Fruit Fly Preamble

I’m a closet home design freak and a wannabe lifestyle maven.

Now I didn’t start out this way. I was never the girly girl with the matching pouf valence that coordinated with the bed skirt.

Baby, it took me years to realize my inner girl.

While I used to live for Style with Elsa Klensch on CNN; I was that girl who just didn’t quite have enough sense, style or money to look effortless and chic.

Frankly that girl isn’t completely gone but she’s grown into a woman who has some idea of what looks good on her. If pressed I can perhaps host a small dust up for a few people.

Mother Martha and a host of friends worked very hard to get me to this point.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention my own mother a source of domestic diva inspiration.

She could can some tasty bread and butter pickles.

She also sewed most of our clothes in our younger years.

Money was tight---blowing it on garments that we would grow out of in a season just wasn’t practical. Why buy clothing when you could run a cutesy poo dress up on the sewing machine?

So it was from this background that my interest in the domestic arts arose in my mid-twenties.

Gracious, elegant living doesn’t have to cost a ton of money.

Or so Mother Martha convinced me.

Starting roughly around 1995 I bought my first edition of Martha Stewart Living. In 1996 I started subscribing.

I may have let a few subscriptions lapse and I may be missing a few issues here and there but rest assured of one thing:

I have every last regular edition Martha Stewart Living magazine I’ve ever purchased. I don’t throw them away and I don’t give them away.

Hell, I don’t even let them out of my house. And no, you can’t borrow them to get recipe ideas. If you can’t get it online at her website, you’re screwed.

The exception to that rule is the Martha Stewart Living Weddings editions.

I feel at 38 I may not get married so I gave them to my former neighbor when she started to plan her wedding.

Sometimes you just gotta let it go---you know what I’m saying?

Anyhoo, Mother Martha got me interested in other lifestyle magazines and now deem it absolutely essential for my existence to have House Beautiful show up every month.

The bug continued to spread and I started watching those cooking, home décor and gardening shows with renewed vigor.

Fine Living Network, The Style Network and HGTV should be the basis for everyone’s T.V. watching schedule.

I even own chaffing dishes.

Colin Cowie, Debbie Travis, Christopher Lowell, Mother Martha---all big names in the lifestyle, event planning and home décor games.

I’m a normal rational person (mostly).

I know these people aren’t my friends and have branded themselves and their products so they and their business partners can get rich.

It does seem that when you see someone all the time on the telly and they’re giving you such great tips on how to make you world a little brighter; you can’t help but to feel as if they're your long time pal.

I mean if I saw Preston Bailey in front of me in the Jewel, I’d almost piss myself.

Is it any wonder that since lifestyle gurus are the rock stars of my world that I would inevitably make an ass of myself when I actually met one in person?