Martha Stewart or Martha Raye?

I wanted to be Martha Stewart before it was cool to want to be Martha Stewart. I spent long hours picturing my house looking like it jumped from the pages of Better Homes and Gardens. In my imagination the smell of cinnamon and vanilla wafted through the halls competing with the smell of baking bread that was coming from one of my two convection ovens. Of course a rack of lamb would be roasting in my Viking gas oven and I would have enough matching china plates and linen napkins to serve all 40 of my guests in the formal dining room. Then reality hits. I don’t like lamb, I have one electric oven, and although I have beautiful wedding china, the sad truth is, as a proven klutz I am more comfortable using the less expensive stuff for everyday. I cook and I bake and I keep a clean house, but it certainly isn’t fancy or elegant enough to grace the pages of a magazine. At first this kind of bothered me, but then I realized I am normal. As much as I love HGTV, The Food Network, and shows like This Old House, I have come to realize that they set a standard that I can’t hope to ever achieve. My life is real. It is filled with diaper changes, nursery rhymes, running toilets, runny noses, and barking dogs. I am like millions of other American women out there who don’t have someone to pre-measure their spices into cute little glass bowls, so they can gracefully slide them into the dishes they are preparing. Other than my husband, I don’t have “production assistants” doing the dishes that pile up when I make a “gourmet” dinner. I don’t have a garden tub (unless you count the old tin washtub in the backyard that we hose the dog off in), master suite complete with sitting room and balcony to retreat to (my only private place is the shower and since my daughter learned to open doors, it isn’t always that private), or pots hanging on a display rack in my restaurant style kitchen. (I do display my pots and pans…usually in the dish strainer on the counter as they air dry.)I don’t have the big lofty house you see on shows like House Hunters. I live in a 55 year old brick cape cod. The kitchen is much too small to accommodate Paula Dean or Rachel Ray, but I love it. To me it is cozy. When I roll up hotdogs in Pillsbury Crescent Rolls and throw them in my 1968 Frigidaire electric wall oven, the kitchen warms up in a matter of seconds. The bedrooms are rather small and the 1950’s tile in the bathrooms might make the designers on Trading Spaces shudder, but it is our home and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. We have a huge basement that is big enough for a whole playgroup of preschoolers to tricycle round and round in on a cold winter morning. We have a half an acre of back yard that includes a wonderful slope for sledding on when I am ready to pull my hair out because of the preschoolers riding around the basement. We have scuffed up wood floors that came from a skating rink and a root cellar that is perfect for hiding my secret stash of chocolate. It may not look like an interior decorator put her magic touches on our house, but it certainly does look like a happy family lives with in its walls.Maybe they should make a show on HGTV about real women in real houses. That would be true reality TV. Heck, I could star in it. I can see it now. We would have a regular segment on how to fancy up Hamburger Helper. I could give all sorts of useful real life tips, like how to get finger paint off of the family cat, or how to tie-dye a shirt that has been hopelessly stained by baby spit up. I could have a weekly spot about plumbing, where call in viewers win a prize if they guess what my daughter flushed down the toilet this week. Of course most segments would be interrupted by baby cries, spills, or an occasional telemarketer or wrong number calling, but that would give me an opportunity to demonstrate real world multi-tasking skills. I could show people how to talk on the phone, mix up a batch of brownies, prepare stew in the crock pot, fold laundry, break up a fight between the dog and the cat, pick up toys with my toes, retrieve a bug from the baby's mouth, wash baby bottles, water plants, answer the door, and plunge a toilet, all at the same time, with a child on my hip.On second thought, maybe the show wouldn’t work. After all, my kitchen is much too small to fit me and all the cameras and equipment. I wouldn't want to constantly worry about a cameraman tripping on the roller skate that seems to always be left on the stairs, and I would hate to see the production crew come down with the endless colds and flues that my family so generously shares with each other. Besides, maybe the idea of a true to life home show wouldn’t go over so well. We usually watch TV to escape reality and because we enjoy the fantasy it presents, so why would people want to tune in to watch what could be their own life on the screen? Then there is the fact that my family would watch the show and every time it aired, I would get a phone call that started off with words like, "I can't believe you didn't wash that off before you gave it back to the baby!" or "Why did you let my granddaughter play outside without a sweater on today's episode? I saw on the weather channel that it was only 80 degrees outside today." I guess for now, I will have to keep watching the existing shows and dreaming of a life with a perfectly organized pantry.