Pre-surgery odds & ends

• My eye surgery is early Monday morning at a hospital downtown, three months after I was diagnosed with a patch of scar tissue om my right cornea that's been affecting my vision. It's a quick, in-office, in-and-out laser procedure. I'll be getting up at the crack of dawn to make sure we get there in plenty of time, but at least it will be over with early on, and I won't have to spend half the day in nervous anticipation (that's what this weekend is for...!). Wish me luck!! 
• Depending on how things go and the restrictions I'm subjected to (my sister, who had similar surgery last year, warned me I will have to limit my screen time for at least the first few days), I may not be around the blogosphere much over the next week or two.  
• If I can come up with a #MicroblogMondays post before then, I'll write it and set it to post automatically on Monday morning, albeit it won't be linked to Mel's list, at least not right away. But if I don't come up with anything, I won't fret...! 
• Poor dh has been suffering for at least two weeks with fits of violent sneezing, and itchy red eyes... not even so much the eyes themselves, but the skin around them has been puffy/baggy, itchy and red. He has seasonal allergies, and they've been especially bad this year (even though he no longer has to mow the lawn, which was always a trigger in the past!).  He also has very dry, sensitive skin at the best of times. (And, of course, like many men, does nothing about it...!)  
• We tried Benadryl, Claritin, Reactine, saline eye drops, cold compresses, warm compresses, even tea bags! but nothing was helping much. We couldn't get an appointment for him with our family doctor for more than a week (! -- our health care system may be "free," but it is absolutely swamped right now, with another covid surge and shortages of staff, many of whom are sick, burned out/fed up and/or quitting -- and who can blame them, after what they've endured in recent years??) -- so he wound up going to an urgent care clinic near us yesterday (Thursday). They gave him a prescription for both Reactine (stronger dosage than the over-the-counter stuff) and an ointment for the skin around his eyes.  
• He wound up going to two different pharmacies trying to get the prescription filled -- the Reactine was no problem, but the ointment had to be special ordered. It was SUPPOSED to be ready this afternoon.
• You guessed it -- he went to pick it up and they still didn't have it... told him to come back Monday. :(   Poor guy -- very frustrating. :(  
• I was trying to think if anything in our environment had changed recently to trigger an allergic attack -- same laundry detergent, no new foods lately -- and then we realized dh had come home with a new bottle of shampoo and started using it right around the time this all started. He has mostly used Pert 2-in-1 shampoo for almost as long as I've known him (40+ years!)... and this was Pert, but they didn't have any of the "regular/classic" Pert in stock, so he bought a variety marketed towards men called "Ocean Rush." It was very strongly scented, and I am willing to bet money that's the culprit. 
• He's going to try using baby shampoo until things settle down, and then maybe go back to using his regular/classic Pert. 
• Speaking of shampoo:  I have used Neutrogena's Anti-Residue shampoo for something like 40 years too. A university friend used it, and left me a half-used bottle when she went back home for the summer. I tried it and loved it, and have been using it two or three times a week since then, alternating with another shampoo (currently Pantene 2-in-1 Volume & Body formula). I've noticed it was getting harder and harder to find (the conditioner that went with it was discontinued years ago) -- and my current bottle is about 2/3 empty, so I've been looking for another bottle lately, without success. Did some Googling, only to find... you guessed it -- it's been discontinued!! (Someone said they found it on Amazon... for $70 a bottle!!)  Their Canadian website is full of customers in the review section, wailing "WHY???"  :(   They have introduced some new formulations (which I have not yet seen on the drugstore shelves here), but the buzz on the website, and on a Reddit thread I found, is that they don't work nearly as well. Boo, hiss.... 
• I saw the Twitter thread mentioned in this New York Times article before I read the article -- related to parenting, sexism, learned helplessness, and the division of household labour. Sadly, I wasn't surprised...! 
• Speaking of Twitter, I've noticed something odd recently. I get a couple of emails every day featuring about a half-dozen tweets that Twitter thinks will interest me, generally from people I follow. If I click on the tweet in the message, it takes me to Twitter, where I get to see (and like or share) the original tweet and some of the responses -- and then sometimes a section of "More tweets," which are usually related, at least tangentially, to the original tweet. I follow a lot of childless and childfree people on Twitter -- and invariably, the featured tweets from them (usually about childless/free topics) are followed by other tweets related to either (a) parenting & pregnancy (!!) or -- (b) artistic photos from Germany. (??!)  
• Bloglovin' outage: still ongoing for more than a week (since Thursday night, July 14th!).  :p