I recently came back from a vacation that involved 55 hours of driving over six days. I only mention this because the night I got home from this so-called \u201cvacation,\u201d I cancelled my gym membership, ordered an elliptical trainer through amazon and vowed to never drive again. Ever. One problem: Ellipticals don\u2019t come in one piece. Thinking of ordering one yourself?<\/p>\n
1. Learn sign language.<\/strong> Two men dropped off the elliptical. English wasn\u2019t their first language. It wasn\u2019t their second language, either. We used a weird mix of pointing, shrugging and facial expressions (\u201cconfused\u201d being the main one) to determine the right spot for the box. I picked the wrong spot.<\/p>\n 2. Get fit before<\/em> it arrives.<\/strong> You\u2019ll be faced with a box the size, and weight, of a mid-sized car. If you put it in the wrong spot\u2014which I did\u2014you\u2019re going to have to be fit enough to drag it to the right spot\u2014which I wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n 3. Buy reading glasses.<\/strong> The instruction manual was clearly written, nicely illustrated and dumbed-down to my level (one of their handy tips: to tighten screws, turn them clockwise). Unfortunately, the manual was printed using a font so small it was invisible to the naked eye. Reading glasses would have helped\u2014a magnifying glass would have been even better.<\/p>\n 4. Have a drink. Now.<\/strong> Ellipticals come in about 368 pieces\u2014some freakishly heavy, others awkwardly shaped, and a few so tiny they disappear the instant you set them down. The pieces don\u2019t come out in the order you need them, either, so you\u2019ll have to empty the entire box before putting the thing together. The sight of 368 random pieces of metal, plastic and electronics scattered all over a room will strike you as a lot<\/em> funnier (and less intimidating) if you\u2019ve had a glass of wine, first. I hadn\u2019t.<\/p>\n 5. Don\u2019t let pets near the box.<\/strong> Ellipticals are shipped in styrofoam. A lot<\/em> of styrofoam. It\u2019s a special type designed to disintegrate into a billion tiny pieces if any animal brushes up against it. Have you ever tried to pick thousands of tiny styrofoam dots off a cat? It would have been easier to replace the cat.<\/p>\n 6. Give up.<\/strong> That\u2019s right\u2014give up. I left the 368 parts scattered across the room and announced (as loudly and dramatically as possible) that this was completely impossible<\/em>. Daughter #2, who has mastered the eye roll, grabbed the instruction manual and had the elliptical set up and working perfectly in less than an hour. Was I being lazy? Possibly. But now I don\u2019t have to go to the gym, so I\u2019m one step closer to my goal of never driving again. Ever.<\/p>\n Did you enjoy this post? Subscribe to my blog and you\u2019ll never miss my once-a-month updates! It\u2019s easy: Just enter your email address in the upper right corner of this page. I\u2019ll never sell, share, or rent your contact information, because I hate it when people do that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I recently came back from a vacation that involved 55 hours of driving over six days. I only mention this because the night I got home from this so-called \u201cvacation,\u201d I cancelled my gym membership, ordered an elliptical trainer through amazon and vowed to never drive again. Ever. One problem: Ellipticals don\u2019t come in one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-funny-bits"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=261"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":262,"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261\/revisions\/262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}