If you eat weird things, now is the time to confess

Recently I got to thinking about all the meals my mom made when Emily and I were younger that we haven't had in a while, so last night I made my mom dig up her recipe for chicken enchiladas. And they are every bit as delicious as I remembered. They're not fancy, and if you happen to be some sort of enchilada snob you probably wouldn't concede that they're enchiladas, but oh man. I'm sharing the recipe because it's easy and we loved them as kids and we were horifically picky eaters.

10(ish) soft tortilla shells
1+ lb chicken, cubed or shredded
1 tsp onion powder
1 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1 can cream of chicken soup
1 8-oz tub sour cream
2 cups shredded mexican cheese
1/2 cup pureed salsa

Now I'm not sure if pureeing the salsa is an integral step, or if my poor mama did that because otherwise her children (and husband) would be like, "ew, what are these green chunks? ::gag::" It's up to you, but I didn't like chunky salsa then and I don't like it now, so we pureed it. Also the recipe calls for just 1 pound of chicken, but we actually used about 1.5 pounds, cubed, and could only stretch it to fit 9 tortilla shells. And even then they were a little skimpy, so I think in the future I'll use 2 whole pounds, and I'll shred it rather than cube it.

So what you do is cook the chicken, and while it's cooking mix together the cream of chicken, sour cream, salsa, and half of the cheese (that's 1 cup). Add the seasonings to the chicken once it's cooked (probably fine to do that at any point), then add a third of the sauce to the chicken. Coat a 9x13 (or whatever dish) in half of the REMAINING sauce, then spoon the chicken mixture into tortilla shells and roll 'em up like enchiladas, lining them up in the pan as you go. Once you've got 'em all situated, pour the last of the sauce over the top and cover it with the other 1 cup of cheese. Then bake it at 350º for 30 minutes.

You see what I mean about it not being complicated, or complex in flavors. But it's very good, if you happen to like casserole-type chicken dishes. I don't know why I feel the need to apologize for the dish. If you don't like the sound of it, just don't make it! And also, don't tell me, because what is worse than when people are grossed out by you?

Remind me to tell you about how I also ate peanut butter and cheese sandwiches when I was little.

Anything for you, hush puppies.

When I got home from work on Wednesday I did the 30 Day Shred. I think it actually may have been day 30, but days 1-29 were almost a full year ago, so I get the feeling Jillian wouldn't be okay with me saying I completed the thing. It was pretty exhausting and I am still sore today. It's probably a good idea to do the workout when I've got more energy, rather than at the end of the day when I'm tired and hungry, but right now I just can't bring myself to wake up 40 minutes earlier to fit it in before I leave for work. Do you exercise in the mornings?


I used to believe that food was just too good, and I was going to have to bite the bullet and exercise more to balance out all the delicious salt and fat, but about 15 minutes into the shred yesterday I was singing a different tune. Please Jillian, I will stop eating french fries and bread if you don't ever make me do this again, oh God not the side lunges. And she even tries to dumb it down for me. "Beginners, follow Anita." I'd feel a lot better about her as a leader if she were also panting and grimacing and using her dad's work boots instead of those unholy 3-pound weights. (Anita actually uses 5-pound ones, which is a riot.) But I try my best to do as many reps as the girls do because like Jillian says, you can't do a 20 minute workout and take a break. It really does take the place of hours of phoning it in at the gym. Which is the same as saying, these 20 minutes are going to be harder than the combined total of all the other minutes you've ever spent being physically active in your life. I think what I'll do is alternate that dvd with plain old walking, and I'm definitely aiming to eat a lot more fruits and veggies and a lot less starchy junk every day. One of the bloggers I read has lost 15 pounds in 3 weeks just by changing her diet (as best I can tell, and I'm not saying that's normal or healthy or whatever. Just saying. Diet matters a lot.) So hopefully I can get rid of my belly jiggle for good. I like to think that once it's gone, it'll be easy to keep it off because I won't want to go back to being jiggly. We shall see.


Tonight we're supposed to get some snow!!! I have high hopes that this will be our annual snow. Of course it couldn't happen during the week so I could enjoy an extra day off, but Monday is a holiday, so we're going to go visit Emily! I'll be walking to and from Charleston, in case you were wondering.

And don't think she won't get the car in the divorce

Did you watch the Super Bowl? I spent most of it on my feet in the kitchen cooking dinner and cleaning up, which I wasn't too happy about. I tried to pick a menu that wouldn't require a lot of effort or attention (pioneer woman's amazing lasagna, plus garlic bread, salad, and a white chocolate raspberry cheesecake that I am very sad I had to share with anyone), and we prepared a few things ahead of time, but still somehow I only managed to catch about fifteen minutes of the game, but I guess that's for the best since the team I was pulling for evidently never got off the bus. Most of my family was rooting for the Saints since it would be their first win, but I've never really been an underdog fan. I have nothing against Drew Brees, but Peyton Manning is just the best. I did see the halftime show and a lot of the commercials, including the one for the Dodge Charger. Did you see that one? Oh, it made me mad. The commercial is a bunch of guys talking about the sacrifices they make for their girlfriends or wives, and the point is "since I do all that crap, I'm going to drive the car I want to drive." It's stuff like walking the dog in the morning, or being nice to his mother-in-law, or GETTING TO WORK ON TIME. And the slogan? "Man's last stand." As in, "In the face of your overwhelming control over every aspect of my life, the only shred of dignity and autonomy I have left to cling to in this world is that you get no say in what car I choose." Because left to their own devices, men would never be punctual or watch vampire shows. I just can't believe that's the commercial Dodge chose for the biggest ad opportunity of the year. That's the best they could do? A concept that blatantly alienates such an enormous demographic? What were they thinking? What woman sees that commercial and thinks "Huh. You know, they're absolutely right. We are so crazy and manipulative. Those poor guys. Thank heavens Dodge has created a product designed to give them a tiny ray of hope in their insufferably oppressive, emasculating lives."

I hadn't thought that Mike or I would ever have considered buying a Dodge, but I can tell you now for certain that we never will. I want no part of a company that thinks men have to defend their masculinity by ignoring their partner's input when making big decisions. I may not know much about relationships, but I know that resentment and selfishness are two good ways to ruin them.

Bad form, Dodge.

Why does she always get to be Trini just because she's Korean?

Emily's coming home today!!! I'm so excited. Here we are in 2005, which is the last time we were together. (No, not really, but she really should come home more often. We have meat! (She doesn't get a lot of meat in Charleston, cause it's rather costy and she's got bills to pay.)) Sadly, our hair doesn't curl quite like that anymore. Or, mine doesn't. She straightens hers a lot, plus I haven't seen her in five years, so I can't speak for hers. But other than that, even now, I think we pretty much still look the same as in that picture. Not the same as each other. We're easy enough to tell apart, I think. Particularly these days, since if you see one of us in Columbia, it's a safe bet that it's me. If you see one of us in Charleston, it's not me. And in case that's not enough, if one of us looks like the secret footage of a fashion makeover show, it's me. If one of us looks hungry for steak, it's Emily. Simple, right?

In school, people who didn't know us well would have to know that Emily had the longer hair and the longer name in order to tell us apart. Except for Ryan Mercer, who told us apart because I "looked more like a clown." Thanks, pal! He tried to explain once that he just meant that my lips were more red (?), but why not just say that? He put his foot in his mouth a lot, so I didn't really take it personally. At least he knew who was whom. But that long hair long name trick doesn't really work anymore, because we both have long hair, so now when I run into somebody I haven't seen in a while, I think they just blurt out one of our names and raise their eyebrows like "did I get it?"

Once, in elementary school, one of the assistant principals wanted to split us up into different classes, maybe so the teacher wouldn't have to try and tell us apart? Or maybe because she just wanted to see how we'd do separated from each other? So she put me in a dumber class than I should have been in, where I got in trouble for answering the other kids' questions and had to stay in at recess with my head down on my desk. Really the only punishment there was the shame of having all the other first graders walk past knowing I was staying behind. While Emily got to be in the smart class and romp around at recess playing Horsey Court with her friend. She says Horsey Court wasn't a real game; they just ran around laughing and called it Horsey Court. For this and many other reasons, I am very glad she's my sister. I can't imagine being twins with somebody who just played Power Rangers at recess like every other kid.

Incidentally, if you'd asked either of us what our favorite movie was at the time that picture was taken, we would have said Uncorked, due in large part to this scene (not so much the last 20 seconds or so). It's an odd little movie but that song is so beautiful. Like Emily!

I mean, I have zero qualifications, but you have a dvd player right? So if you could just point me to my classroom...

I don't think it's a secret to anybody I know that I don't love my job. I don't understand much of anything about our state government, so I usually have no idea what anybody's talking about. I rarely get to interact with my coworkers (or anybody else, for that matter). The coworkers closest in age to me have all had babies since I started, so I'm usually the odd man out in group discussions. People with kids just love to talk about kids! And worst of all, I just don't feel like anything I do helps anyone or makes any difference. I really like my coworkers. When we DO go out to lunch together or talk about non-work things, it's always the highlight of my work week. But overall, it's a pretty lonely, unsatisfying, unfulfilling place. For now, quitting isn't a feasible option. But when I can quit, I want whatever I do next to be as far removed from this kind of work as it can possibly be. I have no idea what lease purchase means. I don't understand tax deductions, tax credits or sales tax exemptions. Weighted pupil units? CPI? School operating millage? Nope, nope, and nope. And even if I did know, I don't believe I would care. Maybe I'm asking a lot, but I want to feel like I'm knowledgable about, and interested in, my work.

One of the things I think I might enjoy is teaching. It's certain to be rewarding, and I doubt I'll ever have a minute to think "I am bored" or "man, I wish somebody would talk to me today." I always wanted to be a teacher when I was younger. But then I wonder if I'm mostly imagining the field trips and Magic School Bus episodes and field days and Charlotte's Web county fair and holiday parties and summers off, and ignoring the part about making lesson plans and being observed and dealing with all the problems students and their parents can have. Every job has its downsides, of course, and I suspect the good would outweigh the bad, but part of me thinks that maybe I'm just incredibly lazy and won't be happy in any job because I don't want to work at all. And unlike waitressing, teaching isn't exactly a job you can 'try out' for a while to see if you like it. Once they hire you, they're banking on you sticking it out for (at least) 9 months. Which might feel a lot longer if you realize kids are the worst and who needs language arts and why aren't there more Wishbones, thanks for nothing you lazy dog.

So! Who wants to hire me to teach some children?

Fitness is nice but can we talk about how good cheese is?

So the walking group was wonderful. It was hella cold, but the trail was really nice and by the time we made our way through the whole thing we'd walked about 2 miles (then we walked a little extra so it ended up being 2.5ish). The club only meets once a month, so in the meantime I've got to find a way to get in some exercise on my own. So I've gone walking a few times at the indoor walking track at my church, which is free after you pay the one-time $5 membership fee, and there's always a cute old man working the front desk and he doesn't know that I haven't been through the "equipment use and care" session so I can even use the treadmills and eliptical machines in the workout area. I'm not one to skirt authority, but come on. I can work a treadmill and an eliptical machine without a 45-minute seminar. I haven't made use of those machines yet, because they've been in use when I've been. I've just used the walking track. It's pretty short- it only takes me about a minute or 90 seconds to make a lap around it, so that's not awesome, but it's indoors, and that's infintely preferable to having to be outside. I don't know how people go running outside in the winter. I don't know how they do it in any other season either, but don't your lungs and your nasal passages burn like fire? Maybe I can get past the exhaustion and the runny nose and the agonizing pain in my legs, but seriously folks, how am I supposed to BREATHE?

I've also been stretching more, and doing some ab work to try and shape up so that it's like a double surprise when I lose the weight. I'm skinnier AND I've got muscles. Out of my way! Erin e-mailed me an 8-minute ab workout, which seems right up my alley (8 minutes a day, and you can lay on the floor the whole time), but you've got to have a computer nearby to go through the workout and we are a 1-laptop household, so whenever Mike is gone or working, I just have to kind of improvise. I took an abs class at PC and there are ab workouts from the 30 Day Shred that I try to pull from, so I'm hoping to look just like my abs instructor Mellette or Jillian Michaels in a few days. I actually kind of like ab work. But it's not going to mean much without some (extensive amounts of) cardio to firm up the (really) jiggly bits.

In a mealtime story that doesn't further my fitness cause at all, last night I made a chicken pot pie. It required a great deal of chopping and stirring so I was anticipating some stellar results to match the effort. Unfortunately, it turned out more like soup with a little crust blanket on top. It tasted fine, but it was nothing to look at and there was definitely not enough crust. It seemed like way too much filling to fit in a little pie dish, so I put it in a big rectangular 2-quart pyrex and it was impossible to get the crust thin enough to cover the whole thing. It looked sorta pitiful. Imagine a murky brownish puddle with a grocery bag in the middle. Next time I'll just use two pie pans and it should be better. Except nobody will eat it because all they'll be able to think about is a wet trash bag. More for me! That's probably something Jillian has never said.

Tonight I'm going to do lasagna, and I've got higher hopes for it since I've made one before. And as long as there are noodles and cheese, you've got a winner in my book. Maybe I'll skip the trip to the grocery store altogether and just put noodles and cheese in a bowl. Lately I've been going to the grocery store just to get the things I need for one or two meals at a time. I can't decide if this is better than one big trip every couple of weeks. I feel like I'm spending a lot of money, but I don't buy things unless I already know precisely how and when I'm going to use them. How do you grocery shop?

Exercising in Winter: For when you want to be sweaty AND cold

This morning I woke up a little excited about the possibility of a two-hour delay for state government employees due to a forecasted "wintery mix," but when I turned on the tv, the meteorologist said there was barely even any rain, so "good news, the roads are clear and you should have a normal commute." Thanks so much Ken Aucoin, you faulty weather liason. It was such a letdown. Throw us a bone, weather gods! It hasn't snowed since that one night last January, and even then it wasn't enough to stick. Living in South Carolina certainly has its perks, but winter here is generally a dull, snowless affair. We're lucky to get one "snow" a year, and I can pretty well guarantee that no snowman has ever laid his charcoal eyes on the palmetto state. When Mike gets a job and we have to move away, one thing I'm praying for is that we go somewhere that gets some snow. (But not a lot, Lord; you know I'm not cut out for the bitter cold.)

Ultimately I guess it worked out in my favor, though, because tomorrow morning (forecasted high 42º) I'm going walking with my mom and some of her coworkers who started a walking club. Evidently the man in charge is called First Sergeant Pelley. I'm hoping this means there'll be a whistle. I really don't mind walking, so it's super-easy exercise, and I like being out in the sunshine in the mornings, which is something I very rarely get to do. So I'm going to wear my thanks-for-interviewing-for-that-scholarship-and-accidentally-throwing-one-of-your-rings-across-the-room-while-doing-so-but-we've-chosen-some-actual-smart-people-instead Presbyterian College hoodie with the pouch pocket stuffed full of kleenex, and I'll be sporting my new sneakers that are meant to help correct my (apparent) tendancy to walk a little crooked. Something about my right leg going too far to the center...? I forget. But it's sure to be good cold fun, and Sergeant Pelley is even bringing hot water for everyone, so we can have cider or cocoa when the walk is over. Or maybe he plans to throw it on us to get us to move faster. I'm not clear on that.