Martha's Calendar

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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