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!

A dear Internet friend is suffering a horrible loss.

Like many others, I’m sending her some mad plaid love:

Ok, I’m sitting here finishing up my sandwich, and it HIT me.

If I don’t get pregnant this try, this one, the one today, the one in about 2 hours, we will be down to our LAST vial of The Frozen Chosen, aka, our donor. No more is available. We are 9th on the waiting list if it magically appears. The other people on the DSR who used him also want more.

And then we will have to make some big decisions. Try one last time with IUI & meds? Try IVF using all disposable income for 2008? Keep going after either of those options with a new donor & paying for everything out of pocket? (That last is only realistic if we use our last vial on our last insurance-covered IUI; the IVF is out of pocket and will empty the pockets.)

On Sunday morning, there were 2 follicles, a 21mm and a 17mm. 20-24 is considered mature, and they grow at 1-2mm/day. Yesterday we triggered their release, which takes 36-50 hours, so we should have 2 mature eggs doing their thing sometime between tonight and tomorrow morning, with swimmers there to greet them.

Please. Let this be the cycle where I get pregnant again. Where Noah gets to become a big brother.

I know we aren’t technically down to the wire, but I see the wire and it is much too close for comfort.

First, everyone please send “come on out” wishes to Frema & Luke, whose daughter was due on Monday. Frema is really tired of being pregnant.

If you still have any fertility-related energy left, it seems like half the internet is trying to get pregnant this month. Good luck to Cali, Jen & Cait, Chicory, Hope & Megan, and anyone else I may have missed. I think all five families are hoping to get pregnant late this week or early next!

I’m off to tackle my third half-mile swim in a week. Do I sound proud of myself?

What can I say? I’ve been a huge Tiffani fan since season one, since before she came out on the show, I’m thrilled that she won. I still daydream about eating the parmesean-winter squash thing she made in the first or second episode of Top Chef season one.

But even better? They had all of my favorite women competitors except Leanne Wong, and they had all the eye candy I could want. Josie’s adorable! Sandee too. And 3 lesbian competitors out of 8 people? Wow!

And? Tre! Loved Tre. I hope they do another one of these things and he wins it.

In less delightful news? Not pregnant.

Over the last week, I have obsessively bounced between being cautiously optimistic that I might be pregnant and miserably positive that I am not.

Today is one of those negative days.

Both of them are boring, even inside my own head.

On the plus side, we will have a definite answer no later than Thursday afternoon, following a Thursday morning blood test. (Of course, a negative answer could make itself known earlier.)

Either way, hopefully after that I will return to posting on more interesting topics. Like the fact that Jill’s parents are coming to visit this weekend.

Between my birthday, which was Sunday, and the end of the calendar year, I usually get all self-reflective. I think a lot about the things that worked, and didn’t work so well, over the last year, and about what I hope for in the year to come.

37 was a surprisingly eventful year:

• Noah turned 1, learned to walk and talk, and transitioned from “baby” to “toddler.”
• We had a major change in our plans for growing our family, switching from trying to get Jill pregnant, to me going again.
• I started trying again, and it’s been quite the roller-coaster. Today is Day 5 of the “two week wait.” (Or as we in the ttc community say it, I’m 5DPO.)
• I had lasik surgery. I can see clearly, without glasses or contacts, for the first time in 29 years. Before the surgery, I could see clearly for 6 or 7 inches in one eye, and 8 or 9 inches in the other eye. I love the results. I haven’t had any problems, and the only ongoing stuff I have to do is put regular old eyedrops in my eyes in the morning, and occasionally at night.
• Jill and I went to my 20 year high school reunion.
• I hit my peak non-pregnant weight.
• I started exercising — I have been swimming at the gym 10 times in the last 3 weeks. I’ve increased my distance from .32 of a mile to .39, both in 20-22 minutes.
• My company went through a massive restructuring and laid off half the staff. My job changed less than most, although I have a new boss and a few new responsibilities.

Although I could not have imagined what this year would be like, I still like to think about what I hope for and imagine about year 38 & 2008.

As I’ve been thinking about it, what I keep coming back to is commitment. Commitment to my health, commitment to having another baby, commitment to Jill and Noah being happy and healthy, commitment to taking my writing seriously, and commitment to my own professional development.

Those things are also all about love — loving my family, loving myself, loving what I do. They’re about passion and vitality.

And aside from the almost-two temper tantrums, I think the next year is also going to be about fun. Most of the time, Noah is so much fun! I hear that gets better and better as it gets easier for him to communicate. Plus Jill got us all season tickets (partial season plan) for the new Atlanta WNBA team, so we’ll have some pre-planned social outlets. (With other families like ours, and with eye candy!)

I hereby declare that 38 is going to be all about bringing on my passion and vitality, in all aspects of my life. That, and having a baby.

I’m going to break that down into some more concrete bites. During the year of 38 and/or 2008, I will:

• Have a healthy pregnancy and a healthy baby.
• Keep up with my swimming and have gone swimming 100 times by the time the baby is born.
• Earn at least $1000 from my writing, including blog ads. (This one is going to be a stretch!)
• Implement my ideas for improving the flow of my day to day work. (This one I need to keep vague here, but my point is that currently I let the immediate demands get in the way of planning and implementing a system that would make those demands easier in the future.)
• See to it that Noah is in a day care program where we are confident that he is happy, safe, and learning, in an environment that respects families like ours.
• Find a way to have a date with my wife at least once per month.

And if all my will and intentionality and planning and hoping and loving for this new baby don’t work? I will get my BMI into the normal range before I turn 39.