Never before has the world seen such a princess.

Nor have her own subjects, for that matter. But Genovian politics are nothing next to Mia's real troubles. Between canceled dated with her long-sought-after royal consort, a second semester of dreaded Algebra, more princess lessons from Grandmére, and the inability to stop gnawing on her fingernails, isn't there anything Mia is good at besides inheriting an unwanted royal title?

"If I was a princess," she murmured, "I could scatter largess to the populace. But even if I am only a pretend princess, I can invent little things to do for people. I'll pretend that to do things for people is scattering largess."

a little princess
Frances Hodgson Burnett

Thursday, January 1, Midnight,
Royal Genovian bedchamber
My New Year's Resolutions
by Princess Amelia Mignonette Grimaldi Thermopolis Renaldo,
age 14 years and 8 months

1. I will stop biting my fingernails, including the fake ones.
2. I will stop lying. Grandmère knows when I am lying anyway, thanks to my traitorous nostrils, which flare every time I tell a fib, so it's not like there is even a point in trying to be less than
3. truthful.
4. I will never veer from prepared script while
5. delivering televised address to the Genovian public.
6. I will stop accidentally saying mèrde in front of the ladies-in-waiting.
7. I will stop asking François, my Genovian
8. bodyguard, to teach me French swear words.
9. I will apologize to the Genovian Olive Growers Association for that thing with the pits.
10. I will apologize to the Royal Chef for slipping Grandmère's dog that slice of foie gras (even though I have told the palace kitchen repeatedly that I do not eat liver).
11. I will stop lecturing the Royal Genovian Press Corps on the evils of smoking. If they all wish to develop lung cancer, that is their prerogative.
12. I will achieve self-actualization.
13. I will stop thinking so much about Michael Moscovitz.

Oh, wait. It's okay for me to think about Michael Moscovitz, BECAUSE HE IS MY BOYFRIEND NOW!!!!!!!!

MT + MM = TRUE LOVE 4-EVER

Friday, January 2, 2 p.m.,
Royal Genovian Parliament

You know, I am supposed to be on vacation. Seriously. I mean, this is my winter break. I am supposed to be having fun, mentally recharging for the coming semester, which is not going to be easy, as I will be moving on to Algebra II, not to mention Health and Safety class. Everybody at school was all, Oh, you are so lucky, you get to spend Christmas in a castle being waited on hand and foot.

Well, first of all, there is nothing so great about living in a castle. Because guess what? Castles are totally old. And yeah, it's not like this one was built in 4 a.d., or whenever it was my ancestress Princess Rosagunde first became ruler of Genovia. But it was still built in, like, the 1600s, and let me tell you what they didn't have in the 1600s:

1. Cable
2. DSL
3. Toilets

Which is not to say there isn't a satellite dish now, but, hello, this is my dad's place; the only channels he has got programmed are, like, CNN, CNN Financial News, and the golf channel. Where is MTV 2, I ask you? Where is the Lifetime Movie Channel for Women?

Not that it matters because I am spending all my time being run off my feet. It isn't as if I ever even get a free moment to pick up a remote and go, "Ho hum, I wonder if there's a Tracey Gold movie on."

Oh, yeah, and the toilets? Let me just tell you that back in the 1600s, they didn't know so much about sewage. So now, four hundred years later, if you put one square too much toilet paper in the bowl and try to flush, you create a mini indoor tsunami.

So that's it. That is my life in Genovia.

Every other kid I know is spending his or her winter break in Aspen skiing, or in Miami getting tanned.

But me? What am I doing for my winter break?