside the tree trunk and some in the branches. Some animals don't build a home at all they just live under a tree or some other sheltered spot.

What kind of animal home would you build? Could you live in it all year round? The early people are called cave people because they lived in caves. That was the easiest thing around for them. But caves would have been damp and dark. Not very pleasant to live in. But, they didn't know how to build things the way people do now. Everything they had came right from its natural, raw state. If they needed a hammer, they had to make one.

I think its interesting to see how they might have lived. We won't ever know all about them. People study what's left from them but we can never see everything. Just as we don't know exactly how dinosaurs looked, we don't know exactly how cave people would have spoken or communicated to each other. We don't know how much they knew about the world around them. We can't really know what their religion was, just bits from the things that have survived since then.

I don't think I would like being a cave person. There would be no bathrooms, no medicine for allergies, no books to read and learn about stuff. I'd miss my computer and being able to hop on a bus and go anywhere in the city or the country. But, cave people, the real ones who lived so long ago, didn't know about buses or computers, so they wouldn't miss those things at all. I wonder what they would think about the world as it is now. So many changes for them to see. Just seeing a car driving along would probably scare them.

What would they think of our houses? Apartment buildings with so many houses all stacked together reaching up to the sky. Could they even have imagined something like that? If they got used to living here, in this time. Would they like it better? They could drive cars, go to movies, have fast food and medicine. They could go to school and learn all kinds of stuff. They wouldn't have to hunt for all their food and they could have as much heat as they want without building a fire. I think they would really like driving a car, even more than living in our houses. But, I'm not sure they would be the best drivers, I bet they would be speeders.

The warm weather seems to be here. Outside I can see tulips and all the other early Spring flowers blooming. The days get longer as they warm up. It won't be long before school is out for the Summer. What will you be doing in the meantime?

There is all that time between dinner, clean up, homework and bedtime to fill. A lot of people just watch TV. Kind of boring but it makes the time pass quickly. But, is that enough for you, just filling in time? Wouldn't you rather be doing something more fun and interesting?

Instead of TV how about doing something. Get your friends and family involved or just do it yourself. Pick a hobby or craft, there are an endless supply of them. Reading, writing, collecting zillions of different things (postcards, stamps, buttons, kites, model planes, marbles, rocks, etc.), building models, birdhouses, sewing, playing board games, sports, making a journal or scrapbook, keeping a little garden, and so on. Its never ending list. Just go to a web directory and take a look at the different hobbies, crafts and collections listed.

Once you find something that suits you, look for other people in your area doing the same thing or having the same interests. You might find a group near you or a group that has regular meetings to share ideas and show off collections and creations. Some things will even have summer camps for kids.

Why did the Wicked Witch melt in water? In the Wizard of Oz, Dorothy pours a bucket of water over the witch and she melts away to nothing. Was she made of sugar? I've seen how sugar dissolves and sort of melts when you pour milk or water over it. I don't think the Witch could have been made of sugar though, she wasn't very sweet for one thing.

Maybe she was made of dust? I know how dust looks. I see it under things and on top of things sometimes. Its very thin and easy to blow away. But, if you get it wet it does get kind of packed down and sticky. So if the Witch had been made of dust she would have packed down, into the floor. But, she would have stuck there and just been kind of a mess. I don't think she was dust. I didn't see a lot of dust bunnies running around her castle, just monkeys.

Maybe she was never really there in the first place. I've seen them do stuff like that in other shows. A trick with mirrors, a time machine or some other sort of thing.

Either way she did seem to just melt and disappear. I don't know why and I don't think it was very nice of Dorothy to melt the Witch. I thought she had a nice laugh. I guess she was a little mean about the red slippers and Dorothy's dog, Toto. Still, Dorothy did drop a house on the Witch's sister. That would make most people pretty sad.

Now, what I really wonder is what ever happened to those ruby slippers anyway? Dorothy seemed to lose them when she went back to Kansas with Auntie Em. Maybe the Witch didn't melt after all. She just became invisible until Dorothy went back to Kansas and lost those ruby slippers.

Someday I will have to write the real story about the Wizard of Oz. I think there is a lot left unsaid.

What would be the itchiest thing on the planet? I think being rolled in honey and left to sit on an anthill would be pretty itchy. There are itchy sweaters too, you know that kind made of a coarse kind of itchy wool. Sometimes you get one of those for your birthday and you smile and pretend its lovely, even though you can't wait to peel it off and start itching every where its touched your skin.

Have you had an itch you couldn't scratch? Sometimes my back is itchy and I just can't reach the spot. I stand in the doorway and rub my back on the door frame, anything to try to reach that itchy spot. I'm glad there are people around who don't mind to get the spot for me. I don't know what would happen if the itch just stayed forever.

Lets say there was an itch bug. He likes to live right on the middle of your back, right between the shoulder blades where its hard to reach even if you use the door frame. The itch bug starts building his little house there. Next thing he has a wife itch bug and a pack of kid itch bugs too. All of those itch bugs, there could be a dozen of them in no time at all. THAT would be itchy for sure.

How would you ever get rid of an itch bug family once they settle in? I would try that itchy wool sweater and see how they feel about being itched right back. If that didn't work I'd lie in a tub full of warm, soapy water and see if I could soak them right off my skin. If that still didn't get rid of the itch bugs I would have to think awhile to come up with a new idea. But, luckily I have a backscratcher. That's just a piece of wood with a long handle and a sort of bent/ curved head. On the end of the backscratchers head are a few teeth, kind of like your comb but not nearly as thin or long. The teeth on a backscratcher are short and blunt, just right for scraping the itch bugs off your skin.

Good bye itch bugs, don't come back and visit me any time soon.

Jonathan Swift is an Irish writer who wrote Gulliver's Travels. Gulliver was an ordinary man who got lost in the sea, he washed ashore on an island where all the people were much, much smaller than himself. Gulliver was suddenly a giant. The little people were afraid of him.

Would you like to be a giant, for a day? It would be interesting.

It would also be hard to find a place to sit. I think you would have to get out of the city and find a spot where you would have plenty of space to turn around in. Somewhere, in a wild spot you could sit down. Watch for any hikers or people trying to have picnic. Don't sit on any animals either. Rabbits, squirrels and crows would seem about as big as bugs to you while you were a giant.

When you got hungry or thirsty you could find a river to drink from but what would you eat? I guess you could go to a drive through fast food place but could you afford enough hamburgers? How many hamburgers would a giant eat? You might want to roast a whole cow. If you are a vegetarian you could eat a whole farmer's field of lettuce, tomatoes and carrots. Just wash off the dirt and bugs first. Although you probably wouldn't even notice the bugs.

I think it would be lonely being a giant. Your friends and family would all be too small to play with you. Swings and slides are made for small kids. School would have to be brought outdoors cause you couldn't get inside the building. But, you could have fun exploring mountains, way high up and deep under the ocean, deeper than the small people can swim.

Still, when I'm feeling tired at night I really like to just be in my own bed, comfortable under the covers with all my favourite things around me and a roof over my head.