The Ella Revival

So I've fallen off the edge of the world for a little bit, dunno why really but I lacked the motivation to write really, definitely not that I haven't had anything to write about...it's been crazy busy! :)

So yeah, where to start. Firstly Mum's operations were a huge success and she's on to the next stepping stone of chemo and radiation. She had a big bandage around her head from the last operation and even though she felt bloody terrible, amused herself by wearing a pretty pink Alannah Hill scarf tied over it, ready to get the frog outta there!!! My Mumma is a crazed lunatic for Alannah Hill, her wardrobe is 90% the pretty pinks, reds, greens, browns and a million pairs of Alannah Hill boots, many the same style....in every colour that they come in :) She always has a new "Larni", she spent many hours eBaying in bed, buying new treasures :)

Mum had her last operation, which we had named "The scary operation" on Thursday, we went to visit her in the Intensive Care Unit for a quiet celebration after a long roller coaster of waiting for test results, hospital trips, three operations and week-long stays for each, then let her sleep and went home to catch up on three months sleep. But we were woken by two policeman knocking at the door at 12.30 at night asking if I owned a scooter. By this time, I just laughed, bah, seriously, now? I remember asking if they'd set it on fire( I've heard this happens a lot with pinched scooters), grabbed some shoes and walked down the road to check out the damage.

Oh my "Ella" was smashed to bits, the guy that took her was drunk or high as a kite and dropped her a few times in the 500 metres he got up the road before he was surrounded by 6 police cars and two sniffer dogs. The officers were a bit shocked by my reaction until I explained, "Seriously after the day we've had, this is so bleep, it's hilarious!". One officer told us that the thieving bleep had been brought out of the lake by the sniffer dogs, mud all down the front of him saying "I didn't do it!" haha!!! We couldn't go into the bushland to see the extent of the damage that night because of the sniffer dogs, she got put on the back of a tow truck and taken away, after a week we went to pick her up and she looked like this...

This didn't look so bad, but as we pulled her to bits to see the extent of the damage...oh dear!

Here she is on the back of the truck from the depo

With all the bits that he'd broken off her in the basket on the back :(

The Ella Revival begins!!! Kraig and I had great fun pulling her apart, less so in seeing the extent of the damage...check this out!

This is meant to be straight...



These were without a single scratch, let alone with cracks and pieces missing :(

But there is a something great from all of this, because she was in such great condition from when I bought her new, there were lots of things that I wanted to do to change her but never had the heart to do it because she looked so new. I've always wanted that seat to be black, so I've  finally sprayed it with vinyl paint and it looks FANTASTIC! :)

Another amazing thing happened, after hearing about my Mum in hospital and then the scooter pinched that night, the dance school Swing Zing, put on a fundraiser for me to get my scooter fixed up they raised an amount of money that I almost burst into tears on the spot, but I quickly composed myself because I wanted to remain at least a bit anonymous. It was SUCH a wonderful surprise.

So I've spent a lot of time researching wreckers all over Australia to find parts... Scooter Wreckers was AWESOME!! I sent them an email and they got back to me the next day with quotes for parts, very impressed!!! They can just post the parts that you need. Two Wheel Wreckers, here in Perth, I sent them an email, waited three days, called and they said "yes we received your email" I asked them for some parts and to their credit they DID get access to a scooter even though they only deal with motorcycles but when I said "so you just send me the quote to my email" he said that they delete them so I doubt if I hadn't called, that I would have received a response. I don't like doing business with people that don't bother with the little things in service. I DID expect the 5 minutes (if that!) of your time it would take to write "sorry we only deal in motorcycles, not scooters" and would instead happily recommend their business to my motorcycling friends, but after this....not so much. But Scooter Wreckers, without a doubt, and I'd rather pay for postage to give them my business.

On a whim I searched Gumtree and found a guy selling parts of a Vmoto Milan for $150, I rang him to see what parts he had and he said $100 take the lot...and so I did! When I arrived and started digging through, there was nearly a whole scooter plus extra bits and bobs and guards, AWESOME! All the pieces that I needed were there. The funniest thing is that the guy he had bought all the parts off had painted this dodgy matt black paint job on it and from where it had scratched off, I could see it was originally GREEN....AAAAAAAHHH! really? again that is so bleep, it's funny! :)

So this scooter is called Sammy Davis Jnr, as it looks like this guy was trying to make some kind of Rat Rod and Sammy was in the Rat Pack.

So now I'm on the search to get Ella painted, I am a little bit hooked on this Flake paint that looks like glitter...but I'm also thinking cherry apple red and duck egg blue, my FAVOURITES. This will be the most expensive part so I'm saving as much as I can at the moment to go towards it :) But the Ella Revival is going much better than I had imagined, thanks goodness.

I've quit the newspaper round and now have a junk mail round...similar amount of work for 3 times the amount of money, you can't say no to that really :) And I have a new job at a Early Learning Centre just up the road from me. I have 25, 3-6 year olds and two assistants in the room and I'm really quite excited about it. I've got a great feeling about the centre and it should be really fun to work there. Mr in Wonderland has been in renumeration and the redundency has been pushed back again and again so it should go through in August now. This way if I have a job it allows him to have a break and not to stress between jobs, which he deserves after all of his hard work and support for me. Plus being only 5 minutes up the road, we can have lunch together every day, which will be nice :)

I am also singing for Kalamunda Youth Swing Band, I performed for the first time a few weeks ago. Hullaballoo was on again and was massive, I had my birthday and many friends birthdays and another Shaolwater Bay trip with my awesome friends :)

So that is the latest news for now, I'll back track some of those things because their is some hilarious photos from them :) So yeah it's been plenty of trying moments and also great moments, so all over the place it's so hard to think that it has only been two months but, as always, it's been fun!