Today was our last chance to clean before Alice arrives tomorrow so I skipped Jackson's soccer game (my god, when is soccer season going to end? but that's a post for another day)(I'm rationing already) to stay home and scrape the toilets. No, not really, I just get in there with a toothbrush. Ha! Kidding! It's really a chamois.

When it came to do the floors, though, I stood there leaning against the modern housecleaner's most inadequate tool, the sponge-on-a-stick-style mop, and I thought, "Do I really want to be in here pushing as hard as I can against The Uncleanable Grout with this pathetic goddamn device?"

So I took my Mop N Glo and the small mountain of rags that I'd coaxed out of a terrycloth bathrobe as old and white as Ralph Lauren himself, and I got down on my hands and knees and I washed the floor by hand. It was one of the most satisfying household chores in recent memory. It was done quickly (granted, our bathrooms are Pee Wee League); the floors were dry right away; and all nooks and crannies were deemed respectable without my having to jam some too-giant-for-the-job piece of grocery store crap Swiffer into them. It's not something I want to do every day -- the phrase "housemaid's knee" comes to mind -- but thumbs up for the occasional application of old-fashioned methods and elbow-grease.

Today's shoes!

Last spring when I was in New York I kept walking by a giant ad for these sneakers in Union Square station and I am proof that advertising can indeed work, but only if your product is TOTALLY AWESOME. The Pumas in the ad were blue, but I went with green in the end and I haven't looked back.