Dear Martha,

I like you. I like you a lot. I like you like I like the way your butter cream cupcakes taste. Or your succulent turkey roast — or those rosemary potatoes. Mmmm … I like you like I like your food.

Every day your Omnimedia ads taunt me from a feed on the side of my LinkedIn profile. Every day I click them, hoping a job I’m qualified for will pop up. No — every time I click on your perfect, little blue logo I just see available internships. I’m thinking I should apply for one. I’ll do anything for you Martha — even if it means backtracking just for an internship with your company.

I want to be your intern. Martha, I want you to be my mentor. Every morning before work, I will delightfully French press your coffee and then top it off with fresh, organic goats milk and raw sugar. I will bring it to you with a smile on my face and say, “Martha, can I get you anything? A ball of yarn and some knitting needles? Perhaps a whisk so we can whisk away our worries? Show me the best of my Cuisinart! Martha — how about we go to the park and walk our Chows and then skip through a field of wildflowers that we later will collect and make a centerpiece arrangement out of!” You will calmly nod, and in your nonchalant voice say, “Why yes, Marissa. In good time,” because you are my mentor and that’s what mentors do.

The other day I tuned in to your show to find you hallowing out a canoe with a pickaxe. I jumped up and sped across the room to get a better look see. Wow. To see you carve and wield that axe.

As I kid, I used to watch your show while I ate breakfast in the mornings. You taught me how to make a water garden with aquatic soil, plants — even a fish to boot! I took notes as I watched you lovingly plant papyrus in sandy soil and top it off with river rock. I made my mom take me to the Home Depot so I could get all the ingredients for my water garden. Boy, did that add up. I came home and did exactly what you said. I lined an oversized pot with sheeting, poured in my aquatic soil, lovingly planted the papyrus and two other plants, topped them off with river rock and filled it with water. Voila! I ran down to the Pet SuperMarket and bought my scum-eating fish to live in the shallow little oasis. My fish ended up committing suicide by jumping out of the pot and frying itself in the harsh Florida heat, and the papyrus outgrew the pot very quickly and we had to plant it in the backyard. But, it was great while it lasted.

When I was in middle school, I bought one of your Christmas craft books. I decided to make stockings for my Nana and Papa. I got out our old 1980s Singer and slaved over those things for days, perfecting the stitching, adding little extras such as tassels and fishing bobbers. I think they are now packed away in a box somewhere …

In high school I saw you make a letter-shaped wreath out of Styrofoam and decided I would make one too. I carved an “H” (for Hermanson) into a giant white block of Styrofoam. I remember my brother’s friend coming over and asking me what I was doing out on the back patio. “I’m making a Hermanson wreath!” I proclaimed and went back to sawing away Styrofoam chunks. After cutting out that big, ‘ol “H,” I took blue silk hydrangea petals (not real petals — I wanted this thing to last!) and stuck them into the entire thing. I got some fancy ribbon for hanging and brought it to my mom. She told me I could hang it upstairs, outside the guest bedroom, in the hall, where no one goes. “Great!” I cheered and ran upstairs to mount it on the wall.

I love you, Martha. I love everything about your show, magazine and books. I love that you took the idea of domestic and marketed it, creating an empire for yourself. I would like to be a part of your empire, even if that means I’m a minion intern. I would love to be your intern, Martha. Will you be my mentor?

Sincerely,

Marissa