true love . . . but the hideous cackle of GRANDMERE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thursday, May 8, 1 a.m., the futon couch in the Loft

This is a nightmare. It has to be. Somebody is going to pinch me and I'm going to wake up and it's all going to be over

and I'm going to be back snug in my own bed, not out here on this futon - how come I never noticed how HARD this

thing is? - in the living room in the middle of the night.

Except that it's NOT a nightmare. I know it's not a nightmare, because to have a nightmare, you actually have to fall

ASLEEP, something I can't do, because Grandmere is SNORING TOO LOUDLY

That's right. My grandmother snores. Some scoop for The Post, huh? I should give them a call and hold up the phone to the door to my room (you can hear her even with the door CLOSED). I can just see the headline:

DOWAGER PRINCESS

SNORES LIKE A JACKHAMMER

I can't believe this is happening. Like my life isn't bad enough. Like I don't have enough problems now my psychotic grandmother has moved in with me. I could hardly believe it when I opened the loft door and saw her standing there, her

driver right behind her with about fifty million Louis Vuitton bags. I just stared at her for a full minute, until finally Grandmere went, 'Well, Amelia? Aren't you going to ask me in?'

And then, before I even had a chance to, she just barged right by me, complaining the whole way about how we don't have an elevator and did we have any idea what a walk up three flights of stairs could do to a woman her age (I noticed that she didn't mention what it could do to a chauffeur who had been forced to carry all of her luggage up the same aforementioned three flights of stairs)?

Then she started walking around the Loft like she always does when she comes over, picking up things and looking at them with a disapproving expression on her face before putting them down again, like Mom's Cinco de Mayo skeleton collection, and Mr. G's NCAA Final Four drink holders.

Meanwhile, my mom and Mr. G, having heard all the commotion, came out of their room and then froze - both of them - in horror as they took in the sight before them. I have to admit, it did look a bit scary . . . especially since by then Rommel had worked his way free from Grandmere's purse and was staggering around the floor on his spindly Bambi legs, sniffing things so carefully you would have thought he expected them to explode in his face at any given moment (which, when he gets around

to sniffing Fat Louie, might actually happen).

'Um, Clarisse,' my mother (brave woman!) said. 'Would you mind telling us what you're doing here? With, er, what appears

to be your entire wardrobe in tow?'

'I cannot stay at that hotel a moment longer,' Grandmere said, putting down Mr. G's lava lamp and not even glancing at my mother, whose pregnancy - At her advanced age,' Grandmere likes to say, even though Mom is actually younger than many recently pregnant starlets - she considers an embarrassment of grand proportions. 'No one works there any more! The place

is completely chaotic. You cannot get a soul to bring up a morsel of Room Service, and forget about getting someone to run your bath. And so I've come here.' She blinked at us less than fondly. 'To the bosom of my family. In times of need, I believe

it is traditional for relatives to take one another in.'

My mom totally wasn't falling for Grandmere's poor-little-me act.

'Clarisse,' she said, folding her arms over her chest (which is quite a feat, considering how big her boobs have got - I can only hope that if I ever get pregnant, my own knockers will swell to such heroic proportions). 'There is a hotel workers' strike. No one is exactly lobbing SCUD missiles at the Plaza. I think you've lost your perspective a little bit. . .'

Just then the phone rang. I, of course, thinking it was Michael, dived for it. But alas, it was not Michael. It was my father.

'Mia,' he said, sounding a trifle panicked. 'Is your grandmother there?'

'Why, yes, Dad,' I said. 'She is. Would you care to speak with her?'

'Oh, God,' my dad groaned. 'No. Let me talk to your mother.'

My dad was totally in for it, and did he ever know it. I handed the phone to my mom, who took it with the expression of long-suffering she always wears in Grandmere's presence. Just as she was putting the phone to her ear, Grandmere said to

her chauffeur, 'That will be all, Gaston. You can put the bags down in Amelia's room, then leave.'

'Stay where you are, Gaston,' my mom said, just as I yelled, 'MY room? Why MY room?'

Grandmere looked at me all acidly and went, 'Because in times of hardship, young lady, it is traditional for the youngest member of the family to sacrifice her comfort for the oldest.'

I never heard of this cockamamie tradition before. What was it, like the ten-course Genovian wedding supper, or something?

'Phillipe,' my mom was growling into the phone. 'What is going on here?'

Meanwhile, Mr. G was trying to make the best out of a bad situation. He asked Grandmere if he could get her some form of refreshment.

'Sidecar, please,' Grandmere said, not even looking at him, but at the magnetic alphabet Algebra problems on the refrigerator door. 'Easy on the ice.'

'Phillipe!' my mother was saying, in tones of mounting urgency, into the phone.

But it didn't do any good. There was nothing my father could do. He and the staff - Lars, Hans, Gaston, et al. -were OK to rough it at the Plaza under the new, Room-Service free conditions. But Grandmere just couldn't take it. She had apparently tried to ring for her nightly chamomile tea and biscotti, and when she'd found out there was no one to bring it to her, she'd