2/15-22/10 - Good shit

Sometimes I feel like my day-to-day life is defined by a series of run-ins with shit—I mean like literal shit! If I'm not frantically trying to discourage my dog from dropping a pile in the neighbor's yard, I'm wrangling cat turds back into the litterbox. If I'm not scraping the bird crap off the car door handle, I'm digging the dog shit out of my shoe. I write this as I've just finished unclogging the Poover Dam from the toilet for the third time in a week.... I wonder when was the last time Martha Stewart ever picked up a plunger? Though I imagine she may have had plenty of opportunity for such activity during her stint in The Big House.

While Martha spent last week enjoying the Westminster Kennel Club Show and attending to anal-retentive chores like "Clean window shades and blinds," "Groom cats," "Organize pots-and-pans cupboards," "Season wooden cutting boards," and "Harvest kumquats from the greenhouse," I managed to walk and bathe the dog, measure my south-facing windows for seed-starter shelves (which Charles promised to build as a Valentine's present), buy cat food, clear out a garden bed for early planting, and make some headway on my ant problem (finally broke down & set out poisoned bait to be carried back to their secret lair). And while Martha made a dogfood cake for her pooch Sharkey's birthday, I made a birthday cake for my pal Kenneth. It was intended to be classic yellow with a rich chocolate icing, but I've still not come across the perfect frosting recipe. This one was still runny after cooling all afternoon, so I opted to whip up a pastry cream filling & poured the icing over the top to transform it into an "eclair cake"—it was actually a big hit!

I did follow Martha's lead and hosted something of a Mardi Gras dinner—I boiled up a pot of gumbo (a regular late summer meal when the garden is bustin' with tomatoes, peppers, & okra) and a quickie chocolate-chip bread pudding sprinkled with what's left of this fall's yard-gathered pecans. A couple girlfriends stopped by for a quick nosh before we hit the town to checkout our buddies' bluegrass band, The Mudflapjacks. And despite the fact that I managed to keep my top on, I still came home strewn with several strands of plastic beads that are likely to find their way to the landfill any day now.

Tolerable temperatures settled in by midweek, allowing me to catch up on the previous week's command to "Pick-up winter debris from garden" as I hauled a month-old pile of privet & holly branches to the curb less than 24 hours before the city trucks came by for monthly pickup. By the time my dad blew into town, using the excuse of dropping-off a few things I inherited from my dear departed Grannie's Brooklyn brownstone to escape the snow mess up North, the weather was sunny & balmy and more akin to what we're used to for winter in the South.

It was a perfect weekend to get busy in the garden. Ironically though, I managed to score a press pass to an organic farming conference that came to town & I spent a sun-soaked Friday afternoon befriending a llama & alpaca while exploring greenhouses & fallow fields on a farm tour & most of Saturday in dimly lit conference rooms learning about herbal medicine & seed saving—skills I can put to use for many sunny days to come, and which are sure to prove absolutely necessary when the shit goes down. I've been to a handful of conferences & expos in my day, and usually end up walking out of them with a bag full of worthless schwag—crappy pens, magnets, keychains, etc.—I came away from this one with a stack of seed catalogs and a bag of compost.... Now that's the kind of shit I can actually put to good use!

2/8-14/10 - A long winter's nap

Somehow a week has managed to fly by & I've not much to show for it.... Many of Martha's commands of the past week have either been foiled by crappy weather, an overfull schedule of meetings & deadlines, impossibility, or sheer ridiculousness. Like Monday's "Prune weeping willows in the wetland while the ground is still frozen." With all the rain we've had of late, my entire yard is a wetland—though I've no weeping willows in need of pruning (I guess I could've braved the driving rain & tackled some privet & honeysuckle). And Tuesday's "Make glittered valentines; address and stamp envelopes" and "Assemble candies for heart-shaped boxes"—What am I twelve? I know Martha's hard up to unload her custom line of glitter in these hard times, but I'm not falling for it.

I did, however, fall for the cute little heart-shaped pies on the cookie-of-the-month back page, although I didn't get to them 'til much later in the week. Martha tells us to make pie crust in a food processor, well I don't own one of these (my cabinets barely have room for my Salad Shooter and combo mini-chopper/stick blender and my lime-green Kitchen Aid mixer lives out in the open on a shelf in the dining room). I took my pastry-making cues from the November '08 issue of Saveur that featured step-by-step instructions on making the perfect pie crust. I settled down with a ice-cold metal bowl and watched Keith Olberman's left-wing pontifications while working my fingers through a pile of flour & chilled butter chunks 'til they morphed into a lovely cohesive lump. Martha's recipe called for a filling of pears & fresh raspberries, but I happened to have apples & craisins on hand—where the hell do you get fresh raspberries in February and why would you wanna ruin them by baking them into a pie?! My version simmered on the stove for an hour or so & got stashed in the fridge with the dough for the night.

The next morning I got to assembling them. I don't own a 4-inch heart-shaped cookie cutter, so I fished an old bean can out of the recycling bin, scrubbed it out, & bent it into a slightly wonky heart shape. Martha didn't recommend to crimp the pies' edges, but I figured this would be a good idea lest the filling come oozing out in a sticky mess. It was a pretty labor-intensive process & I ran out of filling toward the end (the last 3 pies got a scoop of marmalade which actually did run out in a sticky mess), but I've gotta admit, they're really friggin' cute!

Martha also commanded me to "Make compost tea for plants in greenhouse." I don't have a greenhouse, but I do have a collection of houseplants that occupy assorted cobwebby corners in my bedroom & bathroom. They're definitely looking rather sickly as they await their springtime return to the front porch and could use a litle pick-me-up. To make a proper compost tea, you're supposed to use aquarium equipment to aerate the compost/water brew. I don't exactly have that stuff kicking around, but I figure I'll give it a good stir & maybe blow through a length of pvc pipe to add some bubbles to it once in a while.

Apparently Martha spent Thursday attending the opening day of New York Fashion Week and having cocktails with friends. For my fashion quest, I managed to drive out to the Goodwill past the mall & pick up a few new button-downs for Charles to wear to work and a green wool sweater that I hope to felt into a fun purse some time in the near future. As for the cocktails, a hot bath with my friend Sailor Jerry will have to do.

Friday arrived with a threat of snow, an occasion to freak the fuck out here in the deep South. My compost tea had developed a respectable crust of ice & I'm thinkin' not much biochemical action is happening under such conditions. By mid afternoon the flakes had started coming down and I'd yet to make it to the post office to mail off my valentine pies (so what if they won't get there 'til the middle of next week—like me, my loved ones aren't exactly sticklers for a schedule). I braved the icy conditions & went on an errand run—from the looks of the mobs at the grocery store you'd think a nuclear winter was nigh. I also decided it was a perfect time to visit the garden center and pick up ingredients for my seed starter mix. My seeds had arrived in the mailbox and I decided to stare down the wintry mix with some kind of proactive gardening activity. Close to five inches were on the ground by midnight—a pretty respectable accumulation for these parts—and it made for the perfect excuse to stay in and eat leftover pizza, watch the Olympics opening ceremonies, and make vanilla cinnamon cake layers for my pal Lysa's 40th birthday party Saturday night.

Saturday was occupied with enjoying the winter wonderland. The world was bright and sunny & stuff was melting fast! We assembled a posse of friends & neighbors & our accompanying pooches & set off for a long walk around the 'hood, down the tracks, and through the woods. The rest of the afternoon had me wrestling with the tiered birthday cake. I'd hoped to make a nice dark & shiny chocolate frosting, but the recipe I lifted off the internets was sticky & gooey & set like fudge as it cooled. I one and a halved it and still had to make a second batch to cover the whole cake. Needless to say, I was running pretty late for the surprise party, but so was the birthday girl ! As they say, "Birds of a feather....."

Several hours and many bottles of red wine later, Charles appeared at the party to chauffeur me & my drunkass girlfriends home. Apparently it took some degree of force as we threatened to ditch him at a stoplight and make a mad dash for a local bar for late-night disco. The child safety locks on our Honda actually had to be deployed.

Valentine's Day found me hungover & we eventually made it out for brunch after tracking down at least one drunkass girlfriend to return her to the scene of her car. Charles & I celebrated our love by braving crowds of well-clad churchgoers and random pairs of heathens out for an awkward Sunday brunch post Saturday night hookup. I made it halfway through my Southern-style eggs benedict (two biscuits topped w/ a slice of country ham, fried eggs, and a puddle of sausage gravy) while Charles doused his homefries, pork chops, & eggs in hot sauce & inhaled the entire plateful. Back home, I immediately collapsed into a carb and cholesterol-induced coma and spent the rest of the afternoon in bed while my beloved slaved away over school books.

I did manage to arise by dark to resurrect those almost forgotten duck breasts.... A couple weeks back, I found a recent issue of Field & Stream laying on the toilet seat opened to a recipe for Duck Salmi—this is Charles' subtle way of requesting a particular meal and I figured Valentine's Day would be the proper occasion to make it happen. Salmi is a red wine-based mushroomy game stew—served over the toasted remnants of last week's home-baked bread, it was rich and hearty and finally put to rest my red wine-induced fuzzhead.

And by the way—yes, we get Field & Stream too. Some anonymous benefactor must've signed us up, but Charles actually re-upped the subscription as the writing is actually really good, it's chock full of pretty nature photos, and there are some great survival & hunting tips that will really come in handy when the shit goes down. If Martha had only included the occasional recipe for squirrel stew or illustrated instructions for field-dressing a doe, I might never have doubted her.

2/4-8/10 - An ongoing battle....

Three straight days of cold, cold rain was enough to keep me inside to conquer the kind of busy work I'm prone to ignore 'til it's out of control. I managed to put a significant dent in my copy editing duties, plowing through articles on interspecies etiquette and urban sprawl.... I also took on a pile of unpaid bills and an off-balance checkbook while poverty breathed down my neck.

Martha's commands for Thursday included "Take inventory of potting soils and mixes and restock if needed" & "Order metal stakes and labeling supplies for vegetable garden." The weather outside was frightful and I wasn't about to leave the house to mess around in any kind of dirt, and I use scrawled-on recycled plasticware to label my plants, but I did spend much of the evening drooling over my Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds catalog and made a lengthy wish list—here in the South, planting season is right around the corner! Unfortunately that list got taken to the chopping block after my checkbook revelations....

Friday's order #1: "Check burlap covers on boxwoods and repair any tears." Yeah, right—a) I don't have boxwoods, b) If I did, they wouldn't need coverin' in these parts, and c) It's cold & rainy outside! Order #2: "Bake bread." Now that's something I can get behind! Believe it or not, I'd never baked bread on my own before. I'm pretty sure I'd helped my mom with it as a kid, but it wasn't exactly a regular occurrence. I followed the steps in MSL & came out of it with two perfect loaves! The article had a handful of suggested variations on the recipe, but I improvised on my own, using half & half wheat & white flower & adding a little garlic salt & a few pinches of thyme, dill, & tarragon. Charles was so excited about the promise of fresh-baked bread, he picked up a pile of roast beef on his way home, thus sandwiches for dinner. And in light of the measly funds, we bailed on a night out—Charles uploaded random obscure documentaries on Netflix while I swept the floors & folded laundry—very romantic!

More intolerable wet cold on Saturday had me heeding Martha's command to "Scan files and receipts in home office, and shred and recycle papers." My version of this task was to clean off my dresser and weed through the triple-tiered plastic bin of old cards, article clippings, and photos in the bedroom corner while Charles cleared off a shelf in his Mancave to make room for his school books (yes, he has a Mancave—more on this later). While I carefully examined every box & bauble, tossing anything that wasn't valuable, hand-crafted, or irrefutably sentimental, Charles simply held up a cardboard box & swept off the entire contents of his dresser surface and retired to the living room to watch more Netflix. The cardboard box is still sitting under the coffee table.

I eventually got around to making dinner—a cheesy potato casserole layered with seasoned ground venison & served with an arugula salad & edamame & a slice of buttered home-baked bread. In an effort to avoid factory-farmed flesh, we make wild hunted deer a pretty significant part of our diet. No, my husband does not hunt (though I encourage him to take it up eventually as it's a skill that will definitely come in handy when the shit goes down), but there are plenty of gunslingers out there who shoot Bambi for shits & giggles & never get around to claiming their kills from the processor. Each season, we fork over 50 bucks or so & stock up on this unclaimed meat 'til our freezer overflows. I imagine there's an entire culture of sharp-shootin' country boys who subsist on fast food burgers & fries while we city folk dine on free-range venison thanks to their skills.

Much of Sunday was spent fulfilling my Master Gardener duties as I met with a group of townie hipsters who are starting a community garden. Martha commanded a "morning walk with the dogs," so Andromeda rode along with me on an afternoon trip to the fabric store (where I found fringed trim for my naked couch cushions for fifty cents a yard!). On the way back, we stopped at our favorite riverfront park to take a little wander through the woods. With all the recent rain, the river had obviously overflowed its banks & much of the park was a muddy, silty mess. Andi had the good sense to stay out of the mud & instead ran around in the brambly underbrush on the ridge above the pathway.

Back home, Charles was asserting his manhood by cooking ribs to eat while watching the Superbowl. Although he thankfully doesn't give a crap about football, he gets a kick out of the ads, so the game was blasting away while I had a couple of girlfriends stop by to put in their seed orders. Yesterday's cleaning spree had yielded me forty bucks found in a forgotten hiding place, so I replenished my own wish list & had the order placed by midnight....

This morning, before I was able to enjoy another eggy sandwich (this time on fresh baked bread), I awoken to yet another ant invasion. I'd deduced that they were coming from behind the stove where I suspected a bowl of sugar may have spilled when we had some 30 of our closest friends over for black-eyed peas & collards on New Year's night, but saw no evidence of such when we inspected & laid down boric acid & vinegar spray. I refuse to use pesticides—I'd honestly rather ingest an occasional ant than expose myself to poisonous crap (if Anthony Bourdain can do it, so can I!). At this point, I don't know where the hell they're coming from, but they sure as hell love barbeque sauce! Charles' efforts at cleaning up his ribby feast were a bit half-assed & the couple of smears on the drawer fronts & the sticky pan in the sink had the ants out in battalions for an all-you-can-eat-buffet.

I swear there's some mutation on the Y chromosome that leads to domestic retardation! If all the women on the planet suddenly disappeared, I'd give the dudes six weeks before they're grunting naked around a campfire—well maybe the gay guys would keep them in order, but I'd hope they'd have the good sense to hole themselves up in gated communities of orderly, impeccably decorated homes and throw fabulous nightly parties while the straight dudes wallow in piles of their own filth on the outside. As for straight girls like me, we're cursed with this biological urge to cohabitate with such creatures.

This evening I joined a friend in attending a commission meeting a couple counties over where there's a proposal to build a really scary trash incinerator that would belch all sorts of nasty pollutants into some of the most pristine countryside left in the state—ugh! I came home to Charles passed out on the couch as Chris Matthews tore into some hapless Republican on gigantovision. I fed myself with leftovers before heading to the tub with a mug of Sailor Jerry-spiked cinnamon chamomile tea. By the time I got out, Charles had made it to the bed where he was catching up on his schoolwork while sharing a box of Cheez-its with the dog!!! Although I was able to wrestle the snack food away from him, I expect the marauding ants will have sniffed out the crumbs in the sheets by morning....

2/2&3/10 - Steppin' in it....

Yesterday was one of those cold rainy days that keeps me snuggled up in bed with my laptop, kitties, and pooch 'til noon. When I finally did arise to find sustenance, the leftover quinoa wasn't gonna do it. So I whipped up a dilly scrambled egg, arugula, & ham sandwich on wheat toast with a thick shmear of cream cheese. It didn't take Andi long to coax me into the damp, chilly outside world where I spent a good 45 minutes tramping around the muddy yard in my rain boots begging her to come back inside. For some reason she kept creeping through the tangled hedge along the property line to investigate the neighbor's front yard—I suspect she may have left behind a hefty poo pile to match yesterday's backyard deposit. By the time I got her back indoors, I'd stepped in shit and she was covered in mud—a dog bath suddenly became the next item on the agenda.

Martha had listed "Tweet and blog" and "yoga" on her calendar. Well I don't tweet, and I failed to make a blog entry yesterday, but I did manage to get most of the way through a 50 page manuscript on the semantics of ecological discourse while intermittently fucking around on Facebook before heading off to power yoga class.

By the time I got home, I was smelly and starving and had a fridge full of leftover Persian rice to contend with. I had some radishes and tiny turnips kicking around in the veggie drawer & recalled a recipe for sauteed radishes in yogurt sauce that I'd seen posted on my local online farmer's market site a couple of times. It called for a layer of hard-boiled egg chunks, topped with cooked diced radishes (I threw in the turnips and some chopped beet stems to boot), and drowned in a lemony, spicy yogurt sauce. It was a perfect accompaniment to the leftover rice and I went through two piled-high platefuls. Charles, however, was grossed out by the concept of cooked radishes and wouldn't even try it. I abandoned him to fend for himself with a pile of week-old sweet potatoes and a piece of reheated mystery meat while I retired to a tub of lavender-infused hot water with a steamy mug of Sailor Jerry-spiked chai tea.

The rest of the evening was occupied by the season premiere of "Lost"—more aptly known as "Daddy Issues Island"—and I ended up editing Charles' Langston Hughes research paper 'til I was too tired to think about this blog. Much of this morning was taken over by the paper too. My husband is a middle management slave for a customer service call center where he regularly puts in overtime—AND he's taking night classes toward a M. Ed so he can be a high school English teacher. Yeah, he busts his ass big time & I do what I can to make it easier for him, which means keeping him properly fed & clothed & serving as his personal research assistant & copy editor.

Outside it was a beautiful sunny, almost balmy day, unfortunately, between Charles' paper and my real-job editing duties, I didn't get to enjoy much of it. Martha's calendar for today lists an appearance on the Today show which I tried to find online—she must have bombed, 'cause it didn't get posted. The calendar also says, "Polish shoes and take pairs with worn heels or sole guards to the cobbler." The only shoes I wear regularly are flip-flops and faux Crocs, so I translated this command into "Clean the dog shit off the rain boot that's been sitting on the back step since you stepped in it yesterday afternoon." I half-heartedly headed outside with a bottle of spray cleaner and a handful of paper towels, filled a watering can at the rain barrel, found a sunny spot in the back yard, and used a few twigs to dig the encrusted feces from the deep treads of my rubber boots. It was in there pretty good and I actually had to refill the watering can to get it all rinsed away by the time the sun descended to the treeline and it neared dinnertime.

I hadn't forgotten about the duck. I'm right proud of my ability to stretch a single fryer hen into a week's worth of meals, and I figure I can do the same with this bird. Since I'd ripped off all the fat, I figured it's not right for roasting, and I wouldn't want to waste prime breast meat in a boil pot, so I carefully cut them off to pack away in the freezer. I'm pretty damn good at this butchering thing and I figure when the shit goes down we'll be OK as long as I can get someone else to kill, decapitate, and defeather the little critters. Although if the shit's gone down, I doubt we'll be worried about putting aside prime cuts—we're more likely to stake a whole carcass over the fire pit and pray the zombies don't get to us first!

As for now, the carcass has spent the entire day in the crock pot brewing up a hearty broth. I'll soon be tossing in some turnips, carrots, and what's left of that magically endless pile of family farm beet greens to make a stew (maybe thickened with a duck fat roux?)—and there's still plenty of Persian rice to suck it up.

I

2/1/10—Day 1 done

I dragged myself out of bed this morning at 8:30 a.m.—a good hour before I'd usually even consider being up and at 'em. After dealing with the ongoing ant infestation in my kitchen and emptying the dishwasher of clean crockery to make way for the dirty stuff that had piled up in the sink and attracted the ants in the first place, it was time to start my day with a bowl of breakfast quinoa, as recommended in this month's MSL. A dust-covered jar of the strange little grain has been living for years on my top shelf between some very scary-looking homemade pickled mushrooms gifted to me many years ago and a jar of what appears to be fig preserves of unknown origin. (see photo 1)

Although Martha recommended preparing the quinoa on the stovetop with milk, brown sugar, cinnamon, & blueberries, I decided to apply my favorite oatmeal ingredients and cook it in a lidded casserole dish in the microwave. I used milk and orange tangerine Juicy Juice, a dash of nutmeg, splash of vanilla, a handful of craisins, a pinch of salt, and a generous chunk of butter for good measure.

It takes less than 5 minutes to cook a giant bowl of oatmeal this way, but that damn quinoa took for-fucking-ever! It went through at least a half dozen 5 minute cycles and nearly twice the recommended liquid before the stuff even started to take on that translucent sheen that means it's done. Even then, it was still pretty al dente & I added a couple generous splats of my homemade yogurt to transform the sandy pile into something resembling creamy mush (yes, I make my own yogurt—there's more than a little Martha in me after all!). It tasted pretty good, but I'm just not into the weird chewy caviar texture of quinoa—now I know why that jar sat neglected on the top shelf for so long. (see photo 2)

Martha's calendar for today lists "Work out" and "replenish firewood." For me the former means a few rounds of sun salutations and dancing warrior in between checking on the quinoa and batting my little dog Andromeda away as she shoves her slobber-covered squeaky monkey toy in my face and takes over my yoga mat only to outshine me in downward-facing dog. As for the latter, I don't have a functioning fireplace, so a brief visit to my next-door neighbor's fenced-in yard where Andi loves to sniff and scurry all over a fallen tree will have to qualify. After five minutes of snarfing about, Andi squeezed out a massive poo pile in a tangle of ivy & I figured it was time to get outa there & on with my day.

But first I had to get the duck confit in the oven.... I'd planned to make an MSL-endorsed Persian rice dish for dinner tonite. The recipe calls for duck confit as an optional ingredient—one that prompted me to ask the question "What the fuck is duck confit?" The internets enlightened me: it's the salt-cured legs & wings of a duck, poached in duck fat. We just happened to have a whole duck in our freezer (my husband Charles has a meat-hoarding disorder and picked it up on sale a few months back).

I'd only cooked duck for the first time a couple weeks ago. Just before Christmas we caught our neighbor, Caleb hauling a couple of rifles out of his car on a Sunday morning. He was clad in cammo and sporting an orange vest, so it was safe to assume he'd just come from hunting and wasn't about to go postal. He proudly showed off a handful of limp little mallards, their beady dead eyes staring out of shiny iridescent green heads. Caleb offered us a couple of frozen breasts left over from his last killing spree & Charles bowed down before him in eternal gratitude. When I finally got around to cooking them, I simply sprinkled them with Tony Cachere's, pan-seared them, & finished them off in a hot oven for just a few minutes. Served with a side of gingered carrots & cajun spiced rice, they were tender and tasty and surprisingly steaky.

So back to the confit.... I spent the better part of Saturday night eviscerating the thawed quacker carcass with a pair of kitchen shears—removing the legs & thighs, the wings, and all skin & fatty tissues (see photo 3). Following a Gourmet video which I'd found on the web, I rubbed the parts down with salt & spices and forgot about it in the fridge for 36 hours. Somewhere between this morning's ant battle, the quinoa experiment, and the dog's bowel movement, I brushed off the salt as per instructed and slipped Daffy's sundry parts into a 200° oven to slowly poach away the entire day.

By 10 a.m. I was on to my real job—copyediting 40 pages of academic prose on the philosophical implications of lifestyle choices in light of the impending apocalypse. After a few hours immersed in that terrifying crap, I needed to get the hell out of the house! Andi & I took a long walk to the local hippy-dippy grocery co-op where I picked up basmati rice & spices for the evening's Martha-inspired meal.

The rice came off without a hitch, though I refused to peel the potatoes & substituted more of those craisins for the dried cherries called for in the recipe (see photo 4). The recipe also allowed for an option of mixing the confit into the rice, but after pulling the perfectly poached tender parts out of the oven, I decided to follow Gourmet's lead, searing the legs to serve them on a bed of greens with the rice on the side (see photo 5). Lest you think I made a special trip to an upscale market to pick up the fancy greens, know that arugula is among my top 10 favorite foods and I always have it on hand in season, often picking it from my own yard where it's known to sprout up in the lawn after going to seed. And the beet greens were thrust upon me by my neighbor who picked them at her beau's family farm a couple counties over (and I compensate her by allowing my ill-behaved mongrel to shit in her yard!).

Although everything looked perfect, the duck confit was outrageously salty—like drowned-in-the-Dead-Sea salty. Thankfully the subtle perfumey sweetness of the rice & the clean bitterness of the greens complemented the briney meat & provided enough balance to make the whole ensemble more than palatable.

But I'm a harsher critic than Charles, and despite the fact that he was freaked out by the craisins and picked every single one out of the rice (he does the same with peas and corn), he pretty much inhaled the whole plate. In the meantime, I've got a massive pile of leftover rice, a container of congealed duck fat, and a naked limbless bird carcass in my fridge. Perhaps I'll bring a doggie bag to my neighbor tomorrow—I'll just be sure to avoid stepping in the doggie doo along the way.

1/31/10 - Let the games begin!

So I've been a subscriber to Martha's mag for several years—I think it all started shortly after I bought my house back in late 2002. I guess I figured I could turn to her for guidance on how to transform my dilapidated little mill cottage and half acre of refuse-strewn yard into a serene and productive retreat of fine living and good taste—a quaint and cozy dream home adorned with lovingly restored, reimagined, and hand-crafted furnishings and accessories and a sprawling garden of mossy stone walkways, bountiful veggie beds, and rainbow-hued swales of fragrant blooms above which butterflies and birds engage in a year 'round airborne ballet!

But it's not all wine & roses. My domestic bliss is more akin to a domestic Blitz—after a year and a half of marriage and more than seven years of ongoing household renovations, I've found myself utterly overwhelmed as I suffocate under piles of undone laundry while fur-covered dust-bunnies burrow a dark and tangled warren through my entire existence and dozens of unfinished projects stare me down day in and day out like so many mini Mount Rushmores carved into uncaulked crown molding, naked couch cushions, unhung art, unpainted doors, unfinished floors, and knobless drawers around every corner.

So how did I get here? My humble little house had undergone generations of redneck-rigged renovations & repairs that demanded undoing. I ripped up ancient & filthy shag carpeting, knocked down dust-encrusted ceiling tiles, tore out & rebuilt a kitchen & a bathroom, converted a closet to a powder room, peeled up vinyl flooring, pried off pressboard paneling, replaced the roof, hauled off dozens of truckloads of worthless rusty crap, built a patio and a retaining wall, established a somewhat productive kitchen garden, and got started on those blooming swales. Somewhere along the line I acquired and left a handful of different jobs; met & married the man of my dreams (who can claim much credit for the above-mentioned progress); became the proud parent of an adorable pooch; helped start a neighborhood gardening club; earned a Master Gardener's certification; and settled into a routine of quintessential domesticity.

Sometimes I look back to where I was a decade or so ago and wonder what happened to that girl? That freewheelin' twentysomething rock chick up all night to the tune of cheap rent and communal living. Making ends meet on concert promos and art reviews while subsisting on a diet of PBR and two-dollar burritos. I can't go back to those Salad Daze, and frankly, I don't want to—the Betty Page bangs have given way to gray roots and the disco glitter long-buried in my make-up bag would only crust over in my crow's feet. But I've found myself at an impasse as I hack my way through the disheveled jungle of my daily drudgery.

I guess you can say I've always been a Martha fan. My once-and-former roommates even referred to me as "The Indie-Rock Martha Stewart" in deference to my penchant for cooking, entertaining, and crafting. But it's not like I'm obsessed or anything. In fact, I don't think I even knew who the hell she was 'til I caught Ana Gasteyer's dead-on impersonation on Saturday Night Live some time in the mid '90s. I think it was the "Topless Christmas Special" that hooked me (I was going through an extended nudist phase back in those days and was all for anything that involved shedding clothes and flashing tits!). I don't own any of her books, I never really watched her shows (we don't get Fine Living Network on basic cable). But I am a writer by trade, which also makes me an incurable magazine junkie. Martha's subtly made-up mug would call to me from the racks in the check-out aisle and I paid cover price for many an issue before entering the ranks of landed gentry and having a legitimate excuse to splurge on a subscription. Martha's rag now rubs spines with The New Yorker, Country Living, Saveur, and my husband's Entertainment Weekly in our mailbox each month.

But Living has failed to inspire as of late. I've started to feel like Martha has become more about pimping her new line of glitter and jerking off over the ancestral estates of her aristocratic New England compatriots than guiding real people like me on a path toward the good life. My subscription runs out next month, and I'd pretty much resigned myself to severing our ties.

Breaking up is hard to do, and the mere thought of a life without Martha led me to some serious soul-searching. Maybe she hasn't failed me—maybe I'm the one who has failed her! So I revisited a couple recent issues and reconsidered every page with heartfelt interest only to realize that Martha has plenty to say to me—I've just been too lazy and complacent to listen! Hell, she even offers a monthly calendar so I can put myself in her shoes each and every day of the year—so I've vowed to do just that! I turn to Martha as my Beatrice, my guiding light of daily resolve as I stumble through this dark wood of dusty domestic chaos. I'm sure to cross through countless circles of housework Hell (I may even hafta sell my soul and acquire an ironing board!), but I hope to emerge with some level of calm-voiced enlightenment and a highly organized household to boot!

Thus begins my year of living Martha-ly.... I resolve to follow her calendar and adapt her recipes, craft projects, and practical advice to my everyday life for the next year. Of course there will be challenges and I have no illusions of perfection (I am not Martha, afterall). I don't have millions of dollars and herds of minions tending to me and my two New England estates—hell, I barely even have an income! What I do have is a half-time, work-from-home copyediting job; an overworked and underpaid husband; a quaint little home in need of lots of TLC; and plenty of unbroken ground in my back yard. This venture will be undertaken as practically and as frugally as possible without compromising my own lefty ecocentric politics, funky junk shop aesthetics, and in-the-toilet sense of humor.

More proletariat than patrician, I part ways with Martha somewhere halfway up the class ladder—she may have done time in The Big House for stock market scheming, but I was once arrested for skinny dipping. While she is of a distinctively New England pedigree, I wallow contentedly in a grit-tinged Nouveau Southern culture. And while Martha rubs elbows with the rich & famous on a daily basis, many of my fucked-up friends are way more interesting.

So stay tuned for a report on Day 1 of Living the Life of Martha....