Martha’s Calendar
Martha isn’t being 100% honest with us. I’m a big fan of Martha Stewart – mostly because
I think she is very enterprising and seems to have created a life that supports
itself and looks fun. I even admire her
going to jail for “insider trading” because I bet the place looked great once
she left it. But what I do want to point
out, since we are talking about unfair advantage, is her calendar that she
publishes inside her magazine. I thought
that was the coolest thing until I compared it to MY CALENDAR. At this writing I’d just like to point out
the one glaring omission: repetition.
In the course of a month, I don’t recall seeing any task
that was repeated. Like the Saturday she
“groomed the horses.” Who grooms them
the other 30 days in the month? Listing grooming
horses as an event on the calendar as if it was a social engagement leaves me
wondering what else on the calendar is celebrated by Martha once, but handled
by an employee all the other days of the month and year.
My example to drive the point home is this: I take my dogs to the groomer to be formally
groomed about 3 times a year. All the
other times they get baths, it’s good ole Momma Christine chasing them around
the house with a leash, circling the kitchen island more than once, throwing
them in the tub, getting down on my knees with towels on the floor in the
bathroom, checking the temp of the water, holding the collar with one hand and
doing the pouring and washing with my other hands. Oh wait, I have only two hands. So I must be pouring, washing, massaging shampoo,
and rinsing with just ONE hand while firmly gripping the wet dog collar with
the other. I can feel my low back twinge
and the thought of the strain of kneeling over the rim of the bathtub at that
contortionist angle. This is not by any means
an exaggeration. Just the same, it is
also not by any means a social event. I
put it on my calendar to remember that I did it and survived.
I bet I know a thing that doesn’t make it to Martha’s
calendar. Last night it was 8pm. The television and the couch looked inviting,
except for that subtle draft that comes between the gap located at the bottom
of the top and top of the bottom windows in my living room. How many window companies, how many engineers,
did it take to make perfectly good windows with a sixteenth of an inch draft
included at no extra charge? Did I leave
the job for the next day, or did I tackle it last night? I stood in the living room looking at the
windows as if I haven’t seen these same windows for the past eight years. I sighed over and again. I looked at the package of plastic window
sheeting on my table. I thought about
how much fun working with double-sided sticky tape and lightweight flying
plastic is (Not.). I mumbled some word I
would not say in church or in front of my mother and picked up the box and
began to unravel the plastic. It wasn’t
cut into three separate sheets for the three windows I was about to
tackle. It was one big, long sheet I’d
have to cut to size as I went. Yippee. Oh, joy.
Another non-social event to put on my calendar.
My “Yesterday” on the calendar was not just one thing; like
for instance, attending a birthday party that involved me arriving by private
jet or helicopter. (Don’t you just hate
how helicopters wreck your hair? I
watched a helicopter rescue people on a sandbar one summer day in Chatham. I imagine the whipping up of the helicopter
blades made the sunbathers feel like they were getting a high-pressure body
exfoliation. Note to self: do not ignore the rising tide when you are on
a sandbar.) My “Yesterday” list on the
calendar says: dump, Aldi’s, animal
shelter (2 trips; same day); and hunt for women’s snow pants. The snow pants were not at the two stores
that said online that they had them. One
store had two pair, but they were too small.
The other store did not have them at all. Two years ago, I bought a pair online and had
to give them away due to a size conflict.
Apparently, I’m fatter than they think should fit into the size they
list. But how can I go out snow-shoeing to
lose weight if I can’t seem to get my hands on a decent pair of snow pants? A vicious circle indeed. I see a couch and movies in my future this winter. When they bury me in a piano case, someone is
going to undoubtedly ask, “How did this happen?” Be sure to tell them it was the damn snow
pants I couldn’t find.
I am in a new habit of writing down all kinds of stuff on my
desk blotter calendar at home. (I did
get that idea from Martha’s calendar.) I
think it is how I am justifying the space I take up on the planet: if I accomplish something worthy, it’s good
that I was here, right? The whole
process of picking grapes, making wine and jam, and cleaning up the vineyard is
well documented. Theoretically, someone
could just take right over next year if I croak and can’t do it. All the documentation is there. Same thing with the dog breeding. You would know exactly when to de-worm the
pups, when to start mixing in cottage cheese and formula to start their
weaning, etc. It’s all there. Oil changes, car washes, days I was sick and
stayed home from work so that I didn’t end up going to work as a Patient
instead of an Office worker, all the painful and joyous monotony of my
life.
When I look at my calendar, it is clear to me that I am a
lot busier than Martha is. That being
said, I still want to be her friend and would gladly sit down to a sip of my
homemade wine and my store-bought cheese and crackers with her if she
wanted. But at this point I’m not sure what
I would enjoy more: a ride in her
private jet, or one of her farm hands to come help me put up snow fence. We’ll have to discuss that.
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