The Tao of Martha (35 page)

In terms of personal contentment, I feel exponentially better about life at the end of October than I did at the beginning. Working on this project allowed me to focus on something other than missing Maisy, and proved to me that I can absolutely be happy again. I was able to strengthen bonds with Fletch. I started having fun so much so that I was able to share it with readers on social media.

By embracing the Tao of Maisy, I was able to be awesome, give awesome, and get awesome back in return. I really believe that this project is working! And all it took was a little sparkle powder and a couple of doughnuts.

Perhaps Lincoln was a wee bit right when he said, “People are just as happy as they make up their minds to be.” So the Martha Tao tenet I’ve taken away from this experience is: Seize the opportunity to create new memories and traditions.

Hey, Halloween?

You and I are officially cool again. I’m putting you back on the buddy list. Maybe now I’ll even reconsider my feelings on Abraham Lincoln. (I don’t like that man. I must get to know him better.) We’ll see.

But the one thing I can say for sure is that I am glittering the shit out of Christmas.

L
IVING,
Z
OMBIE
S
TYLE

A
s I’ve lived my year of Martha, I’ve been searching for an X factor, a project I could take on and make my own, pairing what I’ve gleaned from Martha’s Tao with my own sensibilities.

A challenge without training wheels, if you will.

Achievement is a cornerstone of what makes me happy, so I’ve been anxious to carve out my own niche. Of course, finding a domestic venture that Martha hasn’t already mastered—
and
secured the merchandising rights for—hasn’t been easy. Cooking? Pfft, covered. Cleaning? If it’s not included in the 744-page
Homekeeping Handbook
, then it doesn’t need to be done. Crafting? She’s glittered the whole DIY universe. Pets? Her dog’s been to Westminster; mine tosses his salad for sport. Entertaining? Oh, honey…bless my own heart.

Martha’s ubiquity has been a boon, up until now. I want to plant my own flag in a tiny plot of uncharted territory.

So what’s left?

What could I do that she’d approve of, but hasn’t already covered extensively?

As always, the answer lies in Fletch.

A lifetime obsession with zombies and George Romero’s (
Fill-in-the-Blank
)
of the Dead
films have left Fletch one black helicopter shy of turning into a complete nut job.

Bless
his
heart.

It’s not that he believes we’re actually going to be overrun with flesh-devouring undead (or so he says). Rather, he’s always talking about our society becoming zombies in an allegorical sense. For example, Fletch hypothesizes that personal electronics are turning their users brain-dead. Like, every time we’d leave the house when we lived in the city, he’d point to hipsters wandering into the street because they were too busy texting about a new PBR-serving dive to look for oncoming vehicles. At Whole Foods he’d gesture toward moms so fixated on their iPhones that they didn’t see the homeless drifter chatting up their toddlers over by the almond butter.

Fletch also harbors major concerns about CDC-type outbreaks that could occur if we were hit with biological warfare or some horribly virulent strain of flu, as seen in the movie
Contagion
. (Two enthusiastic thumbs up, BTW. Any film that offs insufferable Gwyneth Paltrow in the first ten minutes is aces with me.)

Anyway, all of the above led him to start perusing army-surplus Web sites, snapping up items like military-issue sleeping bags. I argued that if the zombies were indeed coming, then I would rather they eat my brains while I slumber on my actual mattress inside my climate-conditioned home instead of a tent in the woods, but sometimes it’s easier not to argue.

Fletch’s stockpile grew to include disaster-ready items like a short-wave radio and batteries and lanterns, which really didn’t seem like a terrible idea, given how often we used to lose power when we were unemployed and couldn’t pay our bills. (Sometimes the only thing standing
between me and stark raving madness was the ability to read a book by the wan glow of a 4D LED light. God bless you, Coleman corporation. God bless.) I stayed out of his way while he happily prepared for the end of days, humming along in his tinfoil cap.

So, like someone who lives with a chronic whistler or travels with the kind of person who feels compelled to read every billboard out loud, I eventually learned to tune out his Chicken Little–ing and all was well. Then we moved to the suburbs. Although everyone is decidedly much slower-moving up here (seriously, Lake Foresters, you’re deciding between soy or skim, not life and death…Pick up the pace already!), they compensate by paying attention, which I greatly appreciate.

And Fletch’s zombie war obsession went dormant.

Until he started watching
The Walking Dead
.

Yeah, AMC.

Thanks for that.

He keeps telling me that I’d enjoy the show, but judging from all the screaming, shooting, and breaking glass I hear from my office every Sunday night, I’m pretty sure that’s the opposite of true.

He’s also crazy in love with National Geographic’s
Doomsday Preppers
series, which has grudgingly become one of my favorites, too. I generally hate the people who’ve been featured, and if they’re who survives after an apocalypse, I’m going to dip my head in ranch dressing so the zombies will sup upon me first.

As this is practically the one show on which we agree, we’ve seen every episode, often more than once. Each time we view, we find more reasons to mock the participants. Not all of them, mind you. Some of them are the kind of ex–Special Forces, hard-core, badass warriors whom I’d wish to have my back in a fight. Or how about the industrious old hippie who turned his postage stamp–size backyard into a massive vertical garden capable of sustaining not only his own family, but also a portion of the community with his magnificent eight-foot butternut squashes?
LOVE HIM, particularly after having my own stupid garden go sideways this summer. Granted, I harbor a few concerns that his family seems inbred, but the man can grow a fine beefsteak tomato from seed, and that’s what’s important. I care far more about his ability to produce the means to make a proper BLT than I do about his relatives’ proclivities.

There’s a particularly contemptible Texan prepper on the episode we’re presently watching, and we have to keep pausing to talk shit about her.

“Her contingency plan is to
hike thirty miles
outside of the city to where her car is parked?” he says during a commercial break. “Wow, what could possibly go wrong in that scenario?”

“Yeah,” I agree, “why wouldn’t she leave her car, say,
twenty-seven
miles closer? Houston’s not that big; there’s no reason to park so far away! And when you’re in the middle of roving bands of marauders and the onset of an apocalypse, wouldn’t you want something more between you and them than, say, a JanSport backpack? What are you going to fight them off with, your Trapper Keeper?”

Fletch nods as he forwards past a commercial for a prepacked survival food that piques my interest. “Parading through the streets carrying all your worldly supplies seems like an invitation to be beaten and robbed. Or worse.”

“Right? Also, maybe before you park thirty miles away, you should verify you can actually, you know,
walk
thirty miles.”

Listen, I’m never, ever going to ridicule anyone’s weight or fitness level. Your body, your business. And as someone who’s jealous of everyone cruising through Costco on a Rascal, I’m well aware that I have zero right to pass judgment. (Personally, if my path to salvation hinges on thirty miles of road marching, then I’m going to be sitting right here with a whiskey sour and a TiVo full of fine, fine Mark Burnett programming. Come and get me, zombies/terrorists/aliens/etc.)

All I’m saying about this woman is that if physical strength and endurance are the key components to your bug-out plan, you should do “some” training, as opposed to “none.”

I decide to actively despise her only when I hear of the next step in her genius plan.

“She’s going to show up at the Mexican border once she finishes the marathon to her car,” Fletch says.

I nod. “Sounds like it, yes.”

“And she’s confident the border guards will simply stand there with open arms, all, ‘Oh, apocalypse in the USA? So sorry. Come on in, friendly Northern Neighbor! You’re totally welcome to all our resources! Here, have a chimichanga, señorita! You must be tired after your long trek.’”

“Pfft, I can’t get past the cat.”

The linchpin of her increasingly ludicrous plan is to
shoot
her cat in the head
before she leaves town once hell rains down. Because that’s way more humane than allowing her cat to roam free and feast on the plentiful rat community spawned as a direct result of the apocalypse.

Asshole.

As the season progresses, we see one episode with a gal who calls herself the Martha Stewart of prepping, and she demonstrates how to make gourmet meals out of her hoarded cans of goods.

Also? She has bouncy hair.

Hmm.

I was passively interested; now I’m actively so.

Plus, having an emergency store of food that I could turn into tasty dinners doesn’t seem like the worst idea I ever heard.

Seriously,
cat execution
, anyone?

I do a little research, and I’ll be damned if the Domestic Diva herself hadn’t addressed basic emergency preparedness on a show in May of 2007.

Again, hmm.

At any point in time, I have false eyelashes and lash glue in my purse in case I suddenly have to appear on TV, so it’s not like I don’t appreciate the notion of planning for various contingencies. (No one has ever spontaneously asked me to be on TV, but when they do, I’ll be there with big, be-fringed Zooey Deschanel eyes.) What I’m saying is, I’ve put forth so much effort in lugging around day-to-day preparedness—dental floss! extra socks! spare string of pearls!—that I never really considered emergencies outside of not being properly accessorized.

Mind you, I’m not worried about an actual zombie war,
Fletch
. Rather, my concerns are more pedestrian—tornadoes and blizzards, mainly. Maybe some high winds in the mix. I live in a particularly wooded community on a tree-heavy street. I can’t walk anywhere except to places with more trees, so it would make sense to be ready for what might happen in case the roads are blocked by felled limbs.

I also want to be on top of it if a tsunami occurs on the other side of the globe and suddenly production is halted on important everyday items, like moisturizing color-care shampoo and the toilet paper with lotion in it. In fact, I’m still congratulating myself for having the foresight to stock up on o.b. ultra tampons before Johnson & Johnson’s inexplicable two-year supply interruption. (P.S. They’re back and for sale at Drugstore.com! Don’t be suckered into buying a box for seventy-nine bucks on eBay.)

Mainly, though, I’m leery of economic problems, at the macro and micro levels. I worry about the country’s finances as well as my household’s. Go broke once and I promise you will never forget it. That memory is always right there, looming on the edge of my consciousness.

Ergo, there are a dozen excellent reasons to lay in a few supplies, particularly as this project seems so Martha-esque. Martha’s previously detailed the specifics both in print and on video on packing an emergency evacuation bag, as well as tips on readying a first-aid kit.

Even Martha’s adorable French bulldogs, Francesca and Sharkey,
have gotten in on the act, using their blog to advise pet owners on how to keep animals safe in inclement weather. Prior to Hurricane Irene, Martha posted photos on her blog about tying up wisteria vines. My assumption is that if she has time to worry about wisteria, then she’s got the basics like food and water down cold. I have to assume that variations on prepping are at the top of her mind, even if I can’t find a specific
Living
piece on exactly what supplies I need to shelter-in-place.

Wait a minute. This is it!

This is my X factor!

I’m going to pursue emergency preparedness as my super-extra-credit Martha project. And I’ll have Fletch help…even if having him do so confirms that he was right about the zombies the whole time.

Argh.