Well, next time I get all worked up about Princess coming home from college, remind me not to. She came home last Saturday, and spent most of the weekend in her bedroom. Granted, she was a help on Mother's Day and made dinner for Gibby while Loghead and I got to go out on a date. She was gone by monday night.

Monday night I was driving home for work, and she called and asked when I'd be home, because she wanted to be able to say good-by before she left. WTF? REALLY Long story short- she was failing a few of her courses and had incompletes and she had somehow convinced her professors to give her extensions to finish up as long as she did the work supervised, on campus.

I finally get home, and her car is packed up and ready to go. Loghead is sitting at the table, smoke practically coming out of his ears. I send her to her room, so he and I can talk first. i ask him a few questions, but barely get any answers from him because he is so mad. He just keeps mumbling that she is "just like her mother" and comments that he divorced the crazy b%^&* to save Princess from that kind of life, but "she's poisoned anyway."

I tell him to shut up with all that right now, and I call Princess back in, and tell her to bring me all her school work and the laptop. She dutifully comes in, and thankfully does look somewhat fearful... I tell her to log me onto her facebook page, because that's where I want to start my questions. I pull up a picture she had posted during finals week, when she should have been studying, where she was at a party, and had taken a photo of what was obviously some sort of drinking game set up on a kitchen table. In the background, you see a hand holding a beer bottle, and several empty cans on the table. I ask her what she was thinking when she posted it. "Oh, I just post everything. No one really looks at this."

i tell her people do, because her Nana and Grandpa have both asked me about it. She swears she wasn't drinking. She has the decency to blush when I point out that the manicure on the hand holding the bottle is the SAME AS THE ONE RESTING ON MY KITCHEN TABLE. I demand she delete it now, and she did. I ask if this is where she plans to stay- friends have offered her a place for free for the next few weeks as she finishes up work. She says no. I tell her I have already copied all the photos of the party house, and I will be looking carefully at any photos over the next few weeks to see if she is lying. loghead tells her she better be too busy working to be on FB and if she's on FB again during this work time, he's taking the computer.

I look over all the course guides and things and ask her questions about various policies and assignments. I finally ask point blank what lies she told the professors to convince them to let her make up the work. Sh acts like she doesn't know what I'm talking about. Like of course professors will extend policies and whatever... I tell her it's not high school and i know college isn't like that.

I volley question after question. I got some truths, but many lies. Basically, she just couldn't get herself out of bed to go to class. She all but says she was too depressed to go. She never admitted that to herself. yet she seems to have had plenty of energy to go to various events and outtings with friends....

She starts talking about leaving now, and that's when Loghead "wakes up" and tells her she can get up and leave in the morning. She says she has to be there at 8:30, and he says she can drive in, just like grown up would get up and drive to work. he tells her that if she goes now, how does he know she'll get up and make the meeting with her advisor if she couldn't bother to get up and go to class. They start to bicker.

I step in and say, "She is and adult now and wants to be treated as one. She has made this issue and she needs to solve it how she sees fit. If she wants to leave, let her go. She has to decide now in this moment who she wants to be when she grows up..." i looked over and saw she had not done the one thing I had requested of her while I was at work that day... "but if she leaves now, she better do the dishes before she goes, like I asked, or don't bother come back until I have cooled off. Because belief me, as calm as I appear on the outside, and as rational as I have been, I am extremely pissed off and thoroughly disgusted that the whole freshman experience was a a waste."

And I left the room. Loghead stormed out of the house. She sat and cried.

About 20 minutes later, the dishes were done, and she was gone.

I talked to her Tuesday night, briefly, but she got mad at some of my questions and hung up. I texted her back that she would be wise not to alienate me at this time, since I was the one who was backing her up and supporting her in this. "You've shit on me before, I suggest you don't do it now. Tough love, baby."

she didn't answer. She's been all over facebook about life choices and cooking and shopping for her roommates, and they went to the movies last night. NOTHING about school work. Loghead is furious. She has called him twice to ask him about cooking and he has been coldly polite. I guess the deal is if she lives rent free, she cooks? I don't know. Her FB page makes her look like a domestic goddess... Puke. That's not what we sent her to college for.

She is mentally ill. i am sad for her. I raised her well all these years so she wouldn't turn out that way, but I guess biology is stronger than environment. And i think she's too far gone to save her, until she admits she needs help... And that just breaks my heart.