Martha Stewart Disease

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Being as how Ms. Stewart is somewhat in the news these days, I thought the following might be timely.

Martha Stewart Disease

Symptoms Of Martha Stewart Disease

• You have an obsession with hanging swags of brightly coloured fabric from curtain rods.
• Your house is decorated with cast plaster gremlins and angels.
• Every shoe box and empty tin can in the house has been decoupaged with flowers cut out from old wrapping paper.
• You float candles in the punch bowl at parties.
• You use a gold ink pen to sign all your cards and the little notes you leave lying around the house.
• You have glass jars filled with dried rose petals everywhere.
• There are a great number of pots of herbs growing on your windowsills, with each plant painstakingly labelled, along with a hand drawn picture of the herb.
• You’ve made a doormat, with a sunflower design on it, out of old bottle caps.
• If given the option, you would rather spend the evening in Canadian Tire than be taken out to dinner.

Symptoms Of Advanced Martha Stewart Disease

• Before putting them in the bowl, you polish each lettuce leaf with a clean white cloth until it shines like a newly waxed car fender.
• You save snowballs from last winter in your refrigerator, in case you have a later need for them in creating an ice sculpture centrepiece.
• You have tie-dyed all your T-shirts with pigments made from organically grown vegetables harvested from your own garden.
• You’ve made wind chimes from coconut shells.
• Your hedges have all been pruned and sculpted to resemble chess pieces.
• Your salads consist primarily of nasturtiums and pansies.
• Every piece of cheese on your appetizer tray comes with a toothpick in it that displays a tiny flag indicating the cheese’s country of origin.
• Your hair looks like a bonsai tree.
• You hoard cookie cutters in all shapes and sizes in a kitchen drawer, and nobody is allowed to touch them.
• You insist on using ostrich eggs instead of regular hen’s eggs for the annual Easter egg hunt.
• You apply rouge on your children’s faces so they’ll look all fresh and rosy and apple-cheeked when company comes.

Symptoms Of Acute Martha Stewart Disease

• The grass in your front lawn is braided.
• You serve organic hors d’oeuvres in a real bird’s nest you found in a nearby forest.
• You make your own gelatin from calves’ hooves rather than buying the powdered stuff.
• You decorate your cakes with pieces of ceramic, bundles of chiffon, buttons, marbles and other inedible items just because they “look so pretty”.
• Each and every flower in your back yard is wrapped in raffia and sports a shiny red bow.
• You serve wine to your guests in conch shells.
• You’ve smeared the interior walls of your home with yogurt so that over time, a natural looking greenish mould will grow, giving your residence the fashionably distressed look of an ancient Greek temple.
• You dress all your children, despite their gender, in white chiffon gowns and white straw hats with red satin ribbons, and haven’t fed them in days in an effort to prevent them from growing into that awkward, gangly phase of physical development.
• You’ve macramed yourself a computer terminal cozy out of natural hemp and recycled Safeway shopping bags.
• Before you go to bed at night, you spend hours at your hobby farm, putting hot rollers in your sheep’s fleece so that they’ll look more fluffy and glamorous than your neighbour’s livestock in the morning.
• You sleep outside, in a tent, so as not to disturb your perfectly made bed.

The Cure

Remedy No. 1
Tie the afflicted woman to a chair with her upper body immobilized in a manner that will not allow her to move her head. Force her to look at a velvet painting of dogs playing poker for one hour on the first day, two hours on the second day, and so on....

Remedy No. 2
A night on the town with Howard Stern and his cronies.

Remedy No. 3
Buy her a one-way ticket to Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan, or Bangladesh so she may gain some insight into the real meaning of “lifestyle”.