August 15, 2007

"Living" the Good Life

Except for the occasional new variety of Scharffen Berger chocolate, I seldom fall prey to the impulse items conveniently placed at the checkout counter at the grocery. So when Keeper and I were in line at Foodville with our shopping basket of staples-a can of tomato juice, five plums, and a box of Cheez-Its--he was startled when I lunged for a magazine on the display rack.

"Look! It's Corky!" I cried. There, sitting on Martha Stewart's lap on the cover of "Living" magazine was a French Bulldog who was a dead ringer for our little Corkster.

"Huh?" said Keeper. "What's she doing there?"

The cashier was scanning our last item when I impulsively threw the magazine on the counter, not caring that it cost more than a gallon of milk. I had to have it. It was like when Van Buren Elementary sent home packages of the kids' school photos. We could keep them (for an inflated price) or send them back and owe nothing. Right. Is there a mother alive who could pass up a photo of her darling offspring?

Back home, I inspected the cover photo closely. There was the Corky lookalike-fawn coloring, big brown eyes, black button nose-ensconced on a silk brocade pillow on the lap of housewife-turned-media mogul Martha Stewart. The dog was as well-composed as the photo. Smiling for the camera, she was the very essence of calm. That's how I knew for sure it wasn't Corky. All our photos of her end up as action shots-she's a fawn-colored blur at the edge of the frame. Unless she had been drugged into submission, this was not our dog on the magazine cover.

That settled, I curled up for a leisurely perusal of the magazine. I flipped it open to the "Ask Martha" page, where a reader had asked, "How does Parmigiano-Reggiano differ from Pecorino Romano?" Somehow I doubt that any real person had a burning desire to know this. I think Martha made this question up in order to show off her arcane knowledge of Italian cheeses. I did discover a useful tip for getting the musty odor out of old cabinets on this page, however.

I continued skimming the articles, pausing at the lovely photographs of recipes using ingredients I've never heard of (grape seed oil? yuzu juice?) on china and linens I can't afford.

Do people really live like this? Is there a whole population of people who have a separate room in their house just for flower arranging?

I thumbed through the rest of the magazine, and stumbled upon something familiar-a four-page article about those little stick-ons that you put on the bottom of things like lamps and furniture so they don't scrape the surface they're sitting on. They're made of felt, rubber or nylon and they're round, square, or cup-shaped. I knew about these. In fact, just last week I purchased some felt pads and applied them to the feet of my dining room chairs so they wouldn't scratch the hardwood floor.

So there. I may not have hand-embroidered pillows, a complete set of sterling shrimp forks, or a pantry stocked with yuzu juice, but I have felt pads on my chair and a dog like Martha Stewart's. I'm living the good life after all.