We have waited long enough, and it's finally here! The Super Bowl will grace our living rooms on Sunday with two teams who are sure to put on a spectacular show. Tom Brady has eaten his Wheaties (more likely quinoa and wheat berries) and Russell Wilson is all fired up for round two. The teams have fought hard to get to Sunday and we couldn't be more excited!
Working out might not be on top of your list for Sunday, but a quick morning session will start your day off with a boost of energy and keep your metabolism working as efficiently as possible well into the evening. This workout can be done on a football field to get you in the mood!
A lucky few can say their work helped spur a fundamental shift in the economic model of modern societies.
If all goes well, Robin Chase may get to do it twice.
A decade before Airbnb and Uber, Chase helped kickstart the "collaborative economy" by co-founding Zipcar, which became the world's largest car-sharing service. The big idea was to replace the enable convenient access to a valuable good (in this case, a vehicle) without requiring ownership.
Now Chase and others have founded Veniam. Their technology powers mesh networks, which provide a new way for people and things (devices, cars, appliances, etc.) to connect to each other and to the internet. The holy grail: ubiquitous no-cost wireless internet access that isn't controlled by the telecom giants.
Fred Wilson, one of the most influential and successful technology venture capitalists of the last decade, announced last month that his firm has invested in Veniam. "We are consciously trying to see the future and seed the future," he wrote.
Chase's story is colorful. She was raised in the Arab world, the daughter of an American diplomat. She is the mother of three children, including one world-famous supermodel. And her career has seen lows as well as highs. "I was a complete shell," she says of one tumultuous period. "It took me, honestly, probably a year to recover."
I spoke with Chase for Sophia, a HuffPost project to collect life lessons from fascinating people. She shared practical wisdom about relationships, raising kids, finding happiness, how she approaches aging, and her latest thinking about the collaborative economy.
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Have you had any recent realizations about living a more fulfilling life?
I attribute a lot of what I have to dumb luck. I've made sure that my family and my children have understood that reality strongly. Being a white well-educated American who doesn't have any immediate family in distress -- that was just like a birthright. What a lucky thing.
My father was an American diplomat. I grew up in the Arab world. I feel that Americans, in particular, lack an appreciation for how incredibly lucky the circumstances of their birth are.
Did you try to foster that in some way with your own children?
There's this story that lives in infamy. We're sitting around the dining room table. My eldest daughter says, "I got straight A's this semester," filled with glee, making her younger siblings feel bad. I said to her, "You know, I'm not so impressed. You're no Maya Angelou."
I said, "There's three things in life. You were born with the genes that you have through sheer luck. It had nothing to do with you; you can't take any credit for that. Your environment is also dumb luck. You happened to be born to parents who believe in education. You have this great environment. You don't get any credit for that. But you do get credit for working incredibly hard. So good for you. You worked incredibly hard. None of those other things you can get credit for."
She fell out of her chair onto the dining room floor, laughing. She said all her peers were getting paid like $20 for each A-grade, and her mom is saying, "Well, an A is okay, but you're not getting a lot of credit for that."
So I absolutely did pound into them where our values lay and what they got credit for.
Below, Chase's daughter Cameron Russell delivers a TED talk in which she discusses winning the "genetic lottery."
You have said, “I’ve never been motivated by money.”
I have always lived my life in such a way that I feel like I'm not taking more than my fair share.
Everyone should be able to live the way I live. So you know, I have not bought my private jet [laughter]. I went to the Goodwill the other week and I got a spectacular silk designer dress that I was really happy with.
I'm still leading a low-consumption, low-footprint life. I think this goes back to, as my father taught me, that I am really an equal. I am an equal. It's profoundly embedded in who I am.
I live in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in a very dense urban environment, mixed-income environment. Years ago, it was summertime, I have these three kids, I’m working, so I’m putting them into different activities.
For a while, I was feeling extreme angst. ‘Wow, my kids are so incredibly privileged. They're getting to go to the day farm camp, or they're getting to go to the Audubon habitat.’ And I was running through my head, ‘Are they getting too much privilege? Are they going to become spoiled brats?’
Then I thought, no, no. The standard that I should exercise here is, I think every child should get to have those things. I wanted to give my children what you would want for every child.
Putting genetics aside, is there anything you've done as a parent that you feel had a lasting impact on your children?
As I raised my children, I really wanted to impart that their happiness would revolve around family and relationships and maybe travel, and not around consumption, so that when they moved into adulthood, they could choose a much broader array of career potentialities. They could be a starving artist and be completely happy because their happiness was not stemming from some income stream.
My children do tease me that there were never any electronic toys in the house. There were no battery toys in the house. For a long, long time, the dress-up box and the pile of old FedEx boxes was the thing.
They will tell you, they led really happy childhoods. They are really pleased with their childhood. When they would say, "How come everyone else was getting these things, and we don't have these things?" I'd say, "You know, I take you on a nice trip sometimes.”
That's where my value is. Stuff is not -- I'm not interested in that. I don't want to have stuff.
You left Zipcar after a period of intense work and fundraising, and shortly afterwards, your father passed away and your daughter’s modeling career took off. What changes did you make to your life after that period?
I am a person who works all the time and whose life is their work. I try to make the barrier between work and life -- actually, I don't have a strong barrier, because I really want to be working on things that I care about. By some measures, I am working all the time.
Post-Zipcar, I definitely was a complete shell. It took me, honestly, probably a year to recover. And then I promptly started working those same long hours.
A luxury of my life is that I've been able, with my spouse, to switch back and forth many times who is the primary breadwinner and who is the primary caretaker.
Whether or not I was doing one role or the other, I was still actively working on intellectual and other pursuits. And as my children have aged, whether I'm getting paid or unpaid, I'm still doing the same work.
Let me add this. It took me a long time to figure out who I am. Post-Zipcar, I've increasingly figured out that my best strengths are ones that I had never appreciated or really understood.
Now, as I've moved forward, I think I have a much better handle on that. I think I'm a good learner. And I'm learning a huge amount in lots of different disciplines. And then, being able to synthesize or seek connections across those fields to see larger patterns and make them feel simple.
To do that requires active listening. There's this recursive piece where you are getting feedback from your environment as well as having your own ideas. You're pushing a little bit in the direction that you think is the right direction. And you're listening very carefully to what the feedback is on that. I think that is how we built Zipcar. And I think that is how I've been developing these ideas and this trajectory that I'm on.
I talk to a whole bunch of people. I listen to how those words fall, and their reactions and their experiences. That shapes how either I should be thinking or how I should be talking about it. It's this constant, delicate learning and pushing path. It's a funny -- it's a very active and directed listening.
What is your latest thinking about how technology is changing our economic models?
I have just finished writing a book. It’s called “Peers Inc.,” and the subtitle is “How People and Platforms are Inventing the Collaborative Economy and Reinventing Capitalism.” I'm totally psyched.
There is a new organizational paradigm that is happening. It is actively transforming how we build businesses, how we work and how we create economies.
If we think about crowd sourcing, Web 2.0, all that stuff, people are empowered. And many say this is “because of the internet.”
That lacks specificity. Actually what's happening is we're leveraging excess capacity, building platforms for participation that organize and simplify the work of these collaborating peers.
We have this new, deep collaboration that's very resource-efficient -- ‘resource’ meaning people, money, assets, networks -- where companies or governments or institutions are doing only what they do best.
This is because transaction costs have now lowered. Dealing with many small parts is no longer an irritating thing. You don't have to bring it internal. And the “peers” in a peer economy -- which can be people or devices -- are each doing what they do best.
So we have this new collaboration that's incredibly powerful and has speed, scale, a high pace of innovation, and adaptability. This organizational paradigm matches our times. The global economy is moving at a very high pace of change. And this structure enables you to iterate and experiment, adapt and evolve, really quickly to match that pace.
It also changes the power structure. If you think about capitalism, it was based on scarcity and hoarding of assets, like trademarks, intellectual copyrights, secrets. This new economy is saying, actually, open shared assets deliver way more value than the old way. It is a fact.
It's kind of the end-run for the Internet. The Internet was created 40 or 45 years ago. But we've really been working with it for about 25 years. Now it's kind of come of age. We're able to figure out, what are its powers? How do we use it?
The collaborative economy is larger than the sharing economy. The sharing economy feels to me like it's about assets. The collaborative economy is everything. It’s making clear and visceral to us that, if I can have real-time access not just to hard assets, but to people, to networks, to experiences, it means that the way I do my own personal life is completely transformed. I don't have to do any hoarding.
I don't have to be worried about having stuff and owning it. I can start to rely on the fact that I can reach out and find the right person at the right moment. That dramatically transforms how you live. Instead of on-demand cars, it's an on-demand life, in a much larger fullness.
It really shapes our potentiality and the pace at which we can do that.
What books have had a profound influence on your life or intellectual development?
One was “Guns, Germs, and Steel” by Jared Diamond. It’s a book that I loved for years and years. After I read it, I bought 10 copies and gave them to different people. That’s the only time I ever did that.
The book comes back to this idea, what is the dumb luck that you're handed? The thesis is: where biology and geography intersect became our destiny. I found it totally fascinating.
More recently, there are a bunch of thinkers over these last 10 years who are either researching or implementing or writing variations on this incredible economic transition that we're in.
There are people like Yochai Benkler and “The Wealth of Networks.” Jeremy Rifkin, Chris Anderson of Wired and I share a lot of ideas. Tim O'Reilly, Lisa Gansky. There’s a whole group of thinkers and doers that are all moving in this same direction, seeing what the underpinnings are, what the new tools are, what the implications of those new tools are.
How do you sleep?
Terribly, because my mind does not shut down. I can fall asleep, and then the second I come out at all, it snaps on. I start thinking about 10 different things, can't get back to sleep. That's how I sleep.
Do you have any advice regarding relationships?
The person that you happen to choose as your spouse is so incredibly important. I think women in particular are enablers of bad behavior.
They're finding a partner when they're between, say, the ages of 22 and 30. There's some shaping potential to be done. And yet, they don't demand their partners take a 50 percent share in household duties, child-rearing, cooking, whatever it is. So the enabling starts. Then they work themselves into a corner.
I was giving a talk the other day to all these veterans who are entrepreneurs. They were 92 percent male. As I was talking, it suddenly occurred to me that, when men also don't learn how to be competent at child-rearing and these other activities, they are covertly telling their spouse -- who is supposed to be the person they love the most -- "You know what? I'm going to be hobbling your career potential because I'm going to be unskilled and useless."
I feel like it's a value judgment. I want to put the burden also on those men. When they are incompetent or unwilling, they are saying our professional futures are not equal.
How did you adjust your marriage after children?
The world is divided into two groups: people who have children and people who don't. It is night and day, having children and not having children. I think of children as “human objects” until the age of like 14 [laughs], i.e., 24 hours a day, every second, you are responsible for them.
The way I'm living now [no longer with young children], every morning I wake up and think -- how incredible! I can lie in this bed, or I can get up! I can change my mind! I can leave the house. I can make appointments. I can travel.
When you are with children, that is all locked down. The freedom of your life is just dramatically different. I certainly did not appreciate it. And when I had my first child, I thought, whoa. No one clued me in on what a giant hit having this child is on my personal autonomy, which impacts my ambition in life, professional potential, and so on. It is a giant hit.
Is there a particular reason you chose to have three children?
Greed. [laughter] I used to work in public health. I was allowed my 2.2 children. Then I hid my third pregnancy for as long as I could because I thought, my god, this is greedy. This is antisocial. This is a total embarrassment. Yeah.
Also, I'm laughing about three children. My husband was less for it than I. I thought, two children is just so easy. [laughter] Life is so pat, you know. Two in front, two in back! It's one adult, one child; it's so simple. Let's shake things up here. So that was also why I had a third child. To make life more akilter.
Have you taken any travel journeys that you would recommend to others?
A really instructive thing is to have Americans understand what a totally different economy and different GDP look like on the ground, living it. We've done a number of vacations where it's been this six-dollar-a-night type of place, a treehouse, a cruddy place in the corner.
My son had this great line. He said, "Wow, people can be really happy without money." And I just thought, yes. Bingo. Let's get that.
It comes back to this privileged life. I want to say 90 percent of the time, when I step into my warm shower, I'm thinking, how incredible. I am standing here, and there's this running water, and it is warm. What an amazing thing.
I honestly think about it almost every time I take a shower. Or wow, I'm lying down on a flat bed, and these sheets are so clean. I'm appreciating that all the time.
How are you approaching aging?
What's curious is around age 52, I suddenly started to think about old age. I had never ever thought about it at all. You never picture yourself there. And suddenly, at this really late age, I thought, wow. My eyesight is declining, my knees creak.
I’ve realized that there's a whole bunch of women in their 70s that are really fabulous. And I thought, I'd like to be one of those really fabulous women in their 70s. But in order to be a fabulous woman in your 70s, it means that I have to be intellectually astute and up and active and engaged now.
Is there anything else you wanted to discuss?
Yes. Addressing climate change. Let's get with the program. Right now, this very moment that we're sitting here, it's either we make dramatic changes or we're moving into a catastrophic world.
It's not your grandchildren. It’s 20 years. In 20 years, it's going to be a really sucky world out there. The reality is so extreme that my saying this makes people think, “You can't trust Robin because she's gone out of her mind.”
It is honestly a crazy reality. It is catastrophic. We're seeing institutions one by one acknowledge it -- the World Bank, the U.N., the IPCC and Obama -- but it’s couched in these little careful terms.
As we're sitting here, the highest likelihood is that we will go to between plus-7 degrees Fahrenheit and plus-10 degrees Fahrenheit global climate change by 2100. What in the heck does that mean?
Minus-7 degrees Fahrenheit was the last Ice Age 50 million years ago. Humans did not exist. And Boston and New York and most of North America was under one kilometer of ice.
So we went from one kilometer of ice, 50 million years ago, no humans -- we are going to that amount of change in 85 years.
That's what we're doing right this second. Even 40 years out is looking pretty rotten. And that's if we do the things that we promised to do. If we don't do those things, which is exceptionally likely, it's in 20 years. It is not some distant thing, and it is not some small amount. This is ecosystem collapse.
So one of the things I think about Zipcar is that people realized, sharing resources leads to a better world. I have a better quality of life. I save money. And it actually has this dramatically strong environmental underpinning. So we can go there proactively, making it as best as we can, or not.
I think you do go through these seven stages of acceptance. And I think people are, right now, all around in the giant denial. If they aren't in a giant denial, they're in the pissed off phase. And we have to move through that and get to -- let's get going. Let's do it.
Sophia is a project to collect life lessons from fascinating people. Learn more or sign up to receive lessons for living directly via Facebook or our email newsletter.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Reuters) - A patient suspected of contracting Ebola after traveling in West Africa and exhibiting symptoms of the disease was admitted on Thursday to a special isolation hospital unit in Sacramento and was being tested for infection, officials said.
(Reuters) - The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved the sale of Evotaz, a once-daily combination pill to treat HIV made by Bristol-Myers Squibb Co, the company said on Thursday.
Foundation and concealer are great, but sometimes they don't offer the level of coverage you're looking for—and that's when makeup artists reach for one buzzy product in particular: banana powders. Mario Dedivanovic, who works with Kim Kardashian, is just one of the pros sold on the stuff; he reportedly likes Ben Nye Bella Luxury Powder ($12, camerareadycosmetics.com). Don't let the name fool you: Banana powder doesn't actually have any fruit in it—it gets its name from its yellow color.
"This powder works on most skin tones, especially medium and darker shades," says makeup artist Brandon Liberati. Banana powders set makeup, absorb excess oil, and reduce the appearance of fine lines just like a traditional powder—but they also color-correct, says Liberati. Unlike white-based finishing powders that can looked caked on, banana powders look more natural on yellow-based skin tones—and they also balance out redness on people of all skin shades.
"It works great underneath your eyes to set your concealer and cancel out blush tones under the eye," says Liberati, who recommends using it to set any contouring products and to camouflage pink tones in your skin.
Liberati suggests using a brush or sponge when applying the product as a finishing powder (this will help ensure an even finish). When using over a concealer or contouring cream, let the product set for a few minutes before removing any excess with a brush. "If you're going to use it as a finishing powder and you have also contoured, be sure you are only giving it a light dusting," says Liberati. "Otherwise, your contouring will not show."
LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - The U.N. Children's Fund launched a record $3.1 billion appeal on Thursday to enable it to help children caught up in a "new generation" of conflicts and disasters round the world, $1 billion more than it sought in 2014.
When a couple finds themselves dealing with fertility issues, it seems like it's the female half whose body and behavior are scrutinized most. Which is totally unfair, considering that 50 percent of the time, the problem lies with the guy’s equipment and habits, says Joseph Alukal, M.D., assistant professor of urology and director of male reproductive health at NYU Langone Medical Center.
And lately, there’s been an uptick in research uncovering just how a man’s lifestyle can affect the quality and quantity of his little swimmers. Case in point: A new animal study ID’d a link between disrupted sperm production and the chemical bisphenol A (BPA), which is found in plastic bottles and food cans. The study, from PLOS Genetics, lends support to the prevailing theory that BPA is an endocrine disruptor, lowering sperm count and quality by mimicking estrogen, which in turn alters levels of male sex hormones.
Officially, BPA has been deemed safe by the FDA. But if fatherhood is in your partner’s future, you may want to steer him away from BPA products—and also clue him in to these other sperm saboteurs:
Carrying His Phone In His Front Pocket
A recent review of 10 previous studies found a nine-percent drop in live sperm per semen sample due to the radiation a mobile phone emits so close to his family jewels. The jury is still out, but it can’t hurt to ask him to carry his cell in his briefcase or back pocket.
Becoming a Stress Case
Stress makes a dent in every body function, including sperm production, says Alukal. A recent study backs this up, finding that anxious men tended to have abnormally shaped sperm and sperm with mobility issues (a big deal, since those boys have to swim far to reach an egg!).
Smoking
“It’s clear that any level of smoking has a negative impact on sperm quality,” says Alukal. The good news: The sooner a guy quits, the sooner his system will start generating healthier swimmers, he says.
Gaining Excess Pounds
Being overweight or obese lowers sperm production, says Alukal, possibly because fat produces estrogen. Not watching the scale poses another male fertility threat: Men who carry extra pounds are more prone to erectile dysfunction.
Spending Time in the Heat
You’ve heard that sperm can get fried if a guy sits too long in a hot tub or sauna. There’s some truth to this, says Alukal. But for heat to really have a sperm-killing effect, a man needs to be exposed to it regularly and often—for example, if his job requires him to work with hot materials, as in the case of a welder, he says. Why is heat harmful? A man’s testicles can’t function properly unless they’re a few degrees cooler than the rest of his body.
Pounding Back Booze
Guys who drink heavily tend to be less healthy overall, says Alukal, and that affects sperm count and quality, too. The effect may take fewer drinks than you think: A recent study from the British Medical Journal suggests that men who had as little as five drinks per week racked up “adverse effects” to their semen quality.
by guest blogger Renee James, humorist and blogger
About 15 years ago, I wrote a column about my boys and the day one of our gerbils died. Like most stories I wrote about my sons, it taught me a great deal about them, even more about myself and about why most of what I often considered a priority -- especially while they were growing up -- was nothing of the kind.
The facts of the case were these: After taking two of them for checkups with our pediatrician, my plan was to leave all three of my sons home alone for about an hour or so, while I returned to the office for the rest of the afternoon. (This was in the good old days of few workplace laptops or very limited options to work remotely.) The boys had my cellphone number and my office phone number and knew I could be home in a matter of 15 minutes. They were 11 (almost 12), 10, and 10 years old at the time, and I liked to think of them as "free-range" children before anyone even knew what that meant.
But the feedback I received after the column ran was that they were neglected and I was a self-absorbed "working woman" who didn't care about them. Regardless of the message I'd hoped to convey in the piece, I heard from more than one reader about how selfish and irresponsible I was.
At the time, I was struck by how judgmental women seem to be of each other while knowing very few details; how harshly we seem to criticize each other's choices and actions. And if we're not criticizing, we're bragging about how "successful" we are as the mothers of geniuses. Some women seem to convey on a daily basis how they've drawn the winning hand at motherhood, and they feel compelled to show their cards to everyone who's just about ready to fold. The rest of us don't want to get out of the game; we just need to figure out how to play the hand we've been dealt.
But I've been reading some news and columns that give me hope. I'm not nearly as alone as I thought. There are women out there, with their porch lights on, in a neighborhood that previously felt very dark indeed. Women like Nancy Wolf, who wrote an insightful and brilliant column titled "About That Mom Who's Not Bragging about Her Kid." It brought tears to my eyes. The love that these "silent" women feel for their child is boundless, eternal, steady, and unquestionable. But the truth is that the road to adulthood, while often paved with nothing but excellent intentions, also includes some hazardous detours. Nothing tragic; no steps that can't be retraced (albeit with great effort and sometimes great pain); but it can take someone entirely off course. Suffice it to say the path some children follow is not the Point-A-to-Point-B journey that many people believe is the only route on the map.
In addition, I'm reading more and more about parents who are endeavoring to raise self-reliant, responsible kids and ignoring the hovering helicopter style so many other parents seem to favor. Parents like Danielle and Alexander Meitiv, who carefully and systematically helped their children acclimate to and then feel confident and comfortable walking a mile from their neighborhood playground to their home without an adult accompanying them. Look, I'm not about to debate how old children should be before parents allow them to walk around their own neighborhoods. That decision is as individual as the children themselves. I also have no idea what the Meitiv children are like and how responsible they are. I do know they've earned their parents' trust.
There is no set of universal instructions that lead to "success" as a parent. There is no playbook that maps out the moves: Do this, this, this, this, and this -- you'll win. Raising children isn't like a chess match, where you try to anticipate what will happen seven years down the road and plan accordingly. (Let me know how that works out for you.) Many people follow all the rules and make the right moves. Guess what? Sometimes even then, after checking off all the "responsible, loving parent" boxes, things go wrong.
So what's the answer? Maybe raising children is more like "skiing the conditions." No matter how skilled you think you are, no matter what worked in the past, the best thing to do is to read the conditions and respond accordingly. You hope you teach your children that sometimes one bad choice is the difference between an exhilarating run and a crash. Make a bunch of those bad choices? God bless. Sure, they'll probably get up again, but they'll have a lot more bruises to show for it.
What can I say? It's called life. Being a human being. And 25 years into my "career" as a mother, I can say this: I'm trying to ski the conditions and learn from my own mistakes every single day. Yes. My mistakes.
I can also say that talking with my sons is one of my favorite things to do. Somehow, they (improbably, inexplicably, incredibly) survived my missteps (and a few of their own) and grew into talented, curious, provocative adults. The thing is--really--this is the thing: I'm very far from a perfect mom. This works out well because despite their many good qualities, my kids are far from perfect people. Which can only mean one thing: We're perfect for each other. And the best part? That little bit of serendipity has rewarded me with more than enough "success" in one lifetime.
Renee A. James works at Rodale Inc. and also wrote an award-winning op-ed column for The Morning Call, the Allentown, Pennsylvania, newspaper, for almost 10 years. Her essays were included in the humor anthology, 101 Damnations: A Humorists' Tour of Personal Hells (Thomas Dunne Books, 2002), and are also found online at Jewish World Review and The Daily Caller. She invites you to Like her Facebook page, where she celebrates--and broods about--life on a regular basis, mostly as a voice in the crowd that shouts, "Really? You're kidding me, right?" (or wants to, anyway), and she welcomes your suggestions, comments, and feedback to the mix.
This weekend a shamanic masseuse came to my home with hot stones.
Boy, did I need it.
I'd been traveling a lot, helping my mother transition into widowhood, getting my younger son's language tested... oh, and launching the first meditation app for women.
Not just any kind of meditation. I lead a yoga nidra meditation company for women. Yoga nidra is a sleep-based meditation technique.
I know. I know. How can I run a SLEEP-based meditation company and be exhausted? Well here's a secret: Meditating doesn't exempt you from periods of exhaustion.
As Pema Chodron says so well: Life falls apart, then it comes back together, then it falls apart again.
Relief from exhaustion takes more than a meditation gadget. Meditation helps, but for many women exhaustion often comes from this struggle to be who we're not.
Lately I'm noticing this manifesting in the bad bargains women make in life.
To understand fully what I mean by bad bargain, you have to understand that bad bargains often come from good ones.
Bad bargains start with the best intentions. A woman caretaking her aging parent who fights hard to get her mother services, who visits often, tires to stay positive and loving, sacrifices holidays to be there no matter what because her parent needs her. That's a good bargain. Many times in life we must go beyond our limits to help others.
The bad bargain starts -- and so does exhaustion -- when you discover years later you are living for one purpose only: to care take your parents.
That's a bad bargain.
I know all about bad bargains.
My son Jacob is severely dyslexic. At age 5 I was curious why he thought I said "cat" when I said "hat." And why when I told him a sight word was "the" the next time he saw "the" he had no idea what the letters spelled.
I had his hearing tested four times. His sight tested twice.
They told me not to worry. Kids read late. Boys talk later than girls.
Everyone seemed to be saying, Calm down, Crazy Mother.
So I kept the worry deep inside only sharing it with my husband and my bestie, Melissa.
By third grade Jacob dictated a poem to his teacher as part of a school project. Parents were invited to the poetry party. Each kid proudly read their poem. When it was Jacob's turn the teacher whispered his poem back to him so he could say it aloud.
The first sentence of his poem went like this:
I AM AS DARK AS A BOOKCOVER.
After that, I knew. I made the bargain. I now had one mission only: to get my child the support he needed.
So the years went by and I fought hard for my son. I felt alone. So alone. So not perfect, back in the days when perfect meant everything to me. I didn't know what to do. All I knew was that I had to protect my son no matter what.
And soon I was lost. Exhausted. Done.
The bad bargain had arrived.
The day before we met with the school district to determine funding for a special school for Jacob I drove my minivan to a far corner of our neighborhood and screamed like a lion.
WHYYYYYYYY? I began in pity party mode.
HELPPPPPPP! I prayed.
And then I cursed. Loudly. The "F" and "k" sounds shaking the car at its core.
I wanted to not be needed for one minute. I craved to not feel possessed.
I cried in my minivan for 20 minutes until I fell into silence. A deep bow. Stillness.
Which is when I remembered yoga nidra meditation. How could I forget?
I returned home later that evening and re-committed to yoga nidra meditation. Within weeks I started to feel a shift. My body felt relaxed for the first time in a while. I was in heaven.
But yoga nidra was not going to solve my bad bargain.
Contrary to all the hoopla, meditation isn't the solution to your exhaustion. Instead what meditation does is help you throw up the white flag. It helps you surrender. Meditation gives you an understanding that you've had enough. It gives you clear signs that it's time to stop a bad bargain.
It's so easy for women to make a bargain with ourselves. To focus only on other people's needs. We fall so easily into caregiver mode.
For a while this bargain may be necessary. Others may need us so we've got to step up. And that can be exhausting. But then there comes a time when the good bargain turns bad. There comes a time when focusing so intensely on another's needs and not your own is a bad bargain. That's what meditation helps us recognize.
Meditation is truly the art of surrender.
My son Jacob will always need me. By the end of sixth grade, age 12, he began reading. Not fluently, but good enough. Still today our journey isn't over. Last week he thought I said "test" when I had said "rest."
He's in 10th grade now, and my mind thinks: What about life after high school? That's why yoga nidra meditation Is as essential as my toothbrush. It helps clean up emotional debris. And with yoga nidra all I have to do is lie down, do nothing, and surrender.
Before yoga nidra I never paused for that surrender moment. Life was loud. I was so busy making sure Jacob was okay. I was attached to the bargain I'd made to protect him at all costs. My exhaustion was like a trance. I was addicted to it. And scared of it, too.
At some point as women we must stop being afraid to be in this place that feels like it's going to take us down. Letting go of the bad bargain can be frightening because we feel we must make a choice. It's either the bargain we made or the life we want.
But what if there was room for both? What if a bad bargain could be released when we stop turning on ourselves? When we trust that it's safe to embrace everything as it is.
Meditation is like a pause button so we can relax in this gap, Where we begin to understand that true freedom is not in this constant either/or battle that our culture wants us to believe. True freedom is in the gap.
So if you're looking to meditation for a quick fix to relieve exhaustion forget it. One week "meditation vacations" are like candy bars. They feel good for a minute, maybe you get a meditation high and your exhaustion fades a bit, but eventually you go back to the same patterns, the same bad bargains, and the exhaustion returns.
The true benefits of making a commitment to meditation comes from this deeper invitation to always be coming home to yourself. to stop the bad bargains and begin to feel fully alive.
There is no perfect formula for a happy life. Again, as Pema says, things fall apart, they come back together, then fall apart again.
Meditation is like the red thread keeping us connected to a source higher than ourselves, helping us peel off layers of exhaustion from all part of our lives, not just from the physical marathon of a busy day.
I tell women I coach all the time that if they want to shift out of exhaustion here's three ways to begin:
1. Commit to a meditation practice 3-5 times per week (ideally lying down).
2. Name your bad bargains.
3. Make a vow and commit to something you long for. Dream big.
Are you living with a bad bargain? Please leave a comment below. I'd love to hear from you.
-- DAY OF REST FOR WOMEN Starting next week on Feb 2nd join me every 1st Monday of the Month for a Day of Rest for Women. 24 hours of yoga nidra meditation. Call in any time. It's free. Because women need it. Click here to sign up for
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Nothing can kill your sex buzz like being all caught up in the moment with a totally revved engine when the guy orgasms, putting the kibosh on one of the most fun ways to get your heartrate up. It’s an unfortunate fact of nature that women usually take a leisurely path to orgasm while guys often opt for the shortest route possible, but that doesn’t mean you can’t do anything about it. These endurance-boosters will help ensure you both have enough time to reach orgasm, then cuddle together and bask in the glow of feel-good hormones.
1. Add Pumpkin to Your Grocery List
Here’s a reason to get your guy addicted to the gourd: “Many people don’t know that there’s research that says pumpkin boost men’s libido,” says Ava Cadell, Ph.D., author of Neuroloveology and the Sexual Health Expo’s 2015 sexpert of the year. “Pumpkin seeds get the blood flowing 40 percent faster to the male genitals and boost sex drive in general,” says Cadell. Even though they’re delicious straight-up or in a sweet and spicy recipe, Cadell says treats that have pumpkin—even cake and pie—can also do the trick.
2. Pull His Testicles
Not hard, obviously! You don’t want to hurt the guy. What you do want to do is prevent the semen from traveling through his testicles, into his shaft and out of his urethra. “When a man is about to ejaculate, his testicles rise, and soon he’ll be at the point of no return," says Cadell. "If you want him to last longer, then you want to pull his testicles down toward his feet." That puts you in the driver’s seat so you can let go when you’re ready for him to, well, let go. As a bonus, you can put this one to work whether you’re having sex, giving a blow job, or trying your hand at a handie.
3. Switch It Up
While it’s rare for a guy to absolutely hate any one sex position, most men have their favorites that can bring them to orgasm in a nanosecond. “I would say doggy is the most popular position men like to orgasm in," says Cadell. "One thing to do is go through other positions instead of just doing that one." She recommends trying out something like this: Start in missionary, move to scissors, get on top, work on your spooning, then finally transition into doggy. He’ll last much longer than if you start off in doggy from the get-go, but of course you can change up the routine based on both of your preferences. To figure out when you should move things along, pay attention to his physical cues. “When a man is about to come, he breathes much faster," says Cadell. "As soon as his breath starts to pick up, then you want to change positions."
4. Get a Pleasure Ring
As far as sex toys go, a pleasure ring is a low-key addition to your bedside drawer. “It’s a flexible ring that stretches to any man’s size," says Cadell. "You put it at the base of the penis, and it helps him stay harder longer because it traps the blood in his shaft." These toys were specifically designed to boost a man’s endurance, but he doesn’t have to know that’s why you got it. “Some brands like Screaming O have pleasure rings that have vibrators on top to stimulate the clitoris," says Cadell. That way, you can just bring it out as something to help you orgasm. Pro tip: The type that has a ring on both top and bottom might overstimulate him, exacerbating the problem.
5. Turn Kegels into a Game
“We all need to exercise every day, but many men don’t realize they need to exercise their penises just like they do their biceps or quadriceps,” says Cadell. That’s where you come in. When your guy is standing and has an erection, drape a mini towel over his penis. Tell him that if he lifts his penis 20 times (or 10 if he’s a total beginner), he can have you in whichever position he wants. Once he’s completed those, move the towel just over the head of his penis, and throw another incentive in there if he can crank out 20 more reps. “Sexercise in the form of kegels strengthens a man’s pelvic floor and can result in longer-lasting erections and even help with premature ejaculation,” says Cadell. Try to work them into the plan at least once a week to see (and feel!) the results.
(Reuters) - Medical device maker Abiomed Inc raised its full-year revenue forecast and said the U.S. Food and Drug Administration had approved its heart pump, sending its stock up about 30 percent in extended trading.
Now Chase and others have founded 
Renee A. James works at Rodale Inc. and also wrote an award-winning op-ed column for The Morning Call, the Allentown, Pennsylvania, newspaper, for almost 10 years. Her essays were included in the humor anthology, 
