If Martha Lived Next Door

I got tagged by Dorothy of Morning Pages to do this. The truth is that, in a way, Martha already lives very nearby. She has two houses south of us in, what else, Southampton. I understand that she sold one of her houses in but I think she still kept the one where she had a long standing feud with the next door neighbor. It's on Georgica Pond, which is a very upscale place where people like Steven Spielberg have houses. Sadly, even though the place is still very beautiful. it is now famous for other sights such as the parties where one can, unfortunately, see such dreadful things as the perpetually drunken Paris Hilton and her hideous underwear(or not- her underwear that is). Gag....

Anyway there was a lawsuit between Martha and her next door neighbor regarding the shrubbery that separated their driveways. He claimed that she ruined the hedges and that she tried to run him over with her big-assed SUV. I thought it would provide much amusement if they had a "War of the Roses" thing where she chopped down the hedge and he ran over her perfect flower gardens. People in the Hamptons have to much time and money on their hands.

So anyway...5 facts of life if Martha lived next door.

1-I think Martha is a little anal so she would probably complain to the town about the state of our land. Up on our hillside there are a number of trees that have fallen and, frankly, just lay there. It's no-man's land up there are covered in places with poison ivy so we just leave it alone. It's too steep to build on and covered over with vines and such so that it becomes very dense with growth quickly in spring thus removing any possible people problems for us. Out of sight out of mind is the going phrase around here. It has one really great side effect- No one from way up on the hill will trample through it thus removing the annoyance of the unruly, screaming, children that live up there. I think all of that would not sit well with Martha as it is far from, how you say, Perfect.

2-Martha living on one side of me would be fine-on the other, not so much. There is a large plot of land that is unobstructed on one side but the other is on a hill that would make life with Martha around just too close for comfort and again, the issues of perfection would arise.

3-Having Martha next door would insure a bunch of changes like Dorothy wrote about. Better roads and some basic sprucing up. Maybe they would put in sidewalks. The sidewalks stop about a quarter mile from me. It's a really tricky thing to try and walk on the road running in front of us-frost heaves and broken blacktop etc. I'm sure Martha would get right on that.

4-Martha would probably come over with muffins and see that I desperately need a decorator and make my house the next project-immediately. That would, indeed, be a very good thing. Maybe I'd be famous for the segment on her show where they do a before and after and you hear an audible intake of breath from the audience when they show the before and after. I would like that because, frankly, I'm sick of everything in the house-just bring in the dumpster Martha!

5-I agree with Dorothy about the quality of food stores and such as well. Currently, I have to go to 3 different places to get good fruit, meat, and bakery. I know that Martha would have a profound effect on the state of food around here and we know where food is on my scale of "things that are important from one to ten". Even though I find Martha annoying in many respects and anal retentive in many others, I would like to get to know her. I'm a people watcher-I like to figure out what makes people tick and it looks to me like Martha has a whole big ol' bag o' snakes in her head. The Donald thing was sort of amusing but I think Martha needs a writer to respond to The Donald. Sometimes it seems that she is uncomfortable in her own skin and not good at extemporaneous quips. Verbal sparring is my forte and I would be able to help Martha so we would be friends and then she would arrange everything in my life and make it run smoothly whereupon I would run screaming from the house and be unable to speak for long periods-only able to blink to be understood. Blink... blink.....

So there you have it-that's the whole bag of Martha for today.

I got a kid quilt from Nicky to bind and it will go in the mail to Amy tomorrow. Now I would like to have some time to work on a few ideas I have that I just never get to. My 12x12x4 piece and some other stuff. My adorable niece was here for the weekend with my brother and we had a good time. Now I better get to work. See ya.........

I forgot to tag 3 people-geez I hate tagging so if you're interested-tag! you're IT!