Why Val has big fun worrying about all the wrong things

Of course, it's not just that Val doesn't like outsiders coming along and telling Holly that she deserves to have a summer vacation that isn't spent in an abandoned mining camp where she can be saved from horrible distractions like functioning plumbing, central heating, mattresses that cannot be confused with matzohs and male contemporaries or being told that all she's doing by blathering about how spoiled Holly is because she can't do much about world evil. What really makes Val wonderful company is her dread of implausible catastrophes because much like how the cowbirds from Pogo were happiest when they were miserable, Val Stone seems to be content to live her life in a state of needless panic so that she doesn't really have to do things about things she can do things about.

I should think that the need to congratulate herself for turning humanitarian causes into a sort of punishment for Holly's wanting things not to her own goody-too-shoes, please-give-me-a-pat-on-the-head-for-caring-enough-to-be-pointlessy-punitive tastes stems from the need to believe that she is, in fact, a poor, misunderstood figure who only wants to help her child live a happy life by depriving her of the only childhood she'll ever have. Caring about cute tops, cute boys and makeup is not just typical behaviour to be tolerated but instead a horrible threat to be fought at every turning. It might look as if Valerie is a crazy idiot worrying about nothing to her detriment but that's not what she sees. What she wants to see is Holly not corrupting Alix by telling her to grow up and acting like a child because the alternative is admitting that it's okay that she do what they did and move on with her life. Valerie might have remarried but it's kind of obvious that she's never really going to get over the death of her first husband because that would make her a bad person.