I read on Back in Skinny Jeans that Martha is on FaceBook.

And if you have to ask who I mean by Martha? You’re dead to me.

I became fairly giddy over the prospect of adding Martha to my FaceBook friends! I’ve had a FaceBook account for over a month but I have been intimidated by all the bells and whistles and never did much beyond signing up. But then the thought of being a cyber buddy with Martha Stewart prompted me to log on to my account and update my profile! I added some favorite songs! I added a Happy Hour widget! Should I send Martha a virtual martini? Would she share tips with me on how to organize Miss C’s school paper work? How does she keep her home free of dog hair? We all know Martha loves her dogs. Wait, do her dogs have their own personal assistants?

Martha and I go way back. My mother had one of Martha Stewart’s first entertaining books in hardcover in the early 1980s. Not that my my mother, someone who knows how to channel her inner Martha, needed the book. My mom was into organic gardening and canning fresh vegetables and making homemade bread years before it was in vogue. She bottle fed calves and raised baby chicks on our farm and today, even though she lives in the city, her backyard garden has the most incredible flowers you’ve ever seen and she’s only been in her new house since May. You could eat off my mother’s floors. Heck, she could serve hors d’oeuvres out of her bathtub. Of course my mom also hasn’t worked outside her home in years.

My mother raised me and my siblings to have an appreciation for the fine things in life, whether it be beautiful English bone china or Waterford crystal, polished silver, cloth napkins for every day and not just special occasions, crisp laundered tablecloths, and fine antiques.

There is a part of me who longs to embrace my inner Martha, but I need the accelerated Martha program for busy housewives. I need a Martha cheat sheet. I don’t have time to make homemade marshmallows! I’m busy people! I serve my kids jumbo biscuits from a can and I would rather throw a wrinkled shirt in the dryer with a damp towel than fire up my iron. Actually I’d rather do just about anything than iron, whereas my mother loves nothing more than a stack of ironing to tackle.

I do regularly use cloth napkins at home, so that’s a start. And, hey, I decorate Miss C’s brown paper sacks for afternoon snack time at school! Only I use Little Mermaid stickers from the Dollar Tree. And I’m not sure Martha would ever step foot into a Dollar Tree. It’s much too bourgeois.

A closet Martha Wanna Be must improvise. Besides, the Dollar Tree is where I get all my Christmas stocking stuffer loot. Well, at least the stuff I don’t count on lasting for more than three days. Just don’t tell Martha that I frequent the Dollar Tree, or else she might revoke my FaceBook friendship.