Falling Apart in a Parking Lot

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I have always been amazed at the outcomes of group settings. You hear about it all the time when 40 people watch someone get robbed, or you decide to get an iPhone because everyone else has those little tech boxes of infinite wisdom and coolness.

What is even more interesting is to see how you personally choose to deal with these situations. The agony of going against the grain can usually be enough to keep you on the sidelines. Heaven forbid someone stares at you. You can always notice these situations at huge public places like the grocery store or mall.

The holidays in general can be one huge conglomeration of these pack mentality instances, and a huge test of either being part of the action or a member of the crowd.

Recently at IKEA this whole do what everyone else does idea was put to the test. I am convinced that if you need to learn any thing at any point in time about life you merely need to go to IKEA. Within those furniture covered walls is a playground for human interaction. Aside from the randomness that you can purchase, it literally satisfies tastes from troll doll shower curtains, to amoeba shaped mirrors, and even vegetable throw pillows.

Every someone or something is sure to provide you with an experience that you know is only possible at IKEA. I'm talking about you meatball macaroni in the cafe.

So of course my last trip there was no exception. I wasn't even in the front door when all hell broke loose. I was walking in with my cart when a rogue cart filled with Tupperware and loofahs goes flying by. Behind is a man flailing one  arm in distress, balancing a lamp and place mats in the other one. The cart is literally emulating a Frisbee as it shoots kitchen organizers from all angles.  And everyone around is staring in awe. My moral conscious was reaching serious lows as I watched three cars proceed to flatten some Swedish version of Rubbermaid. As he scrambled to grab what little remained at that point, the wind picked up and blew those place mats like napkins across the lot. 

This was clearly the last straw. You could see the distressed man just trying to get a little organization in his life was quickly losing faith as he lost distance on the cart. I watched everyone continue to walk by and the cars demolish half the purchase and couldn't believe no one stepped in. I had a few fly away place mats land near me and quickly tried to grab what survived for the man, but he was too far gone as he sprinted to his car with about 1/4 of what he originally had.

No one deserves to have their life fall apart in a parking lot. Had there been less people watching, maybe someone would have decided to stop before flattening an entire cart full.

So moral of the story is, when helping others in public distress....

• Their humiliation is greater than yours.

• Everyone deserves excessive amounts of organizational kitchen ware.

• You can be the one to step up...

• ...because your neighbor probably isn't.

• It will probably be you next, aka cramming a whole room's worth of decoration into a Toyota Camry {fail}

• Flailing arms, and vortex like carts are no sympathy tactic.

• If you feel like you should help then you probably should.

Best of luck at your next IKEA adventure!

RV

Cleaning Spree

So far this cold weather has been down right a pain in the behind when it comes to the thought of ever wanting to leave the warmth of my bed. Which means that by adapting to life as a hermit any sort of workout plan becomes extremely challenging. Especially when you perpetually can't feel your toes. No one wants to put on anything but flannel pajama pants and a space heater this time of year which means your motivation to workout was lost somewhere between ice storm and hot tea.

I am so guilty of this right now. After trying to make it to the gym only to slip around on break your face icy sidewalks it is simple, no one wants to walk into the gym with soggy pants and socks. Nor do they want a broken face. No thank you I'll take the flannel pants por favor.

After some time of avoiding the outdoors somethings gotta give. What happens next has got to be some sort of hibernation Christmas miracle. I decided to compensate the lack of gym time with house cleaning. Not just cleaning but workout cleaning, like set the timer for intervals of sweeping and scrubbing.

It not only helped work up a little sweat but it addressed the cleaning avoidance that sets in once you have been scrubbing for just a little too long.

In sure you have been wondering how to make a cleaning spree into a total body workout right?!

Bathroom: upper body obviously. Scrub everything because in reality nothing in the bathroom is ever actually clean.

Kitchen: abs!! Sweeping, organizing, using brute ab strength to scrub off baked stove mysteries, the possibilities are endless.

Bedroom: Dust all of the random stuff that literally just sits there, every little cranny, depths of the closet and all. Think pure Barre meets Thai chi.

Floors: wet rags + dirty shoe tracks= sliding lunge marathon human mopping machine. *this will be happening on the reg*

So maybe the place didn't look as clean as it could have. It literally never is, but it helped to avoid the blob like lifestyle that ice covered cars can induce. Happy hibernating!!

-RV

Found these Christmassyjewelryishmissingthings in the process yay double bonus <3

Mental Fitness

I have been really sick lately like pass out after a flight of stairs sick. Aside from the nose blowing and other unpleasantness that comes with the winter plague my memory seems to have suffered as well. For example...putting all of my must be frozen groceries into the refrigerator, locking myself out of the car, losing my Kroger card (and panicking because I thought it was my debit card), and we can't forget telling the mailman "no thank you" when he asked which apartment number was mine.

Working out doesn't go so well when you have a hard time breathing in your sleep much less while you are trying to work up a sweat at the gym. Most people get something every year that signals the change of a season, and mine always is when the weather gets really really cold. I realize yesterday was 60 but I am convinced this thing is lingering for so long in order to make things miserable in the single digit temps next week. Basically I am convinced that my body rejects blisteringly cold weather and some days rain.

As someone who never forgets, loses, misplaces, can't recall anything, this absent mindedness is really cramping my style. Oddly enough as I was cringing about how awkwardly I treated the mail man the other day, I kept seeing all of these articles about mental fitness.

side note...I always wonder if things just pop out to you more that you are thinking about them or if the Internet somehow magically knows what is on your mind that would interest you to read about. Like when someone you just randomly ran into after years of not seeing them pops up on your news feed....it has to be some combination of both.

We spend so much time working on physical fitness (or thinking about how we should work on it), that our poor brains get left in the dust. A healthy brain doesn't look good in a bikini after all. If anything this sick spell was a wake-up call to start thinking about brain health. I was feeling another ridiculous lapse in consciousness coming on so here are a few things that I know helped my brain get it together.

1. Yoga focus: I tried yoga, but instead of hitting all of the deepest poses as intensely as possible I halfsied the pose, put my knee down on lunges, dropped my hand down for support etc. And for the first time in a long time focused on how it felt to merely relax your mind instead of stretching your body to the limits. Which not surprisingly ended up being a serious workout. To avoid thinking about all of the things you need to do when you leave, to wish time would go faster, and to purely think about what was happening right there was exactly what was needed.

2. Black Tea: I have never been a fan of taking tons of different medicines, so tea was a great alternative. Because we all know how weird things can get on the Dayquil diet. Black Tea has stimulating effects that enhance your focus, and when has holding a warm cup of tea made anyone feel distracted...that's right never! The tea not only helps the gruesome sickness symptoms on the inside but helps settle your mind.

3. Downsizing: When things aren't feeling so great cutting back helps. Once you start mixing the refrigerator and the freezer up it's time to cut back on the external craziness. Cutting the clutter from your day lets your body deal with making things better.  Netflix is basically the miracle drug.

4. Do work on the procrastination: When you are feeling 100% your procrastination is at the top of it's game. Excessively going out to dinner, Pinteresting, Instagramming, are all the traditional signs of a healthy procrastinator. When you are sick and bed ridden you have no choice but to think about the multiple things you have probably been avoiding. 

5. Double time the vitamins: I don't care what anyone says it can never hurt to increase the vitamin intake. When your insides are feeling like murky trash day sewer water a little extra B-6 never hurt anyone. Vitamins that are immune system boosting are key...obviously.

6. Read:..something you actually want to read. Reading keeps your brain going when your body can't. You will love opening something besides a mystery stained rented textbook that probably would reinfect you on account of being 100 years old and touched by hundreds of people.

-RV