Dear Martha Stewart,

I watched your show today (May 15, 2006) and I was encouraged to write you because if someone can get special attention just because they have the same name, I’m due. I’ve had this name all of my 23 years and she’s only had it for 7. Okay, maybe I’m not named after you, but still.

I think she may grow up hating her name for much of the same reasons I do, but even more having to be compared to you. I dislike how every famous Martha is a wife, (Martha Washington) or a domestic bombshell, like you and the Martha in the Bible who was more anxious to have her house clean then to see Jesus. It seems like if we are named Martha we should have expectations to be a great wife or a fabulous craft maker. That pour Martha on your show today has to grow up knowing she is named after the domestic Goddess and that her parents, by naming her that, have expectations that she may one day succeed like you have done. However, in today’s modern world, she may want to be as far from domestic as possible and may prefer eating the tv dinners rather then making a delicious bunt cake. Kudos to you though on the devilled eggs, they looked wonderful.

I will pretend to like me name though if it means getting to meet you. I think you’re too confident and arrogant and in that way I disrespect you. The only reason you are famous is because you have brought so much ease to today’s women in the kitchen and because you have gone to jail for trying to cheat the system. I think you have fabulous receipts and decorating ideas, but I don’t enjoy the personality you portray during your show. Rather bonding over the use of your products, like Sally Fields the other day, if I meet you I will bring up the fact that my nickname as a child was also Little Martha but not because that was my mothers name. How degrading is it though, being the ‘little’ one in the big Martha’s footprints?

Although with a letter to you it seems appropriate to update you on my latest domestic attempt. I’ve been making a quilt since November 2005 and am in the process of assembling the top layer. I’ve separated the 30 patches and have sewn them into 6 strips but am struggling to match the strips together. It is a process that has taken me a few weeks longer then I expected but I think I may have finally adjusted strip #6 to the target length. Tomorrow I will most likely be sewing the two remaining strips to the rest and then will begin to sew on the borders. It’s an exciting project for me, because I have no domestic talent and with the completion of this queen size quilt I will have proved the right to be named Martha.

From one Martha to another.

* I am most definitely not going to be sending this letter to her but it’s written now and it may as well be blogged.