Forgive me if I'm repeating myself but if you are just joining us here at Less on the Floor, a few words about me. I am a mother to two: my elementary-aged son and preschool-aged daughter. Together with my husband, we live in the heart of a major US city, in a two-bedroom apartment on the 15th floor which boasts sweeping views, a teeny-tiny floor plan, strategic bunk-beds, and a dining room table currently strewn with 4,000 Legos, my laptop, some stray salt and pepper, and (don’t ask) the belt from a bathrobe, which is tying several of the chairs together. This is what passes for a fort on ... [READ MORE]
Treading Water
July 15, 2014 by Leave a Comment
I don't actually know why we bother to say that we're busy. I think what we mean to say is simply that we're living. Keeping on keeping on, and all that. With that said, here's the usual saw: it's mostly been busy, but in a good way. Busy with bachelorette pool parties, camping, Father's Day surprise getaways, Mendocino wedding festivities, long drives to Tahoe with chocolate milkshakes to keep us cool. Busy sneaking in the first half of the USA-Germany match and a Bloody Mary before work. Busy with work travel (the Husband), and then work transitions (me) and a crazy new venture (more ... [READ MORE]
The This and The That
May 28, 2014 by Leave a Comment
What has this woman been up to? This poor blog, what whiplash it must feel: sometimes I just love all over it and sometimes I let it lie there, alone and untended, for weeks upon weeks. But there I go anthropomorphizing something that doesn't need it (I have quite enough living things depending on me, thanks); I suppose it's nice to have a project like this, a sort of faux-commitment entirely of my own making. So I let the blog go! Who cares? La dee da! Look how free and loose I am! The truth, for those of you following at home, is rather multifold. One: as has been hinted, change ... [READ MORE]
Why Do We Do This Again? (Again, In Which I Brave Pinterest)
May 1, 2013 by 1 Comment
"Wait. You went to PRINCETON?" the woman exclaimed. Then she shook her head. "I can't believe you only work part-time. Shouldn't you be off, like, conquering the world or something?" We had covered a fair bit of territory at this point, this rather more, shall we say, Sandbergian mother and I, on the sunny green where our children played: work habits (primarily), bedtime routines, daycare experiences. After educational pedigree we moved on to hobbies and I mentioned I maintain a blog. "How many readers do you have?" Not too many. About 600 hits a month. "Do you monetize at all?" I ... [READ MORE]
Mompetition
January 29, 2013 by Leave a Comment
I have a couple of friends -- real friends, women I genuinely like and enjoy spending time with -- who for a while I was seriously considering breaking up with on Facebook. I know that sounds passive-aggressive, and maybe it is, but I sort of reached a point where I couldn't take it anymore. Facebook is a truly, deeply weird planet. I mean, I am aware that every Facebook page is a carefully curated, highly edited version of real life; a place where our children's foibles are just cute as beans, and our hair looks good, and we're perpetually on vacation or at the pumpkin patch or scoring a ... [READ MORE]
What About Another Worm?
April 18, 2012 by Leave a Comment
A lazy, sun-dappled Sunday afternoon chez nous, Babygirl power napping in the back, my husband resting on the couch, and Babyman and I were lying on the floor with several tubs of Play-Doh. He was mashing all of the contents together through the Play-Doh machine, generating one thick tube after another and then imprinting them with leaves and stars and trucks. I was trying to stifle my Type-A impulse to maintain the integrity of the different colors. (At this point, most of our Play-Doh is a sort of universal pinkish-gray, the result of all the colors being kneaded together over time. I ... [READ MORE]
Why do we do this, again?
April 2, 2012 by 1 Comment
Babyman's favorite YouTube clip was pulled off the internet last week for copyright violations. Which is ironic, actually, because every one of the shorts in the series (I think there were four, in total) made heavy reference to what a flagrant copyright violation they were. Babyman doesn't watch much YouTube: he likes the Wheels on the Bus bits and the occasional Cars promo, but he was really into this mashup of Transformers and Thomas the Tank Engine called Trains-Formers. My husband and I liked the shorts too: short, clever, subversive but kid-friendly, and overall sort of ... [READ MORE]
