I Ain't No Martha Stewart

Every month when my Martha Stewart "Living" magazine arrives in the mail, I feel like a hypocrite. I am not sure who even got me a subscription -- I think it was my mom. If anyone else ordered it for me, they did so in jest.

You see, I ain't no Martha Stewart. If Martha came to my house and looked in my cupboards, she would grab a meat thermometer and poke her eyes out with it. A quick glance in my desk drawers would cause her to convulse. If Martha needed me to drive her somewhere in my minivan (or the trashcan as my kids seem to think it is), she would want to take a hot shower in bleach as soon as I dropped her off.

Any craft or artistic work I've ever attempted has ended with me stewing in anger and a big, ugly mess to clean up. In 7th grade sewing class, we had to make an animal-shaped pillow. After trying to show me how to use her sewing machine, my mother became exasperated and made the whole thing for me. I find it painfully ironic that she is a gifted seamstress -- apparently that gene skipped a generation, because I can't even thread a needle.

Back to Martha. I read her magazine mostly to check out her monthly calendar, because it's strikingly similar to mine.

Martha's schedule:

• September 12: Harvest okra; make curried okra for dinner
• September 14: Clean portable fans and store them
• September 16: Have leaf blowers serviced
• September 28: Prepare chicken coop for shipment of new chicks

Here's my schedule for those days:

• September 12: Harvest crushed Goldfish crackers and pretzel rods from the minivan
• September 14: Turn the dryer on wrinkle release for the 8th time, put clothes in basket, and do not put any of them away, ever
• September 16: Use leaf blower to expel empty juice boxes from the deck
• September 28th: Hope that it snows soon so I don't have to do anything with all those dead summer flowers

Martha must've gotten under my skin, though, because somehow I convinced my husband that we should hang some windowboxes on the front of our house. I imagined adorning them in the winter with beautiful spruce tips, perfectly dusted with snow, pinecones and berries sprinkled in to add some color.

He bought into it, and we had them installed this fall. The reality? I purchased spruce tips in the beginning of November. They sat in my garage for a month, got completely dried out and flattened into the shape of a fan. I plugged them into the windowboxes this weekend, along with some mishapen, uneven red dogwood twigs. The whole display looks totally ridiculous, and I'm wondering if perhaps it would be better just to remove them all together.

The silver lining? I am wholly confident that I haven't missed my calling in art direction or flower arranging.

Yours truly,

The Adult Imposter