Sometimes Bad Things Happen To Good People

I know this is a completely unrelated post. It is just that a series of events have been occurring and culminated to a point where I felt like a needed an outlet to vent and think. It all started the weekend of Valentine's Day. (The fact that it is Valentine's Day is completely irrelevant but it's a time place). I live in a student housing apartment and since I am not local and the apartment is about a mile from campus, I drive my car. The apartment has a parking garage and I park my car there every night. It's pretty secure. The only way someone can get into the building is with the fob that only residents have. Every door is secured like that.

The Sunday after Valentine's Day I walk to my car and find that my car door is ajar and everything is out of place. I'm talking, car manual out of the glove box and onto the passenger seat, stacks of paper bags in my car strewn about. It was obvious, someone had gotten into my car. I can say for certain if I had locked my car that night. I do almost every time I leave my car out of habit. But later you will find out that whether or not I had locked my car does not matter. I didn't find anything missing (to my knowledge). I of course knew there was foul play but I bit the bullet and didn't say anything to the apartment staff. I figured someone has already mouthed off to them and they didn't need another. Later everyone gets a notice acknowledging the break-ins so I wasn't the only one.

The second time it happens, it is last Sunday as in two days ago. Once again, door is unlocked, things are shifted about. I was worried because I had went shopping that day and had a bag of clothes in the car. Thankfully, nothing (to my knowledge) was taken. I had taken precautions and moved a lot of things out of my car. I'm pissed off once again. It was a weekend so none of the staff were at the office. I made a mental note to see them the next time they were available. So you think this is where it would end, but it gets a lot worse.

Monday, the campus closed at around 1pm because of the ice so I went home early. I parked my car even doing the thing where you lock the doors twice and it makes the honk sound. I knew I had locked my doors. I also had two bags of gym clothes and I was planning to wear but since campus closed early, I didn't get a chance to. I left them in my car thinking that it was one less thing to have to pack in the morning. I would just have the bag ready to go when I need to go to the gym. Fast forward to 9am, I am getting ready to head out for my 9:30 class and I see a police car in the garage and as I am walking to my car, I see small, dark crystal-like material on the ground to the left of my car. And I realize what has happened, someone has broken the window of my car. My two gym bags with a whole outfit each and my yoga mat, all missing. Property of at least $200 worth, gone.

I had to talk to police for the first time in my life. In context, I am only 19 years old. I am thankful to have never personally been involved in or a victim of any bad activity. And I'm talking to this police officer trying so badly to keep it together as I explain to her exactly what has happened the last few weeks. Eventually, I just break down crying. I am on the verge simply just typing or whenever I have to tell someone about it.

So here I am, car-less, yoga mat-less, down two pairs of nikes (and now no way to workout) and left feeling utterly hopeless and helpless. As if I wasn't already stressed about tests, and classes and generally being behind in coursework, now I have to deal with this. I wonder how did it get this far. I start looking for people to blame. Myself, for leaving goods in my car, locking the doors (if I hadn't locked the doors I probably wouldn't have a broken window) being unlucky enough to have been picked three times, the asshole(s) for being a disgusting human being, the apartment complex for leaving a broken gate open for over a week, for not doing anything after the incidents FIRST started except send out a note, for telling everyone they can't be held responsible and that we should just lock their doors, for not implementing any safety measures other then sending out said note, for only getting police involved once windows were shattered nearly two weeks after the first incident.

I don't know what the point of this post was. To just rant about my awful day, to say that we live in a cruel world and that sometimes things will happen to us and we just have to deal with it and move on. I don't know. I do know know that I have to phone my insurance company and eventually tell my mom, and pray someone finds my stuff. But I don't know where to go from there. It's times like these that really test you. I don't want to live in fear that something bad can happen to me because it happened once. I don't want to always double check that I haven't left anything valuable in my car. I don't want to be paranoid that someone who most likely lives in the same building as me has committed these crimes. I want to hope that karma exists and that the universe will somehow resolve itself and restore order. Do I count my blessings that it was just a window or that I myself was not harmed, or that I live in a first world country where I have law enforcement who will help me when things like this happen? Do I say, well at least I was grateful enough to have a car to get broken into unlike those who can't afford a car? I don't know how to feel, but I do know that I am not happy.

(FREE!) Manduka Renew Mat Wash Review

Hey y'all! Long time no blogging! It's that time of the year again. I'm back in the throws of school again. But I wanted to make a review post of this yoga mat spray that I recently got. I haven't blogged much about it but I have been doing yoga a lot the past few months offered by my college. I bought my Blogilates mat a while back but it's a little too attention grabbing for me so at the moment I have been using my black Oakley mat which I won back in 2013 at an obstacle course 5K.  I don't know how many times I've used it, but I do know that I have never given it a proper wash or wipe down which is scary considering that I use both sides and the floor on which I'm laying my mat on is probably not clean either. Long story short, my yoga mat needed some good ol' TLC.

My yoga instructor told me about a mat spray that he got for free from a website using a promo code and that was when I found Manduka.  They have 2oz. travel size bottles for $5 which I got for free using the promo code "grateful". I don't know if the code still works but you can give it a shot. Choose free shipping and you basically get a bottle of mat cleaner for FREE. I used my 2 debit cards to get 2 bottles (shameless I know! But when they run out, I will probably buy the big refill bottle.).  They come in three scents: Energizing Gingergrass, Soothing Citrus & Tranquil Lavender. I got the latter two and they smell great. Not a scent you would want to spray on yourself but a very clean scent nevertheless.

The actually process of ordering it online was top notch. I ordered the spray on February 1. It shipped on February 2. And it landed on my doorstep February 5. They came in a box that was way bigger than the actual bottle and it was covered in bubble wrap. I can feel they took extra care to make sure it was sent safely. So if you guys are looking to try out a mat spray for FREE, go to the Manduka website.