Whydiss

Friday was the beginning of a 7 day holiday and I had massive start to my break with hosting a play date for my son. My favorite son turned 8 years last Sunday while staying with his Dad; he came home with a mixed bag of feeling and was very low.

Autistic children find making friends hard, so it is important time for parents to help and I find myself acting as interpreter between how my son’s see the world and how other children see the world.

All week I have been preparing and psyching myself up for the play date. We sent out the invitation late because my son would become fixated on who was invited, and who was coming. We only invited a few because he can’t handle crowds. I prepared all the food from scratch from home because preservative and flavor enhances cause behaviour problems. There was a schedule of activities to keep everyone entertained.

The day before I needed to mow the lawn and within 2 minutes of having the lawn mower out I did this.

As I mowed in front of the letter box I felt the most excruciating pain in my left toe. As I looked down I saw a flash come out of the mower and heard a bang. It all happened so fast.

As I was hopping around on one foot cursing loudly, all I could think of, why did I see the flash after I felt the pain in my foot. Obviously I had just been hit by a flying projectile, most likely a rock, but why did I see the flash afterwards.

I did what any self respecting single mother, (who had people coming over the next day) would do and kept on mowing. Lucky for me, I only use a push mower, which acted like a walking frame. I managed to limp/ mow for the next 30 minutes and finished cutting the front lawn.

After putting away the mower and petrol can, I limped inside and had a shower straight away. After I got out of the shower the first person I ran into was my son and I told him the story about the pain, flash and bang and was wondering why it had happened in that sequence. He laughed at me and said “Your funny Mummy”

So I went and told my story to my Father In Law and he laughed too.

As I was showing off my blackened toe to the men in my life, my favorite daughter came into the room, so I explained the pain, flash and bang mowing story and she wrapped her arms around me and gave me a big hug and said “Are you ok, Mummy?”

She is definately my favorite daugher.

For the last 24 hours I have been trying to take a ‘nice’ photograph of my toe and failing. Yes I did give myself a quick pedicure, cause I didn’t want pictures of half painted, long toe nails all over the net.

Yes I was an excellent host with wonderful home baked food, the kids played excellently together and our extended family dinner party was a success.   My Father In Law jokingly called me a sook because I would not wear anything but slippers on my feet all day.