loriestories

I’m sitting here hungry and wishing I had something awesome to eat, but at the same time feeling lazy and not like cooking (which is my standard mode, truly). So I felt like sharing my ferociously awesome enchilada recipe with you. It’s not very healthy, but it IS easy to make and easy to modify if you have picky eaters. I’ve left out the corn, beans, and jalapenos before when making it for my sister, who’s a super picky eater. It takes about 15-20 minutes to prepare and 15-20 minutes to cook.

Chicken & Black Bean Enchiladas
1 rotisserie chicken (like from the grocery store)
2 cans enchilada sauce (the red kind)
1 package of small corn or flour tortillas (I’ve switched depending on mood)
1 8oz package shredded Mexican-blend cheese
1 can of corn (use the short can or 1/2 of a regular size can)
1 can of black beans (I can’t find this in short cans so use about 1/2 a regular can)
1 small can diced jalapenos (unless you’re a wimp)
1 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
1 tsp ground cumin

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2. Shred chicken into a large bowl.

3. Stir in about 1/2 can of enchilada sauce, corn, beans, spices, and jalapenos to taste (I usually use 2-3 heaping tablespoons). Add about 1 cup of shredded cheese. Stir until blendy.

4. Heat tortillas in a pan or the microwave just until they’re warm & flexible. Spoon a little sauce onto each tortilla, fill with a few spoonfuls of the mixture, roll, and place seam-down in a 13×9 pan (glass works best for these, I think). You should be able to make about 10 enchiladas for your pan with enough mixture left over for a second small pan, or for burritos or something later.

5. Cover enchiladas with remaining sauce and cheese.

6. Bake uncovered for 15-20 minutes, or until sauce and cheese is melty and bubbly.

They’re awesome, I swear. I usually put sour cream on top to balance out the jalapenos.

For those of you who may be interested, I thought I’d spend some time over the next few posts chronicling what I’m doing to train Bean and how it’s working out. Because he’s so young, I’m not really giving him hard core training or anything, but there are small things I’m doing to teach him how to be a great dog and for the most part, he picks them up pretty quickly.

The first thing I decided on for sure was crate training. Bean’s first mom and dad did a great job of getting him and his littermates used to being crated overnight, so I’ve never had a problem with him crying all night long even during his first night with me. He goes to bed around 11pm (sometimes earlier, sometimes later) and we get up at 6:30. In my pre-Bean life I used to drag myself out of bed at 7:30 or 8 if I was really feeling sluggish, so that earlier start has been a tough adjustment for me. But he hears when my alarm goes off and starts making noise, so I couldn’t ignore him even if I wanted to.

I had been doing a ton of reading on training techniques, and on a whim one day I decided to see if I could train him to go into the crate on command. I am using treats and a clicker to train him. He only gets treats when we’re working on commands, so they really are treats more than snacks, and I also only use the clicker when we’re working. You can pick up a clicker at Petsmart for like a buck (they keep them in buckets at the register), or there are fancier ones you can order online. The cheap one works fine for me.

So anyway. To get him to go into the crate on his own, I started by chucking a treat in there, saying “go kennel,” and patting the top of the crate. The minute he crossed the doorway on his own, I’d praise him and press the clicker. We did that several times in a row, and he was totally pumped about the treats. Next, I hid several in my hand and just gave the command while patting the crate top. He smelled the treats and kept nosing at my hand for them, but I ignored him and repeated the command. Finally, I could nearly SEE him thinking, “Well, I guess I could go in there and see what happens.” And so he thought about it for a second, and then went on in the kennel, and it was a total awesome lightbulb moment. I praised the hell out of him, he got a treat and a click, and we were off to the races. We repeated it several times until it was obvious he was getting the idea, and then I stopped for the day.

I’ve grown up with dogs, but this is of course the first time I’ve raised and trained a dog all on my own, and many of the techniques I’m trying are different from what I grew up with. This training exercise took maybe fifteen or twenty minutes, so it was not time intensive at all. I had maybe one more lesson dedicated to “go kennel” and have been reinforcing it at random moments each day in addition to when I actually need to crate him for some reason. I know he understands it because he doesn’t really like going into his kennel, but will do it when commanded (even if it sometimes takes two or three tries).

I waited about four or five days until I was sure he had “go kennel” down cold before I moved on to the next lesson. I’ll write about that one tomorrow or so.

For a long, long time, my vision of the ideal life has included a dog. In fact, though I have two cats and love them completely, I have always considered myself first and foremost to be a dog person. But getting a dog never seemed to be right for so many reasons. It was space, it was time, it was travel, it was work, it was relationship status – excuses, or perfectly good logical reasons, seemed infinite. I was even on the verge of getting a puppy a couple of times, but something always happened at the last minute to change it and I didn’t mind so much.

But over the last several months, my interest in getting a dog had escalated into full-on puppy fever. I cruised Craigslist ads on a daily basis – not just in my hometown, but in all surrounding areas as well. I researched dog breeds and decided I NEEDED a vizsla, and then decided what I really needed was just a short-haired brown dog with floppy ears of any breed.

And then a friend of mine started posting pictures of their accidental litter of puppies on Facebook. And then I found myself obsessed with the one I liked to call “the little brown guy.” And then, well…it’s kind of a long story, but I got really hormonal over the course of a week or so and ended up trying to convince Seth that it was puppy time. Seth insisted that it was not, in fact, puppy time, and that I shouldn’t make major life decisions while hormonal. And then we had this whole big thing about it where it became clear to him that I really, really wanted a puppy – no, wait, THIS puppy – and he told me I should get it even if he wasn’t pro-puppy, because he’d support me, and I was convinced getting the puppy would ruin our relationship, which is pretty great, and he was convinced that if I DIDN’T get the puppy it would ruin our relationship, and OMG drama drama drama and basically, in case you haven’t heard, I have a puppy now. WE have a puppy now.

His name is Bean. He’s a mix between a lab and a German shorthaired pointer, with some springer spaniel thrown in there somewhere. He’s going to end up being way the hell bigger than we thought, which means I’m probably going to have to move out of my townhouse at some point. He is super duper adorable and brilliantly smart and awesome, except when he’s being a psychotic holy terror or a complete dumbass. So far the ratio is mostly manageable. He likes to chew on stuff and he loves peanut butter in his Kong and he loves his human mom and dad and we love him back.

Seriously, Seth and I have both turned out to be total suckers for this puppy. We took him to Petsmart and let him pick out his own bed. We spend a ridiculous amount of time pointing out his adorableness and smartness to each other. We take an obnoxious number of pictures of him sleeping or nomming on his chewy thing or whatever.

Puppies are hard work, and I’m usually pretty wiped out from chasing him around the house and letting him in and out and in and out and in and out and so on. And I have had a couple of moments where I wondered what the hell I was thinking, getting a puppy right now.

But most of the time, when I think about it at all, I think about how quickly we got to the point where I can’t imagine life without him.

For a very long time, I was absolutely certain I did not want children. I had thought it all out, see. I was not the mothering type. I wanted to spend my money on myself. I wanted to travel and have nice things. I proclaimed this loudly and often to anyone who would listen, and I took great pains to get offended when people would kind of shake their heads and say, “You’ll change your mind,” in response.

I was so mellow back then.

And then I entered this period of great ambivalence about childbearing, which I didn’t share with many people. I wasn’t really sure. Maybe I’d have kids. But I definitely did not want to date someone who already had kids. I’d heard horror stories of what a minefield it was to be a stepparent, and I just didn’t even want to deal with that kind of baggage. I wanted a man unspoiled by life, other women, and offspring.

Silly old mellow me.

So now here I am. I’m in love with the man I intend to marry someday, a man who loves me back and intends to marry me too. Weddings are always best when both spouses-to-be agree to show up, right? So I’m in love with this man – this amazing, intelligent, supportive, divorced father of two. Somehow I’m pretty sure he’s still unspoiled.

We waited several months into our relationship before I met the kids. Their stability is really important to both of us, and we wanted to be sure we were serious and in it for the long haul before we introduced them into our lives as a couple. So for the first few months we were dating, he went on his own to see them and I stayed home. When we began making plans for them to spend the first weekend with us, I was terrified.

I wanted desperately to like them and to have them like me back, but I knew there was a very good chance that they might not like me at all. They might even hate me at first, which would be fairly normal and probably not even about me as a person at all, and more about me as their dad’s new girlfriend. I tried to prepare myself for the possibility of a chilly reception and I hoped and hoped we’d have a good time.

And we did. I wrote about it in the spring. We had our moments of awkward tiptoeing and figuring each other out, but no one seemed to hate me and things were fine. I, of course, fell in love with them immediately. We had a couple of other visits and things continued to go pretty well, and I continued to fall in love. And I knew they liked me, and we had fun, but I didn’t know if they loved me and I didn’t expect them to. I’m not their mama, after all. I’m just The Other.

It’s become a little tradition that when we take the kids back after visits, we stop at Burger King. Seth and I have a thing for Mocha Joes and the kids can hit the Playland and it’s a convenient location. Plus it boosts our mood just a little, because though we never let the kids see, we’re always both a little mopey when we’re taking the kids back. So we stop at BK and the first thing we do, of course, is hit the bathroom.

Mira, age 5, likes to make small talk in public restrooms. One time we were at IHOP and I was waiting outside her stall for her to finish and from her perch on the toilet, she described to me in anatomically correct detail how babies were made. It’s always unpredictable and entertaining and sometimes embarrassing.

So we’re in the bathroom at Burger King and I’m waiting for Mira and she says, “Hey Lorie, you know what?” I’m kind of only halfway paying attention and I kind of absently say, “What, Mira?” and she says, “Did you know I love you?”

I’m almost certain it’s not the first time she told me that, but I think it’s the first time it came out of the blue and it’s definitely the moment I will always remember. It’s not terribly poignant, my little sorta step-girl on the toilet with her feet dangling down telling me she loves me, but ohh. My heart grows a little bit just in the retelling. She doesn’t have to love me, but she does.

It took me a second to respond that I loved her too, of course I did. She finished and we washed her hands and went out to join the rest of the family and the whole time, all I was thinking is, I want to be a mom. I want to be a mom. I want to be a mom.

For years, I have been functioning under the stunning misconception that I am basically a mellow person. In fact, if I weren’t so lazy, I could probably search in the archives of this very site just a little bit and find several occasions where I described myself in some way that seemed mellow.

If you have ever worked with me, dated me, been related to me, or hell, encountered me on the street, you are probably reading this through tears of laughter and disbelief. You might even have accidentally peed on your chair a little bit because you were laughing so hard. I’ll wait while you go get a towel and change.

You’re back? Oh, good.

So I’m confessing it now: I am not mellow. I am not even a little bit mellow. I am so not mellow, in fact, that I have often been accused of not knowing how to relax. I’ve been told that even when I think I’m relaxed, I’m actually still tense, still unwilling to let go, still afraid to lose control. If you’re like this, you understand. If you’re not, let me tell you: that shit takes a lot of energy to maintain. It really does. But it’s so hard and scary to let go.

Seth and I emailed and IMed each other for a few weeks before we ever met in person, and during one of those conversations, I confessed to him that I didn’t like watching horror movies because I tended to get very upset when people died. Everyone else in the theater would be laughing and cringing at the gore and the absurdity of the whole thing, and I’d be fighting tears and thinking about who was going to make funeral arrangements and clean up the mess and go through the dead person’s things and close bank accounts and stuff. Because no one was thinking about that in the movie and someone should think about it and it really stressed me out.

“Wow,” he said. “Sounds like someone has too much responsibility in her life.” And, you know, he was probably right.

These days, he’s pretty great at identifying times when I need to let go a little bit, but it’s often hard for me to take his advice. He’ll notice I’m in hypermanaging mode about something or other and kind of take me off to the side and say, “Hey. You don’t have to be in charge of this thing. Let someone else figure it out.” And he’s right, sort of, but on the other hand, who am I if I’m not being responsible for everything?

Of course part of me thinks nothing will get done right, if at all, if I don’t oversee it. But probably an even bigger part of the problem is that I’ve allowed it to define me. I am the person who answers the question. I am the person who solves the problem. I am the person who researches the best airfare. I am the person who makes the reservations. I am the person who decides what time we’re leaving and whether we need reservations and if you should wear a jacket. And I resent it sometimes. Sometimes I really, really resent it. But again, how am I useful to you, how am I productive, how will I have value if I let you do those things yourself?

Here are my greatest fears: being perceived as dependent, stupid, or incompetent. I am more worried about other people THINKING those things than I am about actually becoming them. And how stupid is that? I can’t really control what other people think about me no matter how I behave. But still I try. I work my ass off, wipe myself out, expend all of my energy to be sure that others see me as independent, intelligent, and above all else, COMPETENT.

I don’t know if I can stop making those things so important to me, but I do know that I would really like to be able to just relax and turn off my worries and, you know, maybe watch a gory movie once in a while without stressing out so much about who’s going to clean up those brains on the floor.