Another awesome Badger, Mel, and some of her Internet friends, came up with a brilliant idea to help one of my favorite bloggers achieve a big dream of hers.

Cali, the blogger we’re helping right now, is an inspiration and the embodiment of commitment to and compassion for family. She left her left her job and friends, the life she’d built for herself as an adult, and moved back home to be a full-time care giver for her grandmother, who is crippled by Alzheimer’s.

Through all of this, she’s spent her savings and everything she’s been able to pull together towards her dream of becoming a mother herself. After more than a dozen IUI cycles, she was accepted into a shared-benefit egg donation IVF program. At the last minute, a false positive on a nasty medical test forced her to withdraw from the program.

A few weeks later, with a clean bill of health and deep discount from the clinic, she pushed ahead with an IVF cycle. Unfortunately, it didn’t turn into a full blown pregnancy or baby. However, it did end with enough frozen embryos that as soon as she can afford a frozen embryo IVF cycle, she can try again.

Friends of Cali’s from all over the blogosphere have joined Mel and others to help Cali have that opportunity. Behold:

What UTERUS is doing is donating items to an eBay auction, from which the profits will benefit Cali.

I’ve donated a First Edition paperback copy of Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2003, and also an autographed copy of my book. (Hey, librarians! You could score a copy of the book cheap! Hey, everybody else! You don’t have to actually read it if you buy it.)

I’d like to get organized and donate some of the other random stuff filling our house, but since we leave for Tampa in the morning, I just don’t see that happening in time. But Mel, if we’re still adding stuff to the auction next week, we might have more!