Aileen Jeffries

I need a personal assistant. Someone to keep an eye on Craigslist for things I want (like an old-fashioned library ladder) and evaluate the listing’s grammar and spelling to determine the likelihood the seller will trap me and harvest my kidneys and pancreas when I come to to buy it.

Someone to keep track of my Facebook friend requests to make sure I don’t send a second one to someone who ignored my first request. And to keep track of people who quietly de-friend me and add them to my Permanent Enemies list.

Someone to come with me when I go clothes shopping to remind me that there is no such thing as a flattering beige on a pale-skinned redhead.

Someone to go down into the basement and find the wintering geranium roots and soak them in warm water once a month to keep them alive until spring. Which is apparently an activity that some people find time to do.

Growing edible plants in Portland is easy, almost sinfully easy, compared to growing food in northern Saskatchewan. It never fails to amaze me that under the first foot of dirt around here there is MORE dirt, not bedrock. Our last average frost date is April 3rd, with a “safe” (read: tomatoes) frost date of April 23rd.

So, this being March, I’m busy getting the garden ready. I’ve already seeded peas and fava beans (delicious with a nice Chianti!). This morning, with Kea’s “help,” I dug a trench for some brown, wizened asparagus roots and tossed them in, ignoring the Internet’s insistence on the importance of manure. Asparagus is a fickle plant and I’ll have to wait until next year, assuming it even takes, to harvest.

There’s not much exciting about a covered-over asparagus trench so I also treated myself to some container assemblage. I love container gardening because the problem set is tightly defined. My two new front-step containers feature Daphne (blooming in the most miserable part of winter with the most heavenly scent), anemones which I love for their vibrant, floppy, almost garish flowers, yarrow (ground cover) and black mondo grass which is swiftly becoming one of my favorites.

I like to think the efficiency of a household can be judged by how quickly all the clocks are adjusted after the start or end of daylight savings. The night before? That Sunday? Never, because eventually the time will be correct again?

Further, I imagine one spring or fall, someone is going to come to my house and check to see if I got all the clocks. This person will probably be FLOTUS Michelle Obama or possibly Martha Stewart herself. It is this sort of thinking that motivates me to open the car manual to figure out how to change the dashboard clock and summit the creaky kitchen chair and incidentally reveals the depth of my neurosis.

Anyhow, back to making neat, even vacuum cleaner plow lines in the carpet…

First, let it be said that I hardly ever win anything. This may, just possibly, be due to the fact that I don’t enter many contests. The odds are rarely good and the prizes not worth the taxes. But, a couple of weeks ago, an opportunity fell into my lap that seemed tailor-made for me. The prize? Two minutes to spend $2,000 on bluefly.com.

For me, this is like Christmas. Competitive Christmas. My mornings begin with perusing the sales on sites like Rue La La and Ideeli. I spend all day camped out in front of a computer, ostensibly earning a living but in reality perfecting my clicking and typing skills, preparing for this very moment. I was born for this.

I had about a week to prepare. The contest was set to place this morning at a local radio station, 103.3 KKCW. This introduced a host of maddening unknowns – the operating system, browser, Internet connection speed, etc. I also wanted to maximize my allotted $2,000 – I could just get one item close to that price but that would ruin the fun and wouldn’t be as enjoyable as getting many less expensive items. But, every item added to the cart cost me time; time to find the item on the site, to select size and color, to add to the cart. Precious seconds. I hit upon a strategy, to search by keyword. Searching for “Odessa” leads straight to a gorgeous pair of Due Farina boots and is far faster than browsing to the boots through categories.

Throughout the week, I trained in a series of heats – refining my list of items and keywords. This morning, I arose early to confirm nothing I wanted had been sold out.

The guys at the station running the contest were laid-back and friendly and not nearly as giddy as I. Clearly, they do not spend their free time hunting online for the perfect jersey knit dress to transition into early spring. They took pictures and tried gamely to turn the mundane process of e-commerce into an exciting radio segment. I had trained for distractions and someone (in my mind dressed as drill sergeant or my 7th grade gym teacher) unplugging the Ethernet cable at the 2:00:00 minute mark but of course the reality was far less dramatic.

In the end, I can fairly assess that I made the most of it. The final total came to $2,002.47 (the overage I happily paid). A handbag for my friend who told me about the contest, three pairs of boots, two jackets, two dresses, a sweater, a pair of earrings, tights and some frilly unmentionables. Now, to wait in eager anticipation for my loot to arrive!