The Tao of Martha (28 page)

Dinner’s delayed by fifteen extra minutes and there’s suddenly a sink full of dishes, but the end result is well worth the wait.

The short ribs steal the show, but the macaroni
proves itself to be worthy of the pairing. Fletch declares this to be the best birthday dinner he’s ever eaten.

And just when I least expect it, Martha illuminates another tenet of her Tao: Save your shortcuts for road trips; do it right or don’t do it at all.

Now, if she could just show me what to do with those damn bananas, I’d be all set.

M
Y
K
INGDOM FOR A
C
ROCK
-P
OT

I
’ve hit a wall and now I need a project.

I need to stay in motion.

The minute I stand still is the minute I begin to fall apart.

Maisy’s been gone a month, and I have to find a way to stop obsessing. Missing her has become a physical ache. Every time I think, “I’m better now!” I have a setback. I’m somehow regressing in my grief and I don’t understand why.

Maybe it’s finally sinking in that she’s not coming back, especially since we received the urn with her ashes. We placed her on a shelf in the great room, surrounded by the ashes of all our cats. I arranged her in such a way that she’d be able to see all the doors as well as the main hallways of the house. Had she been able to haul her ponderous bulk up there, this is exactly where she’d have wanted to sit.

Still, and even with the addition of Hambone, I’m struggling.

Rationally, I not only understand that it was her time, but also that
allowing her to go was the most compassionate action we could have taken. I appreciate what a gift her life was, and if I hadn’t lost her, I’d have never come to realize the Tao of Maisy.

The best way to honor her life is to get on with my own.

She’d want that.

Mind you, I’m aware that she was a dog and couldn’t grasp the complexities of human emotions like grief. But I can say that whenever I’ve been sad or down in the past ten years, she’d do something to try to pull me out of my funk, like the Naughty Run. If I was in my office, she’d nose through my trash until she found a Starbucks cup and she’d pry off the lid to lick the contents. Then she’d sit there grasping the cup, which would look comically large between her paws, and she’d always remind me of an Olsen twin.

Her need for physical proximity was her trademark, and I can attest that it’s very hard to stay upset when a sixty-five-pound pit bull tries to climb into your shirt or attempts to hump a cat. Maisy could even time a fart in such a way that it broke the tension; her comedic sensibilities were second to none.

In many ways, having Hambone is a godsend, but at some point in the past few weeks, she careened into adolescence. Any vestiges left of the advertised “cute, timid puppy” have been replaced with “awkward teenager with a sassy mouth and a penchant for biting her brother in the face.”

Every day it’s something with this dog. Her power move last week was exploding out of the screen when she thought it was an open door.
Her Facebook “likes” include Running Through the Muck on the Edge of the Yard and Then Jumping on the Beds, and the Coalition of Dogs Who Prefer to Whiz Indoors.

Yesterday she tore open a six-pack of toilet paper while we were out, and for a second I thought it had snowed in three rooms upon our return. I’ve been calling her Osama Bone Laden, because she’s terrorizing all of us.

Someday Hambone will be my best friend and the love of my life, and I’ll have spent a decade telling her my secrets. Someday I’ll nurse her and hand-feed her every bite and fret over each breath she takes because I love her so much it hurts, and I’ll live to make sure she’s comfortable and content.

Today is not that day.

Today, I picked up four mountains of her poop in the living room. And then I took it all out to the trash, and while I was gone she not only crapped in the laundry room, but then stepped in it and Dirty Sanchezed me in her zeal upon my return.

Maisy would have found Hambone hilarious, which actually gives me comfort.

But the fact remains that if I’m not occupied with a project, then I ruminate on what I had and not what I have.

While I was busy cooking Fletch’s birthday dinner, I felt like the old me, the one who isn’t consumed with loss and sings (badly) into her spatula while she’s making sauce. Truly, there is a joy of cooking. (Quick, someone use this as a title for an iconic cookbook!)

Although I once despised all things meal-preparation-related, I’ve been cooking enthusiastically ever since I wrote
My Fair Lazy
and upped my previously nonexistent culinary skills by taking classes. But I’ve made very little since July that wasn’t specifically to feed Maisy. Between giving her fluids and trying to coax her into eating and taking her on nightly walks, by the time dinner rolled around, delivery seemed the easiest option.

I need comfort; ergo I need comfort food. So I believe the best way to live My Year of Martha currently will be to head back to the kitchen. I’m going to cook every single day for the rest of October. I mean, meal making feels the most Stewartesque action, considering she built her empire on a catering business.

I’ll begin the process by asking Fletch what he might want to eat.

He doesn’t even hesitate with his answer. “Anything in the slow cooker.” And then he smirks.

Crock-Pot cookery does not normally lend itself to smirking, except in this circumstance. Back when we lived in the city, I started hosting an annual eighties party. Everyone would don Lycra and leg warmers and Members Only jackets and we’d throw down to new wave music with John Hughes movies on in the background.

Nothing’s more retro than neon food, so Stacey told me how to make Day-Glo orange Rotel dip, which is comprised of exactly two ingredients, the second being Velveeta. Open the Rotel, cube the cheese, turn on the slow cooker, and voilà! Four hours later, I have the kind of liquid gold that guests will mainline, given the chance.

Except I had a shitty old slow cooker and ended up burning my Rotel dip. Two ingredients! One step! Ruined! (I ate it anyway, but grudgingly.) So, before our next party, Fletch bought us a new slow cooker. He was in charge, as slow cookers are somehow under my mental auspices with other things-that-I-need-but-won’t-pay-for, along with oil changes and car washes.

He brought home a beautiful cranberry-colored KitchenAid slow cooker in
which the entire ceramic part lifted out. We used it a few times in our old house with great success. But then we moved and we lost the cord in the shuffle. I found this out the first time I tried to make Rotel in the new house. (Fortunately the microwave can do the same thing, three hours and fifty-five minutes quicker. Score!)

Fletch offered to pick up a new one, but if I’m too stingy to buy a new slow cooker in the first place, the last damn thing I want is to fork out the cash to replace one that’s perfectly good.

I tore this house apart for
two years
looking for the cord. I knew it was here somewhere, and the minute I gave up and bought another one, then I’d find the original cord. Not happening.

When Angie was visiting last week, we got onto the subject of slow cookers.

“…so I’ll send you the recipe—it’s so good!” she told me, recounting a dish she’d made for a faculty party.

“Can’t, no slow cooker,” I replied.

“I thought you had a nice one,” she said. “Didn’t we make Rotel dip in it?”

“Yes, but the cord’s missing. I’ve pawed through every box in this house multiple times, but I can’t find it anywhere, including the garage. And we had great movers. They didn’t even break a single wineglass. Everything we owned arrived here in perfect shape, so I refuse to accept that they’d lose this one tiny, stupid thing.”

At that point in the conversation, Fletch came into the kitchen for a Diet Coke. He went first to the butler’s pantry, where we store the soda, and then to the glasses across the kitchen, and then to the ice maker. Exhausting! Why not just keep the sodas in the fridge and drink them cold from the can? What Fletch calls “being a nudge” I consider “being a paragon of efficiency.” Although when I pointed this out, he asked, “Are you really burning gray matter in trying to figure out how I can streamline my beverage consumption?” I kind of didn’t have a response to that.

Angie smiled in greeting to Fletch and then said to me, “Can’t you just order another one online?”

Exasperated, I replied, “You’d think, but no. After officially having a missing cord for two years, I decided to compromise by buying a replacement cord. I figured it could be expensive, but not as much as replacing the entire unit. But KitchenAid doesn’t make them!” I’m not kidding; I spent days trawling all the online sites for a solution.

“Replacement cord for what?” he asked, standing at the head of our extra-long dinner table. The old home owners had a tiny table in here, plus a whole seating area with a couch. Mind you, I love a good couch and I’m a huge fan of comfortable seating, but if everyone’s gathered in the kitchen, it’s to eat and drink, not lounge, so we found a table that seats eight normally and ten with the leaves installed. I plan to have this table for the rest of my life, and that gives me a great sense of stability. I feel like that quote from
Fight Club
, all “no matter what goes wrong, I’ve got that [sofa] table thing figured out.” (Of course, I’m less on board with the movie’s line, “Fuck Martha Stewart. Martha’s polishing brass on the
Titanic
; it’s all going down, man.” But kudos to our gal for being woven so deeply into the tapestry of pop culture!)

“The slow cooker. But no one makes one.”

Fletch pulled out a chair and sat across from us. He sipped his soda and said, “I don’t believe that.”

“What’s not to believe? I went everywhere online, and I mean everywhere. I can find you a new drive assembly part for your KitchenAid ice-cream maker, or a rubber foot for your Pro Line coffee grinder, but a cord? No. Replacement cords do not exist for that unit.”

Fletch folded up a napkin and placed it under his drink. “That can’t be. You must have looked for the wrong thing.”

Argh.

“I didn’t look for the wrong thing—I even Googled every iteration of ‘cord,’ ‘plug,’ and ‘power,’ but there’s
nothing. Not to go all H.W.’s reelection, but read my lips—no new cords.”

Fletch pointed to Angie’s Kindle. “Can I see that for a minute?” and then he conducted his own Internet search.

“Maybe you should look under ‘magical electricity-bringer rope,’” Angie suggested.

“Ereplacementcords.com is the most comprehensive place to search,” I offered.

He tooled around on the Internet while Angie told me about her summer teaching in China. Angie had such an adventure there, yet she returned home with a profound appreciation for advancements in American plumbing. She says every time she flushes, she’s all, “USA! USA! USA!”

He closed her Kindle with a frustrated snap.

“Honey,” I said gently, “this doesn’t need to be an I-was-right kind of thing. Rather, these cords simply don’t exist.”

I
was
right, though.