Pink of Perfection

One of my major idols, Eleanor Josaphine Medill “Cissy” Patterson–the country’s first major female newspaper publisher and a sybarite of the first order–used to entertain at her Dupont Circle home in elaborate silk pajamas. I thought of her recently after moving from a 400 square foot apartment–where we regularly entertained in what was essentially our bedroom (whether I wore real clothes or not) to a house with many rooms–one of which I intend to use as an office.

To be honest, a home office is a novel concept for me. I’ve always thought of bed as the ultimate workspace: good for reading, aesthetically pleasing, the perfect place to drink coffee and look out the window. In college I even had the desk removed from my dorm room to make way for a nice, feather-cushioned loveseat. But someone has given me a hand-me-down computer (my first) and I finally reached my breaking point at the public library when a) I started to recognize everyone there (like the man who can’t remove the paint from his eyebrows and is–from what I can tell–in the midst of refinancing his $800,000 home) and b) the woman coughing and typing next to me was obviously going to give me TB.

Not wanting to get too attached to the home office concept–I may, after all, end up back in a 400 sq ft place or miss the DSM-IV charms of the library–I didn’t want to invest too heavily in the set-up. So I repurposed this $9 child’s table and the $6 Braniff-era Steelcase office chair as my desk. This time, I tried not to use spray paint–at least on the fabric–but it was so slow-going (especially after the Law & Order marathon ran its course) that I ignored the advice of the man at the hardware store (he thought I needed “flexible” paint) and went at it with water-based latex spray paint. (P.S. For those of you who are curious about the metallic and glitter varieties, Michaels is running a $1.99 sale right now on Krylon paints.)