I used to love running. Running has been my link to sanity in every difficult moment of my life. I ran as a child, as a teen and as an adult. I ran short and long distances and I’ve always loved running in the hills. I love running downhill and taking flight almost as much as I love running up hill and feeling fire in my lungs.

When I can’t shut my brain off I go for a run and it fixes everything. It’s been my meditation, my therapy and my joy.

With he onset of Rheumatoid Arthritis I went from running a few miles a day to not being able to walk upstairs in my house almost overnight. In addition to the toll it took on my body there was a huge price to pay emotionally. Without being able to move well I was antsy, grumpy and sad all at once. I’d watch people run past me and stare wistfully.

In the last few months a combination of medicines has allowed me to exercise again. I can take long walks and hikes and still feel okay and I can even run a few miles without aches.

I’ve worked up to a four mile run. Rheumatologists will tell RA patients that you should exercise only to the point where you don’t feel joint soreness an hour or a day afterward. What’s been difficult for me as a former athlete is that my old mindset was to exercise to the point of pain. Not extreme pain, but in order to grow muscle strength you need to push it and feel something, a strain, fatigue… light pain.

Exercising when you’re an RA patient means stopping before there is pain and it’s a wholly unsatisfying experience.

Today I did a flat four miles of interval training. I would run at a slow but steady pace for 3 minutes and then walk for one. My hips didn’t hurt, my ankles and toes felt fine an hour later and even this evening. I never lost my wind. I never felt a burning in my chest and I never lost track of time.

My new normal isn’t leaving me happy.

I’ve signed up to run a half marathon in April and it looks like I’ll need to readjust my goals. I won’t be running. I’ll be walking because it’s the only way that I’ll be able to make the distance without injuring my joints.

I should be incredibly grateful that I have the ability to do this long walk. I’m not there yet. Maybe this race (though I’ll hardly be competing with anyone) will be a milestone that can help the disappointment dissipate.

I wish I was running. I’m trying to not look at walking as a defeat.

Last year when Los Angeles’ jails and California’s prisons were overcrowded non violent offenders were paroled. In the mix were white collar criminals, grifters and con artists (perhaps the three are synonymous?). Last year I listened complacently to the news and nodded, thinking to myself, “That makes sense”.

This year I see it differently.

My friend Daphne Brogdon had her world turned upside down when she became (or rather realized she’d become) a victim to the Madoff Scam. I met with another lady last week who told me about a dear friend a business partner who had robbed everyone blind, and we both whispered about all the finance gurus online who live in their mother’s basements and don’t pay any of their bills. She is involved in crowdfunding. I told her in broad strokes about the grifter blogger here in Los Angeles.

With all of this swirling around the discussion becomes a question of how to trust people. How do you know that you won’t be continuously hurt, stolen from or punished?

After bouncing tens of thousands of dollars in checks (possibly hundreds of thousands), stealing cars and lying pathologically about her income, relationships and business the grifter mom was arrested (not for the first time). An officer from the LAPD told me that she was, “The most coldhearted and evil woman I’ve ever encountered.”

As a direct result of this grifter mom blogger’s actions my son has lost three friends. This absolutely kills me. She’s made dozens of people financially insecure, almost bankrupted a taco truck guy. Who doesn’t pay the taco truck? Who? There may or may not be sex with someone’s husband but certainly there was money and in all of this there are kids. Her kids, neighborhood kids, school kids… a lot of kids whose parents are made to feel like they might be crazy.

I’m not sure how these experiences have shaped me or if they will continue to shape me. I’m very interested in crowdfunding but the obvious obstacle is trust. I’m not sure that I’m ready to declare trust in the world.

Today I had a three hour salon appointment and one of those hours was spent listening to my stylist complain about Those Old Jewish Ladies. Only five or so minutes was spent with her regaling me with the tale of how she pretended to be Jewish to get out of a speeding ticket.

As she was flat ironing my hair and complaining about the Horrible Old Jewish Ladies who do nothing but complain I sat smiling and wondering if I was doing the right thing. Should I have gotten up from the chair with my hair half done and caused a scene? Should I have said to her, “I’m Jewish.” Should I have goaded her along and asked her how she knew that they were Old Jewish Ladies? Was it their big noses, thrifty ways or perhaps they stopped to daven halfway though a service?

I’m listening and wondering what it would really feel like, what it would look like if I walked out of a salon, head half finished and simply refused to pay. I sat back and every scenario simply had me thinking that I’d look like a prickly ass. Now, I’m not sure that this is the truth but every scenario I imagined didn’t have me looking like a good guy.

When I left the salon I updated my facebook status

The comments that came in were predictable. There were quite a few exclamations Wow and Shut up being popular. I think people were left speechless (as was I).

My friend Navah wanted to know which salon. Quite a few other people asked me to Yelp review it. I’m not going to do that, though I did sit in that chair and know that I could cripple this woman’s business. I’m not reviewing my anti-Semitic hairdresser online because she doesn’t own the salon. Yes, she’s been there a good long time, yes, she’s a jerk, but salons are gatherings of professionals and I don’t want to try and shoot my hairdresser in the kneecaps, miss and then shoot one of her coworkers in the heart. As a side note Navah is incredibly beautiful. If she says to see Diane at Piero salon we all probably should.

This is all figuratively speaking folks. I’m not shooting anyone any time soon.

I don’t have a good reason for sitting there and listening to her nonsense. Not only did I pay and leave, but I left a generous 18% tip (you know… generous by Jewish standards).

My friend Nina Grimes Stewart had a clear vision of me either leaving after a one liner or (more accurately) realizing there’s no point to it anyway. I’m not one to keep things to myself. Trust me, my life could have been a lot simpler with some tongue biting. What struck me about Nina just knowing that some discussions aren’t worth having is that Nina’s father is Milton Grimes, the iconic civil rights attorney. If Nina, who has lived a lifetime of racial discrimination stories at her dinner table, could see quickly and clearly that this woman wasn’t worth my breath I felt vindicated of my inaction.

Sometimes there are discussions that can’t be had. Sometimes I recognize that I’ll be seen as shrill or sanctimonious. Sometimes it’s just not the right audience.

I love Shannon for hitting the nail on the head with her response.

I hear stories of people passing for whatever the majority is. I guess today I passed for Not a Jewish Lady. 

Traveling to Chicago in the winter is a bear. It’s cold and the traffic is miserable. If there’s only one thing you ever learn from me in your entire life let it be this:

There is a train station in O’Hare Airport. Use it.

I was really happy to meet so many women who I’ve followed online for years. One in particular is Bobbie who had a very serious accident on her way home. Of course I was happy to be with new and old friends but after coming home and hearing about Bobbie, her husband and her kids (just bumps for them, yay!) I sort of didn’t have energy to write about the day.

I will soon.

Baseball season is starting and it’s off to a rocky start. I watch Dance Moms with the kids (just so I can feel smug and superior) and then I realize that the Dance Moms are a little less sociopathic and a little more realistic than the Baseball Dads. The Dance Moms think that their daughters are going to dance their way to Harvard. The Baseball Dads seem to think that their sons are all going to be the next Albert Pujols. It’s possible that one of them will be great, but statistically they’ve got a better chance of being a CEO of a Fortune 500 company than a Major League Baseball pitcher.

I played tennis today and it was awful. I was winning 4 games to one and then we sat down to take a break in the shade (86 degrees today) when my partner asked me how Alexander’s eyes were. I lost set 6-4. In fact I lost some of those games without ever scoring a point.

I keep wondering if we made a terrible mistake by not forcing Alexander to have the “fine tuning” stitches like the doctor suggested. I’m not sure that his eyes are straight (they could be) but I worry that we cost him another surgery by not insisting that they leave some stitches hanging out so they could tweak the eye the second day.

I’m at a standstill today thinking about that. I might try going for a run later. I’m not sure how to get thoughts like these out of my head, but I’m absolutely unable to focus or concentrate.  

I met Braden Richter for lunch in Hollywood last week. The first thing I noticed was the laptop. In addition to being one of those radtastic titanium PCs that weigh next to nothing and can be tossed safely from an airplane, his screensaver was a picture of his son playing football that could have been a poster for Friday Night Lights.

Braden is a Los Angeles based furniture entrepreneur. As he detailed his career path for me I was slackjawed. He humbly talks about going from UCLA to making “some stuff” for someone he knew… which of course became Shabby Chic. Braden quickly left school and started a furniture manufacturing company to support Shabby Chic (literally… I think he made the stuff under under the slip covers). From there they expanded, and then they expanded again, producing furniture for every major retailer I’d pinned, googled or ogled.

Braden’s obvious talents are threefold. He knows everyone. He produces quality. He can forecast business trends.

Flash sales are awesome. I love them so much that I have a portal that brings all the flash sales to your inbox. What’s been missing has been a curated flash sale.

Enter LuxeYard. The sales are “flash” but they aren’t flash in the pan. The home furnishings are exquisite and almost without exception they are from the US. Basically you are buying from the manufacturer and skipping the retail markup.

LuxeYard is changing the landscape of flash sales in one incredible way, concierge. Let’s say I’m walking through the mall and I see the side table I must have but it’s the wrong size/price/color/finish, I snap a picture of it with my phone and upload it to the site and explain what it is about it that I need. LuxeYard’s concierge then goes about the business of sourcing that item from their vast network of furniture manufacturers and offering it to you at a wholesale price. Now, if you share that with your friends the price can go down.

LuxeYard members have the ability to push product prices down for
featured Group Buy items. Members leverage social media and social networks
to encourage others to purchase a product, which in turn drives the price down.
For example, members may purchase an item for $100; share the information on
Facebook encouraging others to buy the same product; and two days later find out
that customer demand, which they helped drive, dropped the price to $50. Everyone
who purchased the Group Buy Item will pay the final lowest price.

This week there’s a group buy for a 16 bottle wine cooler by Kalorik. It’s already below $200. I’m anxious to see how low these things can go.

There’s also a room planner which will allow you to enter images and dimensions of your room… this would have saved me about 80 bazillion returns over the years.

LuxeYard also features trendsetters. This week Nicky Hilton will share some of her favorites. Past trendsetters include Jonathan Shokrian, Amanada Rosbrook, Forbes Riley, Faye Resnick, Bobby Berk, and Daniella Clarke. If you check out the LuxeLife it’s like Pinterest went Luxe.

I’m excited about LuxeLife. I look at Braden Richter and I see a man who has a deep understanding of the furniture business and an uncanny ability to to predict it’s trends. Social shopping has always existed. I’ve shopped with friends since my adolescence, now all these years later Group Buys offer us the chance to shop with our friends and be rewarded for it. I have a feeling that I’ll be sharing group buys here. Maybe y’all can help me make this home office into a space I can enjoy a little.

Lindsay has a fabulous post about Colourlovers and why she is boycotting them. To be perfectly fair I’ve only heard of Colourlovers in passing so if I joined a boycott that would be like me boycotting a prostate exam.

Earlier today the Creative director at Colourlovers tweeted the following:

The issue isn’t that some random guy tried to punish women who might already be close to jumping off a cliff. The issue is that this incredibly provocative post came from the creative director of a rather large website.

The whole story is over at Linday’s blog and it’s a good read.

The takeaway here is multilayered. Colourlovers has had Mr. Moynihan remove their @COLOURlovers from his twitter bio (which might have been a good preemptive move) but will it be too late?

I understand that Shaun Moynihan feels strongly about Jesus and the afterlife. What he might not understand is that many of us feel very strongly about this life. Not everyone is Xtian… in fact a shocking number of us still “need saving” and the Rabbis always put the mother before the fetus. All of this is absolutely besides the point but I did want to mention to the folks at ColourLovers that some folks are tired of evangelists.

Tell me what ColourLovers has to do with my uterus? Explain to me, someone make it clear to me why work and pregnancy are intertwined. Part of me feels badly for Shaun Moynihan because maybe he didn’t understand that his twitter stream is public, but most of me feels badly for the women who loved using ColourLovers and now feel like it’s a place that hates women.

I love that @bubs responded like this.

But I want to know from you. Is this too little too late? Will other brands pay attention to this when they create guidelines for social media usage? Is the design community going to let this pass?