Quick Update

This is just a quick hello and howdy to everyone.  I am in the middle of a super busy week.  My beloved co-worker Jess is away for two whole weeks.  I miss her so much and not just because she helps me fix my mistakes before my boss notices!!  I am covering her shifts as well as doing my own and man, that girl puts in some hours!  Especially when some weeks, I only work two or three days.  My poor feet are killing me!  And I need some extra hours in the day to sleep.  Roll on the weekend!!!

Millie the cat is doing pretty darn well.  I can’t believe I’ve only had her since Friday.  She’s starting to settle in.  This is where she sat pretty much all evening.  She makes me laugh, she probably thought she was so brave, sitting outside my room.  She’s *in* the house… but only a step from my bedroom :)

She does have quite a few items in the ‘cons’ list though.

#1 She doesn’t really like to cuddle.  What is the point of a cat unless she wants to snuggle?!?!  I can usually force a cuddle for about five minutes and there is purring, but it’s just not the same.

#2 She really, really, really wants to go outside.  And that’s not going to happen for so many reasons.  Mainly because I live opposite a train station and near a bunch of busy roads.  And because she’ll probably try and go back to her old house.  So I have to put up with her crying.

#3 She learned how to open the security screen on my window.  She did it accidentally but I swear I saw a gleam in her eye as she realised how close she was to freedom. 

Pros

#1 I like cats.  Millie is a cat.

#2 She has sassy miaows and talks a lot to me.  I like talking to her, it makes a change from talking to myself.

#3 Despite the earlier photo, she’s been so brave and awesome about exploring the house.  This morning, she brazenly walked out to the kitchen and was only a teensy bit scared when the dogs barked at her.

I have a sort of fun weekend planned but am mostly excited about sleep!

More puppies!

Today I was all excited.  I was off to hang out with Danielle at her house, eat fish and chips and borrow Hunger Games off her.  I have been looking forward to it all last week.  And then disaster struck.  A phone call from work asking me to come in as another nurse was sick.  I was really tempted to say no but I am a sucker and said ok.

When I got there, there was just one dental to be done.  Super easy and could have been handled without needing me to cover someone’s shift.  I was a bit annoyed but then we got the phone call that the pregnant bulldog that I’d been petsitting was coming in for a scan.

Six puppies were spotted on the scan and the heartbeats were not very strong so the vet highly suggested a caesarean.  All action stations!

I was so excited that I was going to get to assist with another caesarean, not to mention a caesarean of a dog that I knew really well.  It’s not very common to see births in general practice as most births are done easily at home and the majority of them are at night.

Turns out there were ten puppies inside!  Five boys and give girls.  All healthy and ready to live.  Not as traumatic as the other birth I assisted at where the puppies had been stuck for a while.  These bulldogs were ready to come out and meet the world.  There was one little one who we had to work on a bit harder than the others, but even she came right.

And now, it’s gratuitous photo time!!!!!!!!!!!

About fifteen minutes old.

First feeding at about half an hour old.  Mum was still more than a little sleepy!

About an hour in and everyone was trying their luck.  Definitely a free for all.  These little guys were hungry!

And this is me and our favourite little one that we christened ‘Patch’ :)

February Photo A Day Challenge (con.)

I hadn’t realised I’d gotten so far behind!  Never fear friends, I have been taking pictures every day, just not being so vigilant about posting them on here. 

Let’s play catch up.

Day 17: Time

This is the time I got to leave work on a Friday!  Love it!!!!

Day 18: Drink

This picture reminded me of that poem ‘Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink’.  Also I wanted to show off that I had been to the beach :)  And I went swimming for the first time in the sea in oh… about ten years.

Day 19: Thing You Hate To Do

This is my bedspread.  I hate getting out of bed!!!!!!!!!!!

Day 20: Handwriting

I wrote a quick note to my friend.  So this is my scribble scrawl.

Day 21: Where You Work

This is pretty much a day in my life.  Both these dogs howled the entire afternoon.  SO annoying.  One was waking up from anaesthetic and was howling while still asleep, setting off the little dog.  Luckily they look pretty darn cute!  Plus it occurred on my ‘split shift’ day.  I left when they were in full swing and then when I got back, they’d gone home.  Yay!

New Obsession

As a joke at work, whenever I walk in and there’s a cat out the back, I always say “This one’s mine?”.  Today when I did my hilarious joke, the vet said “Yeah, this one actually can be yours”.  I was like “WHAT?!?!?”.

Yesterday, some people brought in a cat to be put to sleep.  They had been renting a place and keeping a cat there which was not allowed.  Once the owner of the place found out about the cat, the people were told to get rid of the cat or move out.  So they brought the cat to our workplace to put it to sleep.  I don’t really understand why they didn’t just surrender it to an animal shelter.  The vet was a little reluctant to put a healthy animal down so they said that they would take it and try to rehome it.  The owners were very grateful. 

It was a really sweet cat so yesterday was spent calling around animal shelters but nobody was willing to take it.  And I think the plan was to put her to sleep today but then when I came to work, I was like “NOO!!!!!!”.  And so now she is living with me.

Can you spot the cat?

I may have blackmailed Boy Roomie into letting us have the cat by sending him a picture of the cat and basically saying “They are putting the cat down this afternoon unless I can take him”.  So we have little Millie on a trial.  She already has everyone wrapped around her little finger and it’s not even been one full day yet.  The big test is whether Millie will get on with Nilly, the dog.  I’m not sure what will happen but at the moment, we are taking it slowly and making sure that Millie feels safe and comfortable.

I have already taken about a billion photos of her and can’t wait to go to the shops tomorrow and buy lots of fun stuff for her.  So I apologise if future blog posts are cat picture heavy.  I am obsessed.

It’s been a while

My friend came and stayed for a long weekend.  It was a lot of fun and I’ll be posting pictures in a bit.  Probably later this afternoon.  I dropped her off at the airport and went straight to work, so it’s been non-stop.  Today’s a day off in the middle of the week and one I am very grateful for.

I thought I would welcome myself back by posting a video that Boy Roomie took on his phone last night.  We’d been eating chips and Nilly had been drooling and begging for one so we decided to leave the last chip in the bag and put the bag on the floor.  The resulting video is what follows.

 

And you get bonus audio of ALL the people that live in the house.  Boy Roomie, Girl Roomie and moi.  I am the one that cackles “Why is she going backwards??”.  I promise I don’t sound like that in real life.  It was just hard to talk between giggling.

February Photo A Day Catch Up

I hadn’t realised I’d gotten so far behind!  And since I’m away this weekend, I thought I’d better post something.

Day Eleven: Makes You Happy

This is the dog that I petsat last weekend.  She is preggers and even more adorable than last time I sat for her.  I love her so much!!!  I hope that when she gives birth I can be super rude and invite myself over to see the puppies :)

Day Twelve: Inside Your Closet

This is my teeny weeny closet.  It is about as wide as me.  I can only have one season’s worth of clothes in there.  So right now it is summer clothes and all my winter clothes are at my mum’s house.  It’s such a pain.

Day Thirteen: Blue

Watching movies cuddled up to my favourite movie companion- even though she always falls asleep during the best parts.

Day Fourteen: Heart

This is me in my work uniform.  I love getting to wear a scrub top and I ADORE getting to wear- and use- a stethoscope.  It makes me feel like I’m on a medical TV show… although our patients are much more cuter and hairier!

Day Fifteen: Phone

This is the phone at work.  It’s practically vintage.  I hate it so much, I’m always living in fear that I’ll hang up on someone when I put them on hold.  And flicking between the two phone lines?  Forget about it!!

Day Sixteen: New

The start of a new craft project that I originally turned my nose up at but I really think it’s going to look great!

Hope you all have a lovely weekend.  I’m @Skaramouche on instagram, feel free to add me.  I want more pictures on my feed so that I can have something to look at when I get bored :)

Oreo Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookies Recipe!!!

I am not a baking person.  I do like to eat baked treats though and sometimes that means attempting to bake.  My attempts usually end in disaster but sometimes the recipes are so easy that even Anti-Chef Laura can’t muck it up.

All praise and respect to this website here for bringing this into my life.  BUT even more praise and respect to *this* website for being the original creators of this yummy baked goodness.

I used my own tried and tested choc chip recipe so I’ll share that with you guys today.  There was a different one on their website but this one seems simpler to me and the simpler, the better!

Here we go!

1 cup plain flour

1 cup self raising flour

1 cup caster sugar

1 cup chocolate chips

125g butter, melted

1 egg, lightly beaten

Preheat oven to 180C.  I’m not going to give the Fahrenheit version equivalent as payback for all the times that I have had to google the Celsius equivalent.  But off the top of my head, I think it’s 350F.  But can you trust me?!

Add all the dry ingredients into a bowl and mix well.

Add all the wet ingredients into a different bowl and mix well.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry mixture and stir to combine.

Roll the dough into balls (I made 22 with my mixture but you can get away with making more). Chill the dough balls in the fridge for about 30 minutes because apparently it makes it easier to form the stuffed cookies. That’s what the website says and it worked a treat for me.

To form the stuffed cookie, flatten two dough balls to just larger than the diameter of the Oreo cookies and make a sandwich with the Oreo cookie being in the middle. Pinch together the edges to seal in the Oreo.

Chill the cookies for at least an hour in the fridge. I think I did for about four hours.

*Straight from Rock Recipes blog*  It is very important that the dough be very cold before baking. In my opinion this recipe actually works best when baking the cookies from frozen dough. We freeze all of the formed cookies on a parchment lined cookie sheet, then transfer them to an airtight plastic container with layers of wax paper or parchment paper separating the layers of prepared frozen cookies. You can then bake as many or as few as you like and have fresh baked cookies ready whenever you want.

Then bake the cookies for 18-20 minutes or until golden brown, swapping the trays halfway through cooking. Because these cookies spread, I ended up using two trays to make 11 cookies.

Allow to cool. And then eat!  It’s magical- eating three biscuits in one.  The perfect lazy, greedy snack :)

Blu Ray Tuesday #19

The movie: Crazy Stupid Love

The menu: Red Rooster (Aussie KFC- for all you foreigners!) and Cold Rock icecream.

This was last week’s movie and it was just me and Girl Roomie.  I’ve wanted to see this movie for ages and had heard it was good and that I would ‘absolutely love it’.  So I was preparing for another disappointment like what happened with me and ‘Bridesmaids’.  BUT this movie was so much better than I thought it would be and what the trailer made it out to be.

I’m sure everyone has already seen this movie and I’m preaching to the choir, but it was so good! 

I’m probably the only person in the world who doesn’t love Ryan Gosling.  Like, I can see that he’s attractive but I’m not attracted.  The internet however is trying to change my mind by putting clips out there like Ryan reading actual ‘hey girl’ memes or wearing a onesie on the Ellen show.  And then magazines print pictures of him carrying his dog.  It’s like the world wants me to fall in love with him.  When we were watching the movie, I said to Girl Roomie “You know what?  I think I love Steve Carell more than Ryan Gosling”.  She gave me the look.  You know, the “you are crazy” look.  But it’s true.

And now to finish on some “hey girl” memes.  I spent far too long looking at these and picking the best one.  Ok, ok, maybe I like Ryan Gosling.

Source

But this is my favourite.  Girl Roomie sent it to me yesterday.

Recommended?  Of course!  But you’ve all already seen it so whatever.

And I also discovered this whilst searching for pictures.  It contains some swear words so maybe not safe for work.  But watch it when you get home.  And then watch the “Drunk History” videos.  They are hilarious. 

Drunk History Christmas with Ryan Gosling, Jim Carrey and Eva Mendes from Ryan Gosling

My weekend

Wow, I feel like I haven’t been on blogger in forever!  In my last post I said that I was going to try and have a proper weekend instead of doing nothing like I normally do.  I actually managed ok.

Saturday

I got up in the morning and went and visited the dog I am pet sitting.  She is such a delight.  I was convinced that she was going to have the puppies during the weekend I was looking after her.  She did not, phew!!

Look at that little face :)  I love bulldogs, so ugly that they’re cute.

I came home and baked.  I think I will put up the recipe for it but just to whet your appetite (pun!!!!!!), here is a picture.

Chocolate chip cookie stuffed with Oreo.  YUM!!!!!

Then my lovely friend Kristy came over and we went to see a movie with Girl Roomie.  The movie was rated R and I got carded.  I am 26 and I had to show my ID to prove that I was over 18.  I *will* be thankful of this once I’m older!

We came home afterwards, had dinner and a couple glasses of wine and then did what normal people do when they’ve had a few glasses of wine.  Stalk people from high school via Facebook.  Then we got bummed out because everyone was saving the world in exotic locations /engaged/ married/ had babies. 

Sunday

I was all pumped to go to church but I literally have no idea where the time went and by the time I was ready, church would have been half over :(  Went and visited the dog again.

Came home and hopped in the pool, it was a beautiful sunny day and I floated around and read my book.  Boy Roomie’s extended family came over including his little nephew, who is always terrified of me when he turns up at the house.  But by the end of the visit, he was loving me because we played together in the pool and I played soccer with him afterwards.  He has an impressive kick already!

I got major burned in the chestal area.  I hadn’t intended to be in the pool that long but I got sidetracked playing with cutie pie.  Thank goodness my face moisturiser is also sunscreen.  I hate getting burned, it’s so bad!!

And that was my weekend. I'll post my 'February' photos soon

Day Ten

Day Ten is a “self portrait” picture.  Which I totally accidentally deleted.  And then had to rummage around in the recycle bin for.

Dear self portrait, why you so unattractive!?!?!?!  Probably should have brushed my hair… and also had a nap before this piccy was taken.  Oh well, I guess this is the real me :)

I’ve also decided to DO STUFF this weekend.  I normally just sit on my bum and watch TV or read books but I’m going to go out of the house this weekend.  I hope I actually follow through on these plans.  Anyway, I’ll let you know how it goes.

Also, edited to say- the owner of the pug puppies sent us a picture. SO cute!! One of the puppies is on her back, fast asleep with a big fat belly and her tongue poking out. Makes me so happy!!

Day Nine

Day Nine is “front door”.  I love our front door.  Actually, I love the whole house.  It’s an older style house and has all these beautiful touches to it to remind you that it’s fancy and old.  Like for example, the doorbell is in the centre of the door and you turn it to ring the bell.  

I love the picture I took.  Everything came together really beautifully.  It makes my life look super cute.

Plus Nilly is without a doubt, the hardest thing in the world to take a photo of because she never sits still but she is perfect in this one. 

Just to the left of the door, can you see the stained glass window?  Here’s a better shot of it.

It reminds me of ‘Beauty & The Beast’.  Also nerd fact: sometimes when there’s only two people in the house, we’ll take the opportunity to have a ‘Beauty & The Beast’ dinner where we sit at opposite ends of the dining table and light fancy candles in the middle of the table.  And sometimes, someone (aka Boy Roomie) will drain liquid from a bowl by raising it to his lips.  Then that really *is* a ‘Beauty & The Beast’ dinner.  No singing cutlery though.

Day Eight

Well, we’re a week down and I’m still going strong!  Day 8 is “sun”.  Today was a strange day in which it was stifling hot… and then went into intense monsoon weather.  This photo was taken from my car window as I got back to work, driving over flooded roads.  Not fun. 

The sun is peeking out through the clouds and the rain.  It was fun to pretend to be artsy with my photography skills!

Had to share another photo that got sent to us from work.  This is of some patients that made a full recovery. 

The dog in front was kicked in the head by a cow and the owners were worried about neurological damage.  Everything was ok.  Unfortunately later it turned out that the eye had been affected and had to be removed via surgery.  That was fine and healed beautifully.  We removed the stitches in the morning and then in the afternoon, poor sweet doggy came back to us because he’d been attacked by two dogs!  The wounds weren’t too bad but the little guy had to be stitched up again. 

Both dogs were absolute joys to treat- and the owners equally lovely.  I wish we got sent more photos like this.  It’s no fun getting to only see the animals when they’re sick, I want to see them happy and healthy too.

Blu Ray Tuesday #18

The movie: Peep World

The menu: Pizza

You’ve never heard of this movie?  Don’t worry, us neither.  However, this movie will go down in history because this is the movie that Girl Roomie chose and with that decision, she joined Boy Roomie and myself in “The Worst Movie Pickers Ever” club.  It’s taken almost a year but she has finally joined our illustrious ranks.

This movie blowed.  It tried too hard to be a little indie black comedy (and don’t get me wrong, there were some funny moments) but it just wasn’t. 

This bit needs capital letters because it’s important.  DON’T FALL FOR THE FACT THAT IT HAS ALL THESE GREAT ACTORS IN IT.  DON’T MAKE THE SAME MISTAKE WE DID.  Just because it has Dwight from The Office, Dexter from… Dexter, Sarah Silverman, Judy Greer, that chick from American Horror Story, that guy from Alias doesn’t mean the movie is going to be ok.  They were all good, don’t get me wrong.  They just couldn’t save the movie.

Recommended?:  No.  Just… no.  Although there were funny bits, they were far and few between.  What they fell between were some horribly awkward bits where characters’ situations went from bad to worse.  There was so much painful second-hand embarrassment and frustration that I said on several occasions, “I can’t watch this.  I can’t watch this”.  Don’t watch this.

Day Seven

Day seven is “button”.  I spent quite some time trying to think of a creative variation on this prompt but I ended up going with my first thought.

Completely uninspired but I went with the button that turns on my laptop.  I absolutely love blogging and the internet and all the wonderful people that I get to meet and interact with on here.  I hate trying to explain to “normal” people what blogging is and what I get out of it.  They just don’t understand!!

And then I found this photo of me and my friend Kristy on the Mummy Returns ride at Universal Studios in 2008 (I think).  This photo looks completely staged but it’s totally not.  Kristy and I had literally just looked at each other going “How lame is this ride?!”, when suddenly the cart just shot off into space with zero warning, hence our hilarious expressions.  Anyway, the picture still makes me laugh as hard as it did the day it got taken.

Day Six

Day Six is “dinner”.  I was paranoid I would forget, as I did with yesterday’s “10am”.  I did not forget!!!!!!

Yum, lamb chops and roast veggies.  And starring my mum’s wonderful George Foreman.  We love him so!

Whooo are you?? Who, who, who who???

And so goes the theme song to CSI.  I admittedly don’t watch it anymore and I only really ever liked the original one (Las Vegas PD forever!!) but CSI was such a huge part of my life in high school.  Completely obsessed.  So when I heard that there was a CSI exhibition in my home town, I was all about getting there.  Ok, so despite my eagerness it took me three months but I finally made it.  And dragged my mother along.

It was so great!  Admittedly, it was probably for younger children (low teens and over) but we had a ton of fun.  We got to view a fake crime scene with a dummy, take notes, look at bugs under microscopes, do DNA analysis, compare tyre tracks, watch an autopsy on a dummy.  And we had to present our case to Gil Grissom himself.  I was genuinely scared I would get it wrong and Grissom would be disappointed in me :)

But never fear, me and my trusty companion saved the day and brought the right perp in for questioning.  And we got a certificate to prove it signed by Grissom!

It took us about an hour and I got to wear a lab coat throughout the whole thing so I felt super official.  They took some great photos of me and my mum as we worked on solving the case.  There was a fab one of us hard at work in Grissom’s office, it genuinely looked like we knew what we were doing.  Shame we couldn’t take our own photos as their photos were so expensive.  But then we ended up buying up big in the gift shop anyway!

My mum was chuffed with her cop notebook and I love my CSI thermos cup.  I want to use it as work and it’ll make me feel super official when I have to do lab tests!

And this is me with a crime scene outside the building.

And this is my mum not being sure how the camera works.

Day Five: 10am

Um… I completely forgot to look and see what the prompt was for Day 5 until about 12:30 pm… completely missing the 10am mark!

So I took a screencap of the passage we were going through in church, which was what I was doing at 10am this morning.  A bit of a boring picture, sorry guys!  I guess this is why I should at least look at the prompt before the day of!

In other news, I went to see The Muppets today with my friend Kristy.  We borrowed her cousin so that we could have a child with us whilst seeing the movie.  Unfortunately we have been borrowing her cousin for years so we have an “excuse” to see kids movies but now her cousin is starting to get a bit old for this ruse!

It was such a sweet movie and I laughed and smiled the whole way through.  I totally recommend it.  However it did dredge up a few feelings from the past as I remembered why I couldn’t watch a lot of The Muppets stuff when I was younger.

I find their stuff quite frustrating- that’s a negative word and I don’t really mean that word, I just can’t think of the correct word to explain the feeling I get.  Like I vaguely remember a sketch where one muppet was looking for another, say Gonzo was looking for Rizzo.  Gonzo would come onstage and be all like “hey have you seen Rizzo?” and someone would say “Nope, haven’t seen him”, so Gonzo would go offstage and Rizzo would immediately come onstage and say “I’m looking for Gonzo, have you seen him” and someone would say “yeah, he was just here, he was looking for you”.  So Rizzo would go offstage, looking for Gonzo and then of course Gonzo would come back onstage.  This would go on for a few more times and as a kid I could NOT stand this, I would just have this frustrated, anxious feeling in my stomach and I would have to turn the TV off.  I can handle that feeling a bit better as an adult but I ended up fidgeting in my seat a little at the final culmination of the movie as their plan to save the theatre hinged on one single thing and I got that same anxious feeling in my stomach.  Weird, right?!  I can handle it in any other movie but when it’s Muppets, I get all fidgety and anxious.

Anyway, I keep forgetting.  I want instagram friends!!!  My handle is Skaramouche.  I look forward to seeing your daily photos.

Day 4

Day 4 of the February photo challenge.  “A Stranger”

This was a cute little hipster couple that I spied in the supermarket.  I actually pointed the girl out to my mum to show her the hair colour and to tell her that this was now a trendy hair colour.  My mum was like *pauses* “No”, *another really long pause*, “No, no….no”.  I don’t know when or why cotton candy pink and grey became a cool hair colour but it is here.

Anyway, when I spied the couple again whilst we were having lunch, I just knew that they were destined to be a part of my project.  I felt super stalkerish taking the photo, hence it is from the behind and quite far away.

Day Three

Day 3 of the February photo a day challenge is entitled ‘hands’.  Here is a picture of mine.

Please note the cut on my hand.  It occurred just after the run in with the mean lady on the phone.  I was thinking up revenge schemes comparable to anything a villainous mastermind could envisage whilst unpacking some stock.  I was so busy in my thoughts that I cut through the box and straight through to my hand.  Blood everywhere!  Serves me right!!

The things I’m up to on the Internet

First up, is Comment Love!  Sarah and some other bloggers have organised a great way to get your blog out there and get some comments in the process.  We all love receiving comments on our blogs and this scheme asks you to comment on three blogs every day until Feb 14th.  And there’s the chance to win prizes :) And there’s still time to get involved!

Next project I’m doing is the “photo a day during February” challenge

Due to the hashtaggery business going on, I assume it’s a twitter thing but I’m bringing it to the blogosphere.  And hopefully it means I will be able to start getting into the habit of using the camera on my phone.

Day One: My view today

This is the view from the laundry door.  Tessa is furiously wagging her tail, wondering when she should start barking.  She usually waits 0.35 seconds before barking like a maniac- she’s offended that she’s being ignored.  Honey, give me some time to actually get out of the door and reach you before you start barking.  Then Katie’s hobbling over for some cuddles.  She is a cuddle ho.  She is about a million years old but will barge everyone and everything out of the way if she thinks there are some pats to be had.  Then there’s little Nilly who doesn’t care about anything if there is food to be had.  In the photo, she is licking an empty food bowl… just in case there are some crumbs.  I love that this photo sums everyone up perfectly.

Day Two: Words (because I’m in Australia and we’re in the future)

These were the words I read today from Matthew.  And it fits in nicely with the word I have chosen for this year: Light.  Good words to live by. 

Dear oh dear!

I had my first run in at work with a lady who is notoriously rude.  I’ve never previously had a problem with her and have quite happily served her in the past but yesterday she called me up to complain and was just plain mean to me on the phone.  I tried to explain but she started off mean and just got worse. 

I am dotting happy things throughout the post to soothe my nerves which are rising as I write!

As soon as someone is rude, my hackles start to rise- even if the rudeness isn’t directed towards me.  I’m not very good at confrontation and I get flustered and want to cry or punch people in the face which is not very Christian or the best kind of customer service in the world!!

Anyway, I got someone else to ring her back because she wasn’t happy with my explanation of the problem.  And she was nice as pie to the other girl on the phone!  And she told her “You should really watch Laura, you need to have a talk with her and tell her not to say such silly things over the phone”!! 

Next time she comes in, I am going to kill that witch with kindness!  That’s really the only thing I can think to do.  It constantly surprises me when people are rude to customer service people.  You want help?  Don’t be rude to the people that are going to help you!

Any tips on dealing with mean members of the general public?  And especially, any tips on how to keep your cool (and not cry!) would be much appreciated.