I close my eyes when I go to K-Mart and cruise through the household aisles offering your sheets and towels.

I dive for the remote when you come on TV to do a special on origami napkin folding.

I happily tear out the magazine pages where you wax rhapsodic on the wonders of radish sculpture.

I blithely go through the year, never once knowing the "right" way to set a table or how to make nutritionally correct gourmet lunches for the kiddies to take to school.

Call me crazy, but I have a problem with a woman that makes billions giving her gender massive inferiority complexes. <continued below>

It is only at the holiday time that I let you make me crazy.

It is probably due to the fact that more than any other time of the year; you come out full-tilt boogie at Christmas. No matter where I turn, there you are, with your version of home holiday décor. Your classic table displays and your easy, one-step (that is in actuality 42-step) homemade gifts beckon to me. I get out my Christmas decorations from the black hole that is the basement and they look tired and blasé. There you are in my head whispering, "You know, if you went out and bought 50 dollars worth of art supplies, I could show you how to make this mess look like New England Christmas. The world would want to tour your unbearably quaint home as they do mine."

So I come home with stencils and paints and all sorts of junk specifically ordained by Martha as indispensable if you want a home Good Housekeeping would die to photograph. I look at it. It looks at me. I leaf through the "easy to understand" magazine directions. They look like Greek to me.

I pick the easiest thing I can find. It is a tablecloth stenciled with a holly berry design. If you can get through it in one piece, you can do matching napkins and make a simple, yet lovely napkin holder with wire, fake berries and silk flowers. I lay out the white tablecloth on newspapers and get brushes and paint ready. I search for the right stencil. I find it where the dog has left it, chewed beyond recognition in the bathroom. I wonder if Martha has a dog. If she does, it probably paints her bathroom for her. 

I do not give up. I find a stencil of Christmas bulbs that I think will work. I lay it on the tablecloth and begin to paint a cheerful red. The phone rings and I jump. The stenci! l jumps too and red paint jumps with it. Now I have very large, mutant holly.

I do not give up.

I continue stenciling around the tablecloth. When I finish I look back and realize my knee has been getting into the paint. I do not despair. I label it sponge art and congratulate myself on being more artistic and clever than Martha is. I let the tablecloth dry and turn to the napkin holders. This looks a little harder. You must twist the wire with the fake berries and silk leaves in such a way that the wire doesn't show. I try one. It is a metal nightmare. I nearly lose a finger with the wire cutters and the holly and leaves are all on the inside. I try another one. This one looks great! I proudly stuff a napkin into it and admire it. When I take the napkin back out, it emerges ripped to shreds. I glumly check the directions to see if Martha used a blowtorch to correct this problem.

My sons come home from school and make fun of my tablecloth. I chase them from the room, take a good look at my tablecloth and make fun of it too. It looks like a gang of 2-year olds was set loose on it. I throw it away along with the napkin holders and indulge in a small hysteria attack. This is what paying attention to Martha gets you. Fifty dollars worth of stuff you'll never use, a tablecloth in the garbage and a Tylenol headache.

So much for my Martha Stewart inspired delusions of grandeur for this year.

Tami Coxen lives in the eastern US with her two sons, a dog and her husband, in that order. She writes a weekly humor column and articles on the joys of parenting, when she's not joyfully parenting.