...a modern fairy tale (as told by a suburban princess living in the Real World)...

Once upon a time there was a beautiful princess who lived in a shiny silver castle on a white cloud, up in a bubbly world somewhere up there. A chic and stylish young thing, though borderline naive, she had a lovely pair of pink Guess shades which lent everything around a rosie hue. Life really was made up of raindrops and lollipops, and people are every bit as good as you hoped they would be.

There came a morning when she woke to a bright shining sky, no different than the day before. Nothing to make her think the day would be any more or less ordinary than usual. As ever a "babe in the woods", she donned her red cape and headed outside intending to go feed the deer and rescue a fallen sparrow or two. Without warning, she nearly stepped on a bright green tree frog sitting haphazardly on her front step. "Oh what a dear tree frog" she said, as she placed an affectionate kiss on its brow. When he didn't turn into a prince, she reacted with a contemptuous, disgruntled little kick. But readers, if you have ever tried to kick in heels, you know that it's not the best of ideas. Thrown off her rhythm, her balance upset, she tripped instead on his slimy surface and tumbled forward and off the fluffy cloud she called home. Down, down, down she fell for what seemed like 3 and a half months and in the process, lost her pink shades. Getting increasingly dizzier, she began to realize that as a princess, especially an incredibly intelligent and capable princess, she could call the shots. This epiphany took almost two hours but in the end, she was able to act in the proactive, change-effecting way of a truly enlightened royal.

"Stop, just stop" she cried, and the world listened. The world bowed and conceded.

She stopped falling and the world righted itself. Balance restored, she stood warily but firmly on her Chinese Laundry tweed pumps and looked about her. It was a world different from her white clouds and daffodills, a trendy yet eclectic neighbourhood with strange characters and even stranger fast food joints, but she thought she could make it work here. Always gracious to a fault, she wouldn't even let her Persian Revolutionary guard (decked out in requisitional garb: Talulah skirt and Chanel sunglasses) go after the tree frog. It wasn't his fault after all, he just hopped onto the wrong doorstep, plus it was a cute frog. Instead, with a flick of her hair and a conquering glint in her eye, she headed to the nearest late-night coffee house for a non-fat decaf latte and a complimentary mint stick. As he handed her the coffee, the boy behind the counter slipped her his phone number...