The Thumper Rule

So any of you born before the year 1990 should at least be familiar with this happy foot tapping bunny named Thumper from Bambi, he said, "if you ain't got nothin' nice to say, don't say nothin' at all."

I am of the opinion that a lot of bloggers try their best to follow this "rule" in regard to talking about themselves or their lives. This is the "safest" way to go, because then you don't get the ridicule of perhaps being told that you 'deserve' all the misfortune that has been falling on your head as of late... I have been waiting for some SUPER GOOD day to take place to write a warm "fuzzy" post about and give everyone a warm blog reading glow, but in the past week, I haven't had a whole lot of those days, so I am going to DISOBEY dear old Thumper's rule and say it like it is :)

So You all got my great Easter post. It was Easter, it was great, and I love my fam. Monday Morning rolled around, and our power was turned off. Yep, off. No, this was not a mistake... apparently those meanies don't even let you get an entire MONTH behind on your bill, only like 3 weeks, so a word to the wise, if you don't want to get raped by outlandish fees, pay your electric bill for SRP in a timely manner. So I scraped together my pennies and paid the bill. Only had to go about 40 minutes without power. (image from here) Scarlett colored once she got over the DISTURBING realization that all of the TV's were BROKEN!! She didnt notice all the lights were out but it was daytime, so we had plenty of sunlight..

Wednesday my Cell phone turned off, mostly. This again, was no fluke incident :) It allowed me to get incoming calls, but they had decided that they wanted a payment from me so the only person I would have the luxury of calling was them, good old Tmobile. And i also couldn't send responses to the text messages that would come in. It was an isolating couple of days before we could come up with some more money to reactivate my phone. (image from here. I love how disturbed she looks and how you can almost make out a Hitchcock profile behind her)

Friday was a silver lining day. After dreaming of Enchiladas all night long, my friend Brookie -- or as Scarlett calls her, "Spooky", came over and brought the ingredients I didnt have, (which were a lot) and even bought me a 3 dollar pan and made me a bunch of chicken Enchiladas. She even bought all the garnishes and chopped them up so that Joe could decorate his enchiladas, and she didnt even help us eat them, she left us that Entire pan for ourselves. It was awesome and SO TASTY. It doesn't even end here. She watched Scooby for us for free so that we could go see a movie and actually have a "Date night" we saw the 'Date Night' Movie. We are so cliche like that. We saw the Valentine move on Valentines Day we are so not very original these days :). But it was wonderful to spend some time together just the two of us, and that was great.

Saturday, Scarlett and I ate at YC's Mongolian Barbecue for lunch, and that is one of my all time fave places to eat, and Scarlett's too. I have a couple pictures from there.

Scarlett friendly said "Goodbye" and waved to all the exiting YC customers, and continued with a "Have a Nice day!"

 We had a great time... then I got a reminder from my calendar (I have started setting these to help with my absent mindedness and as a result absenteeism to all events I had desired to participate in) that cousin Michael Chappel's fiancee's Bridal shower was happening in 20 minutes! I was wearing a muumuu, so I made a quick dash home, grabbed some clothes, and a card that I made, Darn I should have taken a picture of it, it was pretty... threw some makeup in my pocket and headed over to my Mom's to pick up her gift offering. Then Scarlett and I attempted to trek out to the shower. It wouldn't have been so bad were there not a huge accident on the 60. I didnt really mind though, because Scarlett napped the entire way there, and I thought "Score! she will be in a good mood!"

Well we were almost there, and I was searching for this "Orchid" street, when I noticed my air conditioning was blowing warm all the sudden. Oh, the thermostat was showing the needle all the way to the big H for hot.. :( I, being very familiar with cars that like to blow up and get hot on me, turned the A/C off, and coasted more or less to my destination. I turned off the car and it sounded like a sprinkler system had gone off under my hood. I knew that was a bad sign, but non-chilantly joined the shower without drawing attention to my situation. The shower was nice, even if Scarlett was in a rotten mood, nap or no.. anyway. My cousin Rachel saved the day, producing a little purse full of "pretties" for Scarlett to play with and even let her keep it! She was in heaven with her very first personal Chapstick!

The shower was fun. I was glad I went. I love spending time with my Chappel Cousins, and my Aunts Laura and Lucy were both there. Joe, my Knight in shining armor came to rescue me. We discovered it was not going to stay cool even with more water in it.. so I called my Brook's dad who is an auto genius. He told me we definitely needed to tow it and NOT try driving it back from Elliot and Higley. So we called my Dad and asked him to help us tow the vehicle to Fred's house. Scarlett and I drove Joe's Jag to my parents and scored a nice steak dinner over there. (image from here)

Fred got the car all fixed up and ready for us to pick up by Sunday night. My car is running like brand new! (that's not my car but it is a cute red hatchback, was the best i could do! image from here) It hasn't run this well in a VERY long time. So again, we have no more pennies, but things could be worse.

We have each other. We have our loving friends and family. We have a place to live, and landlords who are working with us (my wonderful parents). We have food stamps to keep us in food. We have me- a less than mediocre cook... who somehow still manages to get the job done. I've made it into my second trimester now, of my pregnancy without incident. That is a blessing.

We have managed to pull all our information to provide to our Accountant and are still hoping we live through April, but I figure if it hasn't broken me yet, maybe I can make it! Another great photo of Scarlett to characterize my mood: