Day 10: Strictly Butter Baby, Strictly Butter

Okay, now I know that the Implement of Torture jump rope hates me. Since the first day I laid hands on it, it has consistently tried to take my life—or at least maim me. On the very first day it tripped me up while trying to jump on the uneven ground, giving my knee a little twist. That made jumping a bit of a challenge, but I refused to let the rope win.

Then came the knuckle smashing. Yeah, I had picked up one of those old fashion type ropes, made of cotton with wooden handles and metal connectors. Sometimes when it tried to trip me it would hit my knuckles with those metal pieces, and now they're black & blue.

After a couple of good sets, it decided I needed to trip again—but there was a fatal flaw in it's plan. Just as I was hitting jump #434, I stepped on it as it swung around. The rope snapped. The Implement of Torture jump rope is no more! BWA-HA-HA-HA! Unfortunately, it also twisted my knee enough that it too decided to give.

I immediately went out to buy another jump rope of a totally different style. It cost a little more, but there were no metal pieces that would threaten my knuckles. When I came home, I attempted to finish the remaining jumps. After about a hundred more, my knee gave out. The rest of the afternoon was spent nursing the knee. (Luckily, I had completed all of the other exercises before attempting to use the Implement of Torture jump rope.)

So today was a partial victory. Only 116 jumps more and it would have been a total win. Oh well, there's always tomorrow.

For those of you who don't know, I love to cook. I like to make foods from other cuisines, or try recreating a medieval recipe, or even experimenting and whipping something up. This morning I was reading a book on Indian cooking (The Turmeric Trail by Raghavan Iyer). In a side-note comment for his Ghee recipe, he says:

"As I always warn my students, you cannot hurry perfection. You may be tempted to turn up the heat to expedite the process of melting butter and skimming the milk solids. Fall into that trap and watch your butter burn."

It made me think about what we're doing with this program. We're trying to get into peak condition—a kind of perfection for our well-being. Although we may wish for it to occur overnight, we know it can't be hurried. Some people ramp up their exercises trying to get to the end-goal faster, but that would be like turning up the heat on the butter. They'd burn out before they got there.

Perfection cannot be hurried. We're slowly building up our exercises. We're changing our tastes and adjusting the way we eat. We're learning new things so we can live in wellness for the rest of our lives. It takes time.

The goal is not the destination, but the journey we take to get there.