Princess in Training

Anyway. I get why Grandmère is so into the idea of my running for student council president.

But what’s LILLY getting out of it? I mean, you would think, mad as she is about the security camera thing, SHE’D be the one running for president. What’s up with that, anyway?

Thursday, September 10, the loft

So, guess where I’m staying while my mom and Mr. G are out of town? Yeah. That’d be at the Plaza.

WITH GRANDMÈRE.

Oh, they’re getting me my own room. BELIEVE ME. No WAY am I sleeping in the same suite as Grandmère. Not after that time she stayed over at the loft. I barely slept a wink the whole time she was there, she snored so loud. I could hear her all the way out in the living room.

Not to mention that she’s a total bathroom hog.

I guess I kind of expected it. I mean, no way would Mom and Mr. G let me stay alone at the loft. Even if, like, the entire Royal Genovian Guard was positioned on the roof of our building, ready to take out any potential international princess hostage-takers. Not after what happened during my birthday party.

Not that I even care. Not now that I am responsible for making the country over which I will one day rule the most hated land in Europe. Which is pretty hard to do, considering, you know, France.

I didn’t actually think it was possible for me to get more stressed than I already was, considering that:

I think I might be flunking Geometry after only three days of it. My best friend is making me run for student council president against the most popular girl in school, who is going to crush me like a bug in a humiliating defeat in front of the entire student body on Monday. My English teacher—the one I was so excited about and who I was sure was going to help mold me into the kind of writer I know in my heart I have the potential to be—seems to think my prose is so bad it should never be unleashed upon the unsuspecting public. Well, more or less. My boyfriend apparently expects me to Do It. I’m a baby-licker.

Thank God to all of that I get to add that I had ten thousand snails flown from South America and dumped into the Bay of Genovia in the hopes that they would consume the killer algae currently destroying our delicate ecosystem, only to discover that South American snails apparently don’t like European food and that Genovia’s neighbors now want nothing to do with us. Yay!

Why can’t I do ANYTHING right?

Maybe Becca is right. Maybe I should take up yoga. Except that I tried it that one time with Lilly and her mom at the 92nd Street Y, and they made you stick your butt up in the air the whole time. How is sticking your butt up into the air supposed to make you feel less stressed? It just made me feel MORE stressed, because I kept wondering what everyone was thinking about my butt.

Ordinarily, to soothe my frazzled nerves, I might write a poem or something.

However, it is impossible for me to write poetry, knowing, as I do, that at this very moment, Karen Martinez is poring over the piece of my soul that I handed to her. I hope she is aware that she is currently holding all of my dreams of ever succeeding as a novelist—or at least a hard-hitting international journalist—in her black-nail-polished fingers. I sincerely hope she won’t squash them like a bug under Fat Louie’s massive paw.

I know, you know, that it’s pretty unlikely I’ll ever actually get to DO any writing once I take over the throne, since I’ll be too busy begging the EU to let us back into it, and all.

But I think I would have liked to see a book or even just a newspaper article with the words “by Mia Thermopolis” on it.

Now I have to go make sure my mom is up on all the plane safety regulations. I mean, it is not like they are buying a seat for Rocky. She is going to have to hold him the whole time. I hope, in the event that their plane goes down, she is prepared to use her body as a human shield to keep Rocky from being consumed in a fiery conflagration.

Also, that Mr. G knows he has to count the number of rows between his seat and the nearest emergency exit, so that in the event of a water landing and the plane sinks and the lights go out, he will still be able to lead my mom and Rocky to safety.

Thursday, September 10, the loft, later

Geesh! Talk about touchy! I don’t know why they got so mad. It’s important to know plane safety. I mean, that’s why the airline companies print those cards they stick in the back of the seats. Hello. Good thing I have been collecting them for years, so I was able to use them as illustrations for my baby-safety talk just now.

You would think people would be a little more appreciative of my proactiveness.

Someone’s IMing me…

Ooooooooooooooo, it’s Michael!

SKINNERBX: Hey! You’re home! Saw you on New York 1.

FTLOUIE: You SAW that??? OMG, how embarrassing.

SKINNERBX: No, you were good. Is that really true about the EU, though?

FTLOUIE: Apparently. My dad says it will be all right, though. He thinks. He hopes.

SKINNERBX: They should all be ashamed of themselves. Don’t they know you were just trying to correct THEIR mistake?

FTLOUIE: Totally. How was your day?

SKINNERBX: Great. Today in my Policymaking Under

Uncertainty seminar we talked about how satellite imaging has revealed that Yellowstone National Park is actually a massive caldera, or supervolcano, which is basically an underground reservoir for magma that has blown every 600,000 years, and is now about 40,000 years late for eruption. Also, that when it does blow, volcanic ash from the explosion would travel as far away as Iowa and the explosion would be 2,500 times more forceful than that of Mount St. Helens, killing tens of thousands immediately, and then millions more in the resulting nuclear winter. Unless, of course, we can figure out a way to relieve some of the pressure now and prevent what could be a global disaster.