Pre-surgery odds & ends (& jitters!)

• My gallbladder removal surgery is tomorrow (Monday, August 15th). I would be lying if I said I wasn't nervous. Aside from having my wisdom teeth out when I was 30, and the d&c I had two years ago for fibroids, and my recent eye procedure -- all relatively minor examples -- I've never had "real" surgery before. Recovery from my recent eye surgery/procedure has been longer and more involved than I had anticipated (albeit I am doing better all the time) and I've found myself thinking, "WHY did I sign myself up for this?? (And so close to my other surgery too!)"  But then I remember how absolutely miserable I was last fall, and several other times before that over the past 20 years -- and other times when I wasn't in outright pain but wasn't feeling great either. Hopefully this will help (crossing all crossables...!).   
• Adding to my qualms, I can't help thinking about my great-grandmother, who died of complications following gallbladder surgery... 94 years ago, in 1928. She was just 44 years old.  :(  She was also, it should be noted (UNlike me...!), the mother of NINE children (!) (plus at least one more stillborn that we know of), ranging in age from 25 down to 11, including my grandfather, who was 16 at the time. (As my mother said, "No wonder the poor woman died young...!")  I'm not sure exactly where she had her surgery, but they lived on a farm in rural Minnesota -- it definitely wasn't at a newly built, modern big-city hospital, like the one I'm going to be at. And gallbladder surgery techniques (and medicine generally) have come a LONG way since then...!  
• Unless there are some surprises along the way, it should be a "keyhole"/minimally invasive procedure, and I will be home later in the day. (My mother thinks it's criminal how quickly hospitals release patients these days -- but then she spent two weeks in the hospital after I was born...!  Different times...!) I'm told most people would take two weeks off from work to recover (not an issue here, thankfully), and up to four weeks to fully heal. I will have to stick to a low-fat diet for the first while afterward, but in most cases, the body eventually adjusts and you can eat pretty much whatever you want without suffering (which is what most people who have had this surgery tell me). Here's hoping...!   
• Wish me luck!! 
• I have a #MicroblogMondays post ready to autopost tomorrow morning. I didn't think I'd have the time to post from my laptop before we leave for the hospital (or the savvy to do it on my phone later...!). 
• My sister & her partner bought a new house!!  They have been looking longer than we've lived in this condo  ( = six years!) but as in so many other Canadian cities, the market has been ridiculous lately, and even when they've bid on houses in the past, they have lost out in bidding wars. Their current house is tiny -- smaller than our condo unit, about 600 square feet -- and they have been wanting something a little larger for a while now -- in part so that they can host future family celebrations, given that our aging parents just can't do it like they used to. Possession will be in early September, so I should get to see it next time we head there to visit (which will hopefully be in October for Canadian Thanksgiving). 
• I've already been seeing back to school ads and posts on social media from friends in the U.S. (primarily the southern states) for the past week or so.  From past experience, I know this will continue through mid-September (schools here generally start the day after Labour Day, but junior & senior kindergarten classes sometimes start a week or so later).  Bracing myself for the onslaught...!  I have several friends sending kids off to to college/university for the first time this fall too. 
• On Medium, Yael Wolfe asks "Why Does Everyone Want Us to Feel Sorry for Mothers?" Sample passage: 

There are few tangible social supports that hold women up in this culture. And that includes mothers who get the benefit of the cultural clout that comes with motherhood but little else. It’s important to me not to diminish the challenges that mothers face in a society that only pretends to support them.

However, it’s also important to me to highlight — at every opportunity — the fact that single, childless women like me have even less social supports...

...no one is stepping up to offer to help us. No one asks if we need assistance changing the batteries in that smoke detector that is too high for us to reach. No one asks if they can bring by a bag of frozen dinners when we are sick. No one offers to come help us for a day here or there, altering their own schedules to fit into ours.

No one makes any effort to know — to really know — what it’s like to be a single, childless woman. And god knows, no one is asking anyone else, on our behalf, “Don’t you have so much sympathy for her, now that you know what her life is like?”

...how about we all stop feeling sorry for each other and just help each other, instead?

• In the Washington Post, this opinion piece caught my eye: "I was a foster child. Foster care adoptions won’t solve the end of Roe." Here's the opening paragraph: 

With the fall of Roe v. Wade, anti-choice governors have advice for what to do with unwanted children: Give your newborns to the foster care system, and they’ll be adopted. But if these governors had even the barest understanding of their states’ foster systems, they would know that adoption is not the true purpose. I’m certain of this because I grew up in the system myself.