Balls to today

Today started off well. A nice lie in, followed by a late breakfast.

Once we were up and ready we went into town to see the 'Urban Beach'; it was heaving!
So nice to see town so busy.
The beach itself was really just a bit of play sand in the road, but the kids seemed to love it.

There were a few vintage cars, in fact Mr A received an invite earlier in the week to exhibit Cav, but it's still off the road so he said no. Given the kids that were clambering on things, we decided it was a wise decision to leave Cav safe in the garage!
There was also the annual motorbike and scooter show.

We had a coffee in town and then still an hour to kill before we went to my Dads for lunch.

This is where it all went wrong.

I knew Theo was at Mums, so I thought we'd call there for a bit before going to Dads. I rang to say we were en route, so she told Theo we were going and he got all excited.

We'd just got out of the car, when I thought I could hear shouting, but thought it was probably just Theo playing out.
Then I heard more shouting ......'HELP'.

In his excitement, Theo had wanted to show Gant and Mash how he could splash in the pool. Mum had set up his paddling pool and for good measure, threw some plastic balls in as well. As she was picking up the balls to put them in the pool, she stepped on one and slipped backwards into the paddling pool
I found her, semi conscious on the floor in the back yard with a very obvious broken ankle, but luckily no head injuries.
Theo was stood next to her trying to work out what was going on!
One of the neighbour's had got to her before me, but it had literally just happened so I called for an ambulance while Mr A tried to entertain Theo indoors.

As usual, it took me ages to get hold of my sister; she was at home with Theia and no car, so how lucky we got a car seat for Theo only last week, as Mr A was able to take him home while I stayed with Mum and waited for the ambulance to arrive.

We followed the ambulance to the hospital and I gave my Dad a call to let him know what had happened and apologise that we would be late for our tea.
Although they divorced over 40 years ago, there's still no love lost on my Dad's part, but even so, I expected him to be more understanding.
I could tell he was pissed off but what could I do? Leave my Mum in pain, on the floor, with a 3 year old while I went out for tea???

With my step mums recent fall and broken arm, I thought he'd at least understand how long these things can take. I said for them to eat when it was ready and we could always have cold cuts later on.

At the hospital, there's never any signal and it took ages for various doctors and nurses to decide a plan of action.
Mum was sedated while they reset her foot (a break of 3 bones in a triangle around her ankle). They had to do this before the X-ray as the fracture was cutting off supply of blood and nerves to her foot so they were keen to alleviate this.
Although the foot is back in a normal position, she will need surgery tomorrow to put pins in the fractured bones.
She's being kept in overnight and I've to ring again in the morning to find out what's happening.

I called Dad as we left the hospital (5 hours after my original call), to again apologise for not getting there for tea. My Stepmum wouldn't even speak to me, she passed the phone over and Dad was very curt; telling me how the food was in the bin as it had been spoilt!
Personally, I think I gave enough warning that we wouldn't be there and in view of the circumstances it wasn't our fault. My apology wasn't enough though so he ended the call by saying he'd post my birthday card through sometime this week.

So what started off as a great day turned into a really shitty one. My Dad has the hump with me and I can't help but think that if I'd not decided to go to Mum's on that spur of the moment, then none of this would have happened.

Today's blip is one of the balls from Theo's pool. It somehow ended up under the hospital bed (which freaked me out), but we think it was maybe under Mum's back when they put the stretcher under her to carry her to the ambulance.