Just Call Me Martha

Well, okay, just call my magazine collection Martha. It's so embarrassing to admit, but yes, I do subscribe to Martha Stewart Living, and I had this weird urge to reread a whole ton of them the other night. So, the dictates of a New England harridan (to paraphrase one of our good friends) are strewn about the den, and I feel sort of desperate looking at them. Why? Because with an infant, a job, and a dog that eats crap from the side of the road frequently, my house is never going to meet Martha's standards. Then again, when is Martha Stewart going to swing by my house? Maybe if she gets sent to whatever the female San Quentin is...all right, that was a completely stupid joke, and not that funny. Apologies. At any rate, I don't know what it is that compels me to want my house and life to fit into those tidy, twee standards---latent Southern belle gene? I will say that the older I get, the more often I hear ancestral Southern drawls over my shoulder when I do things or plan things. It's not a bad thing, just an interesting thing.

For Christmas this past year my mother got me an apron that reads "Just Call Me Martha". I wear it in what I think is jest, and then every so often I find myself shrieking at my poor husband, my poor dogs, my poor kitchen, wondering why it is that my life is in such disarray. It's ridiculous, though, isn't it? Madame Martha has an army of help to maintain that lifestyle, and god knows the rest of us wouldn't even know what to do with that horde, even if we did have them. What honestly does matter? The fact that Bean grins hugely when I go in to fetch her in the morning, that my dogs want to snuggle up to me all the time, that my husband and I find each other fun and interesting still, that I'm a darn good teacher...and that tonight I wanted to make a pecan pie for dessert and I discovered that I didn't have to run out to the store for any of the ingredients.

Just call me Martha.