I’ve said it before, I’m not flexible. I can’t even touch my toes. It’s something that I work on and hopefully one day will achieve. Or I’ll at least achieve greater flexibility. Aside from being physically inflexible, I’m pretty inflexible mentally.
I’m not a go with the flow type of person. I like routine in my life and when my routine gets interrupted, well, I don’t like that. Tonight’s plan was to go to the gym after work and run 4 miles. I had Jason set the rice cooker so our rice would be done at 8, which would also be when our Vegetable Korma from the new issue of Cooking Light would be ready.
Well, as you can probably guess, my night didn’t go according to plan. When I got in my car after work, I realized that I’d forgotten my gym bag. So I drove home instead. There was traffic and I got home ten minutes later than I normally would have. When I got home, Murphy was rambunctious and in desperate need of a walk. So I took him for a 20 minute walk around the neighborhood.
Then I went to the gym. I like the gym near my office much more than the one near my house. For one, the one near my house is incredibly hot. The cardio machines are upstairs. Don’t they realize that heat rises?
I got on a treadmill after waiting in a line five people deep. I ran for 2 miles and it sucked. I’m not normally a big sweater but I was drenched. The run felt much more difficult than it should have. After 2 miles, I got off my treadmill like a good little time limit rule obeyer and waited in line again, also behind five people. I did the second half of my run and it was also kind of shitty.
When I got home, Jason told me that the rice cooker had never started, so our rice wasn’t ready. Plus, it was already 8 o’clock and I still had to make the Korma.
I started getting all pissy and then I realized that I need to be more flexible. So what if I’m home and cooking dinner an hour later than I’d wanted? So what if the rice wasn’t ready at the time that it was supposed to be? So what if the potatoes in the korma took much longer to cook than the recipe instructed? In the grand scheme of things, these are tiny little details of my day, details that I will forgot by tomorrow, probably.
And the korma was good. It was 9:30 before we ate, but it was good and that’s what’s important. And maybe one day, I’ll be able touch my toes too. Or maybe I won’t. I’m flexible, or at least working on it.
(recipe from March 2011 issue of Cooking Light)