the to-do list

Now that vacation is over, all of my attention is focused on my upcoming surgery (next Friday, 8/3). Because I am a control freak through and through, I am keeping myself quite busy (mentally, anyway) with a self-imposed "to-do before surgery" list. Let's take a look at what all I have on the week's agenda, shall we?

1. Find out everything imaginable about what to expect during/after surgery from tell-all bloggers. This is actually proving to be extremely enlightening and useful, as the information the actual DOCTORS give me is...lacking, to say the least. My hat's off to the girls willing to over-share EVERYTHING about their own experiences with this surgery...I feel like I'm a lot more aware of what to expect (and worry about) because of their openness...and I certainly plan to pay it forward by doing the same thing after my surgery is over. Here's a few of the helpful blogs I've come across: SIF's Post-Op Tips;  Lap for Endo Diagnosis & Treatment Advice; Anne's Lap Tips; Lap: Before & After Tips; My Lap to treat Endo.

Now that I know what to expect, I have to follow the advice of these ladies and make lots of preparations, which brings me to the rest of my to-do list.

2. Prepare and freeze meals. I've been prepping and shopping and planning to do this for a few weeks now, but now that the time has come to actually cook and freeze...ugh. Who wants to do all THAT work? But it needs to be done, so I shall do it. Eventually. Maybe later. (Or not-- my parents are going to come stay with me for the weekend after surgery and Mom said something about cooking a bunch of stuff for us...so maybe I will do NO preparations, and leave that to her? Yes?)

3. Collect proper entertainment/things to pass the time. I've read almost all the books I have on my Kindle, so I need to find new stuff to download. I think I'll go to the library, too. As for TV-based entertainment, I think the Olympics will keep me pretty occupied. I was also thinking about grabbing a season or 2 of a good show to start watching...we don't have Netflix, but if anyone already owns DVDs of a great show and wants to lend them to me, that would be totally accepted. Ditto goes for good books you're dying to lend.


4. Clean the house. I am TERRIBLE at the 'lay there and heal' thing (remember, I had over a week of this in April after that episode, plus many smaller (one or 2 day) experiences over the past few years after regular ruptured cysts), and nothing will get me hopping (however painfully) off my couch/bed faster than spying dog fur tumbleweeds rolling across the floor, or a layer of dust on the mantel, or spaghetti-sauce-stains on the stovetop, or grass flecks on the rug. Although I (and my house) am normally quite orderly and clean, apparently the desire for cleanliness goes into MAJOR OVERDRIVE the longer I am laying on a couch with nothing to do but look for imperfections in my environment. Thus, I must preempt this desire to clean by making sure everything is SUPER CLEAN before the surgery. The good thing is that I did some major deep cleaning last week before vacation, so there isn't THAT much to do now.


5. Weed the gardens. REALLY WELL. Let's be honest-- they haven't been weeded in far too long anyway (before vacation, we were getting rain almost every single evening, so I could never do anything outside)...so the lack of weeding PLUS abundance of rain (totally unheard of, btw) means that the weeds are mile-high. This is the sort of thing that will majorly stress me out as I'm bed-bound, and give me constant temptation to run outside and fix things up. And I have a hunch that the physical stress of weeding (bending over, pulling, etc) is NOT going to feel awesome after abdominal surgery, so...yup, time to take care of that now. Yesterday I knocked out two beds really well. Only about a million to go...


6. Find a multi-outlet extension cord thingy. The couch I prefer to lay on is in the middle of the room with no outlets nearby. This will cramp my style and limit my electronic-device-using. I know we have several of these things around the house...just need to find one that can be temporarily (and tackily...haha, it's going to be laying across the middle of the floor, sick!) relocated.



Okay. I think that's everything on the list for now. Now that you see how much I have to do (as well as full-time work all week, of course, in addition to another trip to Atlanta on Wednesday for pre-op), it should make sense that instead of doing ANY of those things right now, I've spent the morning making and eating pancakes and watching the Olympics. Obviously.


How about a few random vacation pics before you go? Perfect.

 Most scenic (and RIDICULOUS) mini-golf course ever!! Plus it was SO WINDY the balls kept getting blown away, ha. But I beat Matt anyway, so that's all that mattered.

 This was an AWESOME giant swing in the lobby. Seriously, it was the coolest thing ever. I want one in my house. Add it to my list!