0451471075 (N) (14 page)

Although I don’t run into her downstairs having my makeup touched up, I do bump into Paula Deen on my way up to the Loser Lounge and we have a lovely conversation with lots of quality eye contact. I make her laugh, so automatically I find her taste to be impeccable.

This is approximately three weeks before everything goes sideways for Paula. When the story breaks, I don’t know how to react—I have trouble reconciling her terrible, hurtful words with the lovely woman in the green room who calls me a “hoot,” so, looking back, I can’t consider counting her as having met an icon.

Plus,
that’s
about to happen in fifteen minutes.

I’m on set with Savannah Guthrie, who weighs as much as a lacrosse stick and I try not to envision our looking like the number 10 while we talk. The pretaped portion rolls before our live interview and I can barely pay attention. I’m sitting to Savannah’s left, so the whole time, I’m keeping my right eye on her with my left eye toward the back of the studio. Halfway through our conversation, I see a statuesque, seasoned blonde enter the back of the room. I can’t make out her face, but her general outline is very, very familiar.

YES!

THIS IS IT!

THIS IS HAPPENING!

We continue our interview, and I keep waiting for Savannah’s flash of recognition or sly nod to the camera, indicating that now is the time, but it never actually comes.

The segment ends, she thanks me, and that’s it.

That’s it? How is that it?

And how come the statuesque, seasoned blonde is . . . not Martha? Martha,
where are you??

Okay, I’m devastated that I didn’t get to meet her. But she’s still indirectly responsible for helping me turn one of the worst years of my life into one of the best. She was my guiding force, even if it was the idea of her and not her herself. That has more value than any brief interaction we might ever have.

If I’ve learned anything in my forty-six years, it’s to keep pressing past a disappointment, because there’s always something better on the horizon.

I decide to keep the goal to meet an icon, as this can still totally happen. I don’t know who it will be, but I’ll try to look surprised when it does. (That practice was not for nothing!)

I consider adding
fully housebreak Hambone
to the list, but I don’t.

Because nobody can perform that kind of miracle.

10.

N
OT THE
B
ULLSHIT
, J
UST THE
G
OOD
S
HIT

The fact that I’m butt-hurt over Martha doesn’t stop me from listening to her show on Sirius radio. In fact, I suspect the one who’s truly butt-hurt is Martha herself, as she’s recently lost her dedicated station and instead now has only a couple of hours on the Starz channel.

Cough
*karma*
cough.

I have no specific proof of Martha’s said butt-hurtedness here, yet the fact that she eats her lunch while on the air is a heavy clue. I’m not kidding; she doesn’t even try to hide the fact that she’s chewing. I’m sure there’s a legitimate explanation, like she’s broadcasting from her test kitchen and is so busy that she must sample items between commercial breaks. Still, it’s disconcerting to hear her through a mouthful of what sounds like a pecan chicken salad croissant.

I’m listening to Martha while I’m out picking up supplies for our annual Fourth of July party. Hopefully this will be an improvement over last year’s redneck, white-trash, hee-haw showdown, considering it’s not a hundred and five degrees, I’m not
allowing Fletch to serve Dew Drivers (Mountain Dew and vodka), and most important, I’m not completely panicked over having a dog in the specialty clinic’s intensive care unit.

Between jaunts to the grocery store and Costco, I get a real piroshki vibe from the sound of her chewing. I think I hear chives.

A person by the name of Thomas calls in to the show, but when Martha takes the call, the voice belongs to that of a woman. Across the satellite waves, I can actually feel the thousand-yard stare she’s inevitably pointing at her call screener.

So fired.

However, the screener got it right—the feminine-sounding Thomas is indeed a young man, and he’s calling in to ask Martha about fun Fourth of July games he might play with his family. Giggling, he explains that he has a high voice and that people often confuse him for a girl.

I certainly can’t discern someone’s sexuality over the radio, and even if I could, it’s not only none of my business, but also no big deal, so I won’t speculate on Thomas’s preferences. Say what you will about all the sharks that the program
Glee
has since jumped, but that show has done so much to demonstrate the beauty of different and I’m glad. For all that annoys me about kids today, I love that they’re growing up in a world that won’t tolerate intolerance.

As for Martha?

Well, she’s not letting this voice-thing go. She spends what feels like half the time on the phone arguing with this sweet kid over whether or not he’s actually a girl. In my head, I imagine her suggesting he play “pin the tail on the faggot” because I doubt she’s read the time-to-stop-using-hate-speech memo.

Maybe that’s how I’m dealing with my disappointment—imagining the worst of her.

Regardless, I decide I need to run more errands because when Martha’s on a roll, I don’t get out of the car.

Her next call is even more astounding. A college girl’s moving into her first off-campus apartment and she wants to make it cute, so she asks Martha about inexpensive ways to decorate because she doesn’t want it to be all futons and bookcases made of stolen milk crates. Now
that’s
a
massive climate shift since I went to college. If you and your roommate had coordinating comforters, you two were basically Tom Ford for Gucci. My contribution to being fancy back then was to keep my posters in their original plastic wrap.

I suspect this new emphasis on design for everyone is due to HGTV. Mind you, I adore HGTV and had it on twenty-four hours a day before we bought our house, which is why we didn’t run into too many snafus along the way. We knew to look past some highly unfortunate wallpaper to see our home’s fine bones and true potential.

Fletch and I recently started watching
Love It or List It
during dinner because O’Reilly makes me too shout-y. Except this may not have been the best idea because now we
both
end up yelling at the television. Personally, I always thought of Canada as a fine place, all toques and Timbits, really a kinder, smarter, more polite version of America, but now? Now I’m not so sure. How is every single home owner surprised that their crappy hundred-year-old row house has foundation damage? How did they not have that place inspected before they closed escrow? And designer Hilary is trying to help you, you ingrates, so maybe you shouldn’t holler at her when she discovers the kind of wiring that will incinerate
everything you ever loved while you sleep, even if that means you can’t have a second-floor laundry room. You’re still close to transit, so you’ll live.

Literally.

Not long ago, there was one episode where the house had essentially given the home owner cancer because of long-term exposure to asbestos, but after they updated their kitchen, they were all, “It’s okay now, eh?” and decided to love it.

What?

YOUR HOUSE TRIED TO KILL YOU! MOVE, YOU STUPID CANUCK.

(In all fairness, I imagine the home owners on
Love It or List It
are to Canada what
Honey Boo Boo
is to America, but still.)

Anyway, the college girl pings Martha to see what she might suggest in terms of furniture and Martha comes back with one of the most myopic, out-of-touch, let-them-eat-cake answers I’ve ever heard.

Martha says, and I swear I’m not making this up, “Why don’t you shop at Pottery Barn?”

Pottery Barn.

Bitch, I’m not only a grown-ass adult, but I’ve written eight
New York Times
bestselling books and that’s
still
where my very nicest stuff comes from.

I’m in my car, flabbergasted, when Martha remembers her sponsors. Almost by default, she throws in, “You could also buy your furniture at Macy’s.”

I’m sorry; has Martha never heard of IKEA? Or Craigslist? Or Etsy? Or outlet stores? Or consignment shops and yard sales? What kind of terrible advice is this? Is she suggesting that this girl fork over her parents’ hard-earned USD so she can buy a couch that will be splattered in Jell-O shots and frat boy emesis the very first week? How is this a good idea?

Does Martha honestly expect the kid to use her student loan
money, so that she ends up paying monthly for her Charleston Roll-Arm for the next fifteen years? And if she were to somehow miracle a Pottery Barn sofa into her apartment now, what’s left for her to strive for? Desiring better seating was my driving force for
years
after college. All I wanted was the
Fight Club
epiphany that I’d finally taken care of that whole seating issue. I understand the student may not want to live with a Dumpster couch, but surely there’s a happy medium between the sublime and the ridiculous.

I spent all of the
Tao of Martha
trying to find a way to out-Martha Martha and I came up completely empty-handed. Granted, I definitely improved my quality of life, but I never came close to achieving the Pinterest-perfect lifestyle to which Martha subscribes.

Yet I sense an opening here, a flaw in The Martha’s grand plan, if you will. Is there a way to maybe show Martha up? To prove her advice wrong? How hard could it be to decorate a college apartment on a shoestring while still providing visual appeal?

A while back, my friend Angie told me about this chalk paint that allows the user to transform furniture without benefit of sanding or priming. I guess it has grout in it? After we’d discussed the product, I looked to see if I could find it on Amazon, but they didn’t carry it. As I trend lazy when it comes to nonessentials, I gave up the notion of repainting a couple of my ugly end tables before I even began. But now there’s a potential quest involved, so I put a pin in this idea, deciding to circle back as soon as I finish preparing for an extraordinarily classy Fourth of July party.

Or not.

And P.S., I hope Thomas and his loved ones have the best holiday ever.

•   •   •

This stupid chalk paint is harder to procure than I thought and it seems really expensive—thirty-five dollars for what looks to be about a pint! Strike one. However, according to the Annie Sloan
Web site, this is enough paint to cover one hundred and fifty square feet, which, according to my stellar math abilities, I estimate will coat my entire house. What’s annoying is I’d have to go down to the city to buy it, since products are sold exclusively in interior design shops. Strike two.

The only reason I’m even considering heading to Chicago is that I’m trying something new. Instead of ordering whatever I need on Amazon Prime and having UPS bring it to me like so many monkey butlers, I’ve decided that it’s better for me to actually leave the house to procure items. I’ve been trying to make small changes to my lifestyle in terms of diet and fitness, so I figure anything that forces me to park and walk is a good move.