I wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving! In case you decide to stop by, Martha Stewart will not be dining with us this Thanksgiving. I'm telling you in advance, so don't act surprised. Since Ms. Stewart won't be coming, I've made a few small changes: Our sidewalk will not be lined with homemade, paper bag luminaries. After a trial run, it was decided that no matter how cleverly done, rows of flaming lunch sacks do not have the desired welcoming effect. The dining table will not be covered with expensive linens, fancy china or crystal goblets. If possible, we will use dishes that match and everyone will get a fork. Since this IS Thanksgiving, we will refrain from using the plastic Peter Rabbit plate and the Santa napkins from last Christmas. Our centerpiece will not be the tower of fresh fruit and flowers that I promised. Instead we will be displaying a hedgehog-like decoration handcrafted from the finest construction paper. The artist assures me it is a turkey. We will be dining fashionably late. The children will entertain you while you wait. I'm sure they will be happy to share every choice comment I have made regarding Thanksgiving, pilgrims and the turkey hotline. Please remember that most of these comments were made at 5:00 p.m. upon discovering that the turkey was still hard enough to cut diamonds. As accompaniment to the children's recital, I will play a recording of tribal drumming. If the children should mention that I don't own a recording of tribal drumming, or that tribal drumming sounds suspiciously like a frozen turkey in a clothes dryer, ignore them. They are lying. We toyed with the idea of ringing a dainty silver bell to announce the start of our feast. In the end, we chose to keep our traditional method. We've also decided against a formal seating arrangement. When the smoke alarm sounds, please gather around the table and sit where you like. In the spirit of harmony, we will ask the children to sit at a separate table, in a separate room, next door. Now I know you have all seen pictures of one person carving a turkey in front of a crowd of appreciative onlookers. This will not be happening at our dinner. For safety reasons, the turkey will be carved in a private ceremony. I stress "private" meaning: Do not, under any circumstances, enter the kitchen to laugh at me. Do not send small, unsuspecting children to check on my progress. I have an electric knife. The turkey is unarmed. It stands to reason that I will eventually win. When I do, we will eat. Before I forget, there is one last change. Instead of offering a choice between 12 different scrumptious desserts, we will be serving the traditional pumpkin pie, garnished with whipped cream and small fingerprints. You will still have a choice: take it or leave it. Martha Stewart will not be dining with us this Thanksgiving. She probably won't come next year either. I am thankful. Martha Stewart's Christmas letter to Erma Bombeck: Hi Erma, This perfectly delightful note is being sent on paper I made myself to tell you what I have been up to. Since it snowed last night, I got up early and made a sled with old barn wood and a glue gun. I hand painted it in gold leaf, got out my loom, and made a blanket in peaches and mauves. Then to make the sled complete, I made a white horse to pull it, from DNA that I had just sitting around in my craft room. By then, it was time to start making the place mats and napkins for my 20 breakfast guests. I'm serving the old standard Stewart twelve-course breakfast, but I'll let you in on a little secret: I didn't have time to make the tables and chairs this morning, so I used the ones I had on hand. Before I moved the table into the dining room, I decided to add just a touch of the holidays. So I repainted the room in pinks and stenciled gold stars on the ceiling. Then, while the homemade bread was rising, I took antique candle molds and made the dishes (exactly the same shade of pink) to use for breakfast. These were made from Hungarian clay, which you can get at almost any Hungarian craft store. Well, I must run. I need to finish the buttonholes on the dress I'm wearing for breakfast. I'll get out the sled and drive this note to the post office as soon as the glue dries on the envelope I'll be making. Hope my breakfast guests don't stay too long, I have 40,000 cranberries to string with bay leaves before my speaking engagement at noon. It's a good thing. Love, Martha Stewart P.S. When I made the ribbon for this typewriter, I used 1/8-inch gold gauze. I soaked the gauze in a mixture of white grapes and blackberries which I grew, picked, and crushed last week just for fun. Response from Erma Bombeck: Dear Martha, I'm writing this on the back of an old shopping list, pay no attention to the coffee and jelly stains. I'm 20 minutes late getting my daughter up for school, packing a lunch with one hand, on the phone with the dog pound, seems old Ruff needs bailing out again. Burnt my arm on the curling iron when I was trying to make those cute curly fries, how DO they do that? Still can't find the scissors to cut out some snowflakes, tried using an old disposable razor ... trashed the tablecloth. Tried that cranberry thing, frozen cranberries mushed up after I defrosted them in the microwave. Oh, and don't use Fruity Pebbles as a substitute in that Rice Krispie snowball recipe, unless you happen to like a disgusting shade that resembles puke! The smoke alarm is going off, talk to ya later. Love, Erma Martha Stewart's Holiday Calendar December 1 Blanch carcass from Thanksgiving turkey. Spray paint gold, turn upside down and use as a sleigh to hold Christmas Cards. December 2 Have Mormon Tabernacle Choir record outgoing Christmas message for answering machine. December 3 Using candlewick and hand-gilded miniature pine cones, fashion cat-o-nine-tails. Flog Gardener. December 4 Repaint Sistine Chapel ceiling in ecru, with mocha trim. December 5 Get new eyeglasses. Grind lenses myself. December 6 Fax family Christmas newsletter to Pulitzer committee for consideration. December 7 Debug Windows '95. December 10 Align carpets to adjust for curvature of Earth. December 11 Lay Faberge egg. December 12 Take Dog apart. Disinfect. Reassemble. December 13 Collect Dentures. They make excellent pastry cutters, particularly for ecorative pie crusts. December 14 Install plumbing in gingerbread house. December 15 Replace air in mini-van tires with Glade "holiday scents" in case tires are shot out at mall December 17 Child proof the Christmas tree with garland of razor wire. December 19 Adjust legs of chairs so each Christmas dinner guest will be same height when sitting at his or her assigned seat. December 20 Dip sheep and cows in egg whites and roll in confectioner's sugar to add a festive sparkle to the pasture. December 21 Drain city reservoir; refill with mulled cider, orange slices and cinnamon sticks. December 22 Float votive candles in toilet tank. December 23 Seed clouds for white Christmas. December 24 Do my annual good deed. Go to several stores. Be seen engaged in last minute Christmas shopping, thus making many people feel less inadequate than they really are. December 25 Bear son. Swaddle. Lay in color coordinated manger scented with homemade potpourri of frankincense and myrrh. December 26 Organize spice racks by genus and phylum. December 27 Build snowman in exact likeness of God. December 31 New Years Eve! Give staff their resolutions. Call a friend in each time zone of the world as the clock strikes midnight in that country. Signs You're Being Stalked by Martha Stewart: You get a threatening note made up of letters cut out of a magazine with pinking shears, and they're all the same size, the same font, and precisely lined up in razor-sharp rows. That telltale lemon slice in the dog's water bowl. On her show she makes a gingerbread house that looks exactly like your split-level, right down to the fallen-over licorice downspout and the stuck half-open graham cracker garage door. You find your pet bunny on the stove in an exquisite tarragon, rose petal & saffron demi-glace', with pecan-crusted hearts of palm and a delicate mint-fennel sauce. The unmistakable aroma of potpourri follows you even after you leave the bathroom. You discover that every napkin in the entire house has been folded into a swan. No matter "where" you eat, your place setting always includes an oyster fork. Twice this week you've been the victim of a drive-by doilying. You wake up in the hospital with a concussion and endive stuffing in every orifice. You awaken one morning with a glue gun pointed squarely at your temple. Dear Santa: I rarely ask for much. This year is no exception. I don't need a new stereo, handy slicer-dicers or comfy slippers. I only want one little thing, and I want it deeply. I want to slap Martha Stewart. Now, hear me out, Santa. I won't scar her or draw blood or anything. Just one good smack, right across her smug little cheek. I get all cozy inside just thinking about it. Don't grant this wish just for me, do it for thousands of people across the country. Through sheer vicarious satisfaction, you'll be giving a gift to us all. Those of us leading average, garden variety lives aren't concerned with gracious living. We feel pretty good about ourselves if our paper plates match when we stack them on the counter, buffet-style for dinner. We're tired of Martha showing us how to make centerpieces from hollyhock dipped in 18 carat gold. We're plumb out of liquid gold - unless it's of the furniture polish variety. We can't whip up Martha's creamy holiday sauce, spiced with turmeric. Most of us can't even say turmeric, let alone figure out what to do with it. OK, Santa, maybe you think I'm being a little harsh. But I'll bet with all the holiday rush you didn't catch that interview with Martha in last week's USA Weekend. I'm surprised there was enough room on the page for her ego. We discovered that not only does Martha avoid take-out pizza (she's only ordered it once), she refuses to eat it cold (No cold pizza, Is Martha Stewart Living)? When it was pointed out that she could microwave it, she replied, "I don't have a microwave." The reporter, Jeffrey Zaslow, noted that she said this "in a tone that suggests you shouldn't either." Well lah-dee-dah. Imagine that, Santa! That lovely microwave you brought me years ago, in which I've learned to make complicated dishes like popcorn and hot chocolate, has been declared undesirable by Queen Martha. What next? The coffee maker? In the article, we learned that Martha has 40 sets of dishes adorning an entire wall in her home. Forty sets. Can you spell "overkill"? And neatly put away, no less. If my dishes make it to the dishwasher, that qualifies as "put away" in my house! Martha tells us she's already making homemade holiday gifts for friends. "Last year, I made amazing silk-lined scarves for everyone," she boasts. Not just scarves, mind you. Amazing scarves. Martha's obviously not shy about giving herself a little pat on the back. In fact, she does so with such frequency that one has to wonder if her back is black and blue. She goes on to tell us that, "homemaking is glamour for the 90s," and says her most glamorous friends are "interested in stain removal, how to iron a monogram, and how to fold a towel." I have one piece of advice, Martha: "Get new friends." Glamorous friends fly to Paris on a whim. They drift past the Greek Islands on yachts, sipping champagne from crystal goblets. They step out for the evening in shimmering satin gowns, whisked away by tuxedoed chauffeurs. They do not spend their days pondering the finer art of toilet bowl sanitation. Zaslow notes that Martha was named one of America's 25 most influential people by Time magazine (nosing out Mother Theresa, Madeline Albright and Maya Angelou, no doubt). The proof of Martha's influence: after she bought white-fleshed peaches in the supermarket, Martha says, "People saw me buy them. In an instant, they were all gone." I hope Martha never decides to jump off a bridge. A guest in Martha's home told Zaslow how Martha gets up early to rollerblade with her dogs to pick fresh wild blackberries for breakfast. This confirms what I've suspected about Martha all along: She's obviously got too much time on her hands. Teaching the dogs to rollerblade. What a showoff. If you think the dogs are spoiled, listen to how Martha treats her friends: She gave one friend all 272 books from the Knopf Everyman Library. It didn't cost much. Pocket change, really. Just $5,000. But what price friendship, right? When asked if others should envy her, Martha replies, "Don't envy me. I'm doing this because I'm a natural teacher. You shouldn't envy teachers. You should listen to them." Zaslow must have slit a seam in Martha's ego at this point, because once the hot air came hissing out, it couldn't be held back. "Being an overachiever is nothing despicable. It is only admirable. Never lower your standards," says Martha. And of her Web Page on the Internet, Martha declares herself an "important presence" as she graciously helps people organize their sad, tacky little lives. There you have it, Santa. If there was ever someone who deserved a good smack, it's Martha Stewart. But I bet I won't get my gift this year. Martha Stewart's Household Tips for Dumb People Quick-dry plaster + friggin' cats that keep crapping on the rug = instant bookends! Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. If you're really running late, bring the waffle iron into the shower with you! Sex isn't nearly as disgusting when you use a hand-knitted penis cozy. To know when to change to the next square of toilet paper, label them with consecutive days of the week. A simple turkey baster can also be used to remove those pesky beans lodged in your ear canal. Don't discard used toothpicks -- simply glue on some belly button lint and you'll never pay for Q-tips again. A wreath of dirty underwear is great for repelling mosquitoes! Freeze some urine in a Mrs. Butterworth's bottle, then break the glass for an ice sculpture that'll have your guests talking! Nail bars of soap to the bottom of your shoes and hose down the kitchen floor and you've just created your own indoor Olympic skatin' rink! In a pinch, frozen water can substitute for ice. BayWatch videos can help get those flabby forearms in shape. Always buy two pairs of the same socks; that way, if you lose a sock, you have two replacements. Duct taping the baby to a ceiling fan after meals makes for a lively game of "Dodge the Chunks!" Fill up those holes in the bathroom tile grout with Mother Nature's own sealant: snot! Adding sprigs of baby's breath behind the ears of a loved one's corpse is sure to lift everyone's spirits during the funeral. A dead dog makes an excellent door stop -- for a while. While the common method of flushing a dead fish down the toilet can be sad for the kids, putting the aquarium snail down the garbage disposal makes an interesting sound that can be enjoyed by all. In the fall, you can sew leaves back onto your trees to delay the onset of winter. With a Hefty 40-gallon trash can liner and cable tie-wrap, you'll have grandma's daily colostomy bags changes down to once a month. |
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