Aileen Jeffries

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!

This vase came from Pottery Barn. I’m normally not into things that are new but artificially distressed to look old but I couldn’t resist this one. I like the mustard yellow and the texture and the contrast between this vase and the more modern items in the foyer. I knew it would look smashing with the tansy in this bouquet. Matching a vase to the flowers is probably like matching an outfit to shoes, but I do that too.
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There are plenty of reasons I’ve chosen to live on the West Coast over the East (living in the flyover hinterlands is a non-starter). The summers are much better, truly wild places still exist out here and there’s an optimistic, inventive spirit in our populace that makes up for the meth problem and sky-high unemployment rate.

But, one thing the East Coast has on the West is historic architecture. In Portland’s Old Town, the buildings boast their age – 1869, 1886, etc. And for Portland, that’s old.  But in cities on the East Coast, there are houses that were built over a century before that. There’s a confidence of place that comes with age, a sense that the neighborhood has settled into a character that will remain unchanged in the decades to come.

In 2007, Kes and I visited Washington, D.C. over Labor Day weekend. We spent several hours roaming around Georgetown, between eating breakfast at a crêperie and escaping the afternoon heat with gin & tonics in an excessively air-conditioned bar.

As we walked about Georgetown, we noticed a pattern in the door knockers. Most were heavy, elaborate affairs, no doubt forged in a time when there were still blacksmiths. The ones that really caught our attention were foxes. We speculated they marked the inhabitants as members of a secret society, the kind of society that determines which countries we’ll be invading in ten to twenty years. We brought up the fox door knockers with our bartender and he dismissed them as showy affectations of the newly rich. Which is exactly the sort of thing you’d say if you didn’t want outsiders sniffing around your secret societies.

Since that trip, I’ve traversed the Internet looking for a fox knocker for our own door. I even inquired at Chown, a local hardware purveyor catering to wealthy mechanism fetishists. My search was fruitless for the first year. Undaunted, I kept checking back, secure in the knowledge that the Internet Provides All to the patient, finally finding the perfect fox door knocker this May. The misspelling of “Manufacturers” in the Web site’s banner is distressing – nothing says “we’ll sell your credit card info to the highest bidder” quite like blatant typos. But, I took the chance and a short week later, my fox knocker arrived.

We installed it over the weekend, a feat that was complicated by the “hand crafted” nature of the knocker (read: nothing about it lines up and the bolts are, suspiciously, metric). Kea loves banging it. Our nanny thinks it is a little on the threatening, scary side. I’m just waiting for the emissary from the West Coast cell of the Società delle Volpi to come a’knocking.

Doors of Georgetown
Knockers & Handles

I am too old for:

• shoes by Jessica Simpson. The shoe to the left is cute, no? Too bad I won’t be able to get them. I’m simply too old for anything “designed” by Jessica Simpson, or really, celebrity-endorsed products in general, although I’d make an exception for a really cool, unexpected celebrity product line. Cormac McCarthy Survival Gear, I’d be all over that.
• the Ugg & Mini Skirt combo I see the kids at Wilson HS sporting. In January. This is so impractical. It speaks of a pampered existence; of overheated suburban McMansions and chauffeur/parents. In my day, I would have frozen to death around mile six on my uphill trudge to school if I’d worn this. I have to suppress the urge to yell at them to get off my lawn even though I don’t even have a lawn, they’re no where near my house, and they’d probably just wonder why the middle-aged lady is yelling at them from her middle-aged person’s car.

Things I’m too old for, but do anyway:

• Mykonos. Great for week-long bachelorette parties. Good for mommies? Probably not. In a concession to my advanced age, I’ll be sure to stay on the family end of Super Paradise beach during my next visit, avoiding the clothing-optional meat market on the other end.
• Shopping at American Eagle, Brass Plum, Urban Outfitters, etc.

Things I’m too young for, but do anyway:

• Timeshare condo ownership. Even more embarrassing, it is in Palm Springs, a community in California that has actually managed to alter the local weather patterns by building so many golf courses (and watering them) in a desert.
• Martha Stewart. Her perfectionism and focus on domestic trivialities used to bother me, but now I find her aspirational. Hand-lettered place cards? Dedicating a room to present wrapping? Raising your own turkeys? Bring it. I feel confident that emulating this woman will bring me closer to my life goal of ascending to the position of Family Matriarch.

Things I will never be old enough for:

• Having a “case of the Mondays” and/or relating to Cathy cartoons.
• Comic Sans type face. Unacceptable. Usually arriving in my Inbox in the form of a “humorous” forward about the differences between men and women.

Those who have toured our home recently and witnessed the Wall of Coach I have in our bedroom are aware that I have a small handbag vice. There’s black ones and brown ones, white ones and a lovely cognac one I’ve had since college. I added to my little flock this week, a reward to myself for finally shedding the last of the baby weight.

It is slim, it is shiny, it is supple and sleek. I will call her Esmeralda.