Princess' Diaries

Today when I woke up, the pigeons that live on the fire escape outside my window were cooing away (Fat Louie was on the windowsill—well, as much of him as could fit on the windowsill, anyway—watching them), and the sun was shining, and I actually got up on time and didn’t hit the snooze button seven thousand times. I took a shower and didn’t cut my legs shaving them, found a fairly unwrinkled blouse at the bottom of my closet, and even got my hair to look sort of halfway passable. I was in a good mood. It wasFriday. Friday is my favorite day, besides Saturday and Sunday. Fridays always mean two days—two glorious, relaxing days—of NO Algebra are coming my way.

And then I walked out into the kitchen and there was all this pink light coming down through the skylight right on my mom, who was wearing her best kimono and making French toast using Egg Beaters instead of real eggs, even though I’m no longer ovo-lacto since I realized eggs aren’t fertilized so they could never have been baby chicks anyway.

And I was all set to thank her for thinking of me, and then I heard this rustle.

And there was my DAD sitting at the dining room table (well, really it’s just a table, since we don’t have a dining room, but whatever), readingThe New York Times and wearing a suit.

Asuit. At seven o’clock in the morning.

And then I remembered. I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten it:

I’m aprincess.

Oh my God. Everything good about my day just went right out the window after that.

As soon as he saw me, my dad was all, "Ah, Mia."

I knew I was in for it. He only says "Ah, Mia"when he’s about to give me a big lecture.

He folded his paper all carefully and laid it down. My dad always folds papers carefully, making the edges all neat. My mom never does this. She usually crumples the pages up and leaves them, out of order, on the futon couch or next to the toilet. This kind of thing drives my father insane and is probably the real reason why they never got married.

My mom, I saw, had set the table with our best Kmart plates, the ones with the blue stripes on them, and the green plastic cactus-shaped margarita glasses from Ikea. She had even put a bunch of fake sunflowers in the middle of the table in a yellow vase. She had done all that to cheer me up, I know, and she’d probably gotten up really early to do it, too. But instead of cheering me up, it just made me sadder.

Because I bet they don’t use green plastic cactus-shaped margarita glasses for breakfast at the palace in Genovia.