• For snacks: dried fruits, nuts, pumpkin and sunflower seeds, popcorn

My mom is so not going to go for this. Unless she can smother it in hoisin sauce from Number One Noodle Son, she is just not interested.

TO DO BEFORE MOM GETS HOME

Throw out:  Heineken

Buy:  multivitamins

Throw out:  cooking sherry

Buy:  fresh fruit

Throw out:  alfalfa sprouts

Buy:  wheat germ

Throw out:  Colombian roast

Buy:  yogurt

Throw out:  chocolate chips

Throw out:  salami

Don’t forget the

bottle of Absolut

in the freezer!

Monday, October 20, After school

Just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse, suddenly, they did.

Grandmère called.

This is so unfair. I thought she was supposed to have gone to Baden-Baden for a little R and R. I was fully looking forward to a respite from her torture sessions—also known as princess lessons, which I am forced by my father, the despot, to attend. I mean, I could use a little vacation myself. Do they really think anyone in Genovia cares whether I know how to use a fish fork? Or if I can sit down without getting wrinkles in the back of my skirt? Or if I know how to say thank you in Swahili? Shouldn’t my future countrymen and women be more concerned with my views on the environment? And gun control? And overpopulation?

But according to Grandmère, the people of Genovia don’t care about any of that. They just want to know that I won’t embarrass them at any state dinners.

As if. Grandmère’s the one they should be worried about. I mean, I didn’t have eyeliner permanently tatooed onto my eyelids. I don’t dress up my pet in chinchilla bolero jackets. I was never a close personal friend of Richard Nixon.

But oh, no, it’s me everyone is supposedly so worried about. Like I might commit some huge social gaffe at my introduction to the Genovian people in December.

Right.

But whatever. It turns out she didn’t go after all, on account of the Baden-Baden baggage handlers being on strike.

I wish I knew the head of the baggage handlers’ union in Baden-Baden. If I did, I would totally offer him the one hundred dollars per day my dad has been donating in my name to Greenpeace for performing my duties as princess of Genovia, just so he and the other baggage handlers would go back to work, and get Grandmère out of my hair for a while.

Anyway, Grandmère left a very scary message on the answering machine. She says she has a “surprise” for me. I’m supposed to call her right away.

I wonder what her surprise is. Knowing Grandmère, it’s probably something totally horrible, like a coat made out of the skin of baby poodles.

Hey, I wouldn’t put it past her.

I’m going to pretend I didn’t get the message.

Later on Monday

Just got off the phone with Grandmère. She wanted to know why I hadn’t returned her call. I told her I didn’t get the message.

Why am I such a liar? I mean, I can’t even tell the truth about the simplest things. And I’m supposed to be a princess, for crying out loud. What kind of princess goes around lying all the time?

Anyway, Grandmère says she is sending a limo to pick me up. She and my dad and I are going to have dinner in her suite at the Plaza. Grandmère says she is going to tell me all about my surprise then.

Tell me all about it. Not show me. Which hopefully rules out the puppy-skin coat.

I guess it’s just as well I’m having dinner with Grandmère tonight. My mom invited Mr. Gianini over to the loft tonight so they can “talk.” She’s not very happy with me for throwing out the coffee and beer (I didn’t actually throw it away. I gave it to our neighbor Ronnie). Now my mom is stomping around complaining that she has nothing to offer Mr. G when he comes over.

I pointed out that it’s for her own good, and that if Mr. Gianini is any sort of gentleman he’ll give up beer and coffee anyway, to support her in her time of need. I know I would expect the father of my unborn child to pay me that courtesy.

That is, in the unlikely event that I were ever actually to have sex.

Monday, October 20, 11 p.m.

Some surprise that was.

Somebody really needs to tell Grandmère that surprises are supposed to be pleasant. There is nothing pleasant about the fact that she has managed to wrangle a prime-time interview for me with Beverly Bellerieve on TwentyFour/Seven.

I don’t care if it is the most highly rated television news show in America. I told Grandmère a million times I don’t want to have my picture taken, let alone be on TV. I mean, it’s bad enough that everyone I know is aware that I look like a walking Q-tip, what with my lack of breasts and my Yield-sign–shaped hair. I don’t need all of America finding it out.

But now Grandmère says it’s my duty as a member of the Genovian royal family. And this time she got my dad into the act. He was all, “Your grandmother’s right, Mia.”

So I get to spend next Saturday afternoon being interviewed by Beverly Bellerieve.

I told Grandmère I thought this interview thing was a really bad idea. I told her I wasn’t ready for anything this big yet. I said maybe we could start small, and have Carson Daly or somebody like that interview me.

But Grandmère didn’t go for it. I never met anybody who needed to go to Baden-Baden so badly for a little rest and relaxation. Grandmère looks about as relaxed as Fat Louie right after the vet sticks his thermometer you know where in order to take his temperature.