Days Go By

"Day Turns into Night" by KayBird

My days are turning into nights and one month just runs into the next.  Am I coming?  Am I going?  I don't know, but I'm not there yet!

Woah.

I think I just wrote my first lyrics to a song for the everybody.  But seriously, it sure goes by so fast.  And now I just sound old...

But today marks a new day!  Ok, it's really day 3.  Or Day 5, depending on how you look at it.  Evening 3, to be more precise.  Evening 3 of Clomid.  I read somewhere that taking it at night makes the side effects.  I then read somewhere else that while this is true, taking it in the morning increases the chances that follicles will mature before IUI.  I've since stopped the Google madness.

My dosage has increased from 50mg (1 pill) to 150mg (3 pills).  The pharmacist gave me a sympathetic expression when I picked up the medication.  He asked if I had any questions.  I didn't.  He wished me luck.  

Awkward!

50mg produced multiple follicles, but only one that was fully developed.  Our first treatment in April was unsuccessful, but is used as a baseline to proceed. So forge ahead we will!

So as days go by...I feel good.  No hot flashes (yet).  No crazy food cravings (yet).  No nausea or feeling like a fish full of eggs that needed to be gutted (yet).  Nothing exciting to report (YET!). 

"Just Ducky"

"If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, looks like a duck, it must be a duck!"

~ Proverb quotes

But what if your duck...well, what if it CLUCKS instead?

(I think that might just be the title and them of my next Children's Book, by the way...what do you think!??!)

...and now with the rest of the story... 

I woke up late Sunday morning.  The weather was incredible and my cardinals were bickering playfully in the tree outside my front porch, but I was still in a fog and my own chirp was not so perky!  I was in need of cheering up.  Luckily, I remembered that I had just began subscribing to our local newspaper and today was the first day of it's delivery.  I LOVE the Sunday paper; stuffed full of colorful comics, sale ads, specialty magazines and coupons (oh yeah...and the actual news, I suppose).  I shuffled out in my PJs to retrieve it and sat in my new wicker chair to sort through the treasure chest when I stumbled across a last minute announcement that caught my eye:

The 2010 Annual Kansas City Duck Derby.

Now I don't know about you, but rubber duckies are my absolute favorite childhood bath time toy. Any time Ernie would sing about making his way to the tubbie I would go get my cute-n-yella-n-chubbie little friend to sing along!  So bright and squeaky with big-lashed eyes and toothy smiling beaks - how can that NOT cheer me up?  

I wish I would have better planned my weekend so that I could have promoted it beforehand.  Besides all the clever little connections and quips in my head now, I found out when I got there just what a great cause it is.  My spirits were not only lifted by the sound of laughing children playing in the moon walks or the sight of colorful kid-art on the sidewalks made from homemade chalk (not to mention the yummy local Boulevard Wheat for us big kids!), but by the organization that benefit from the proceeds:

The Children's TLC (Therapeutic Learning Center).

 Children's TLC was founded by a group of volunteers who were ahead of their time; caring and preparing nursery school kiddos with Cerebral Palsy for formal school, based on feedback gathered by public school teachers.  It has since expanded and formed fantastic alliances with establishments like Children's Mercy Hospital and the YMCA, but maintains its focus of providing education and therapy assistance to those children and their families, both able and disabled, regardless of their financial or other circumstance.  We often remember to donate to charities that help cover the financial cost of the physical and emotional care of a child in need, but I hadn't thought of the importance of what the CTLC does before!  How inspiring!

So I found a good location to watch the race - a bird's eye view, if you will...

...plunked my racing duck #088029 into the big cage.  The countdown began...

...and they were off!...

...while we did not win the coveted million dollar prize, we sure did have a fantastic day.

So what do you do if your duck clucks instead of quacks?  You pluck yourself up and just keep clucking!  Because that's what makes it, and  you, unique and special.  You flock to those that will cluck right along with you.  Because that's what makes you belong.  You still walk (or waddle) and look like a duck.  You are still a duck!

...and occasionally - just once in a pink moon...you even let a QUACK in once in awhile!

(RE)Connecting the Dad Day Dots

I missed my dad today.

I had been looking forward to spending the first Father's Day with him since - well, since my childhood; during every other weekend visitations.  You see, we had only reconnected just four short months before his death last year.  He had not been a part of my life since before I was married.  He did not walk me, his only child, down the isle.  He will never get to see his one and only grandchild.

But this is a day to celebrate!  And I do not want to bring it down with sadness from days gone by.  I want to remember the good!

The good is that he loved me in the beginning and in the end.  The rest of time is just middle-stuff.  The good is that he told me that he loved me even as brain function stole away his ability to speak.  He said it through blue eyes that look like mine.  He said it through the squeeze of my hand; with his crooked little pinkie inside my hand having that same crooked little finger.

Little girls need their dads.  The woman that I have become loves the dad that the little girl had.  I  somehow found a man to marry that loves me in all the middle-stuff ways that a little girl needs to turn into a woman.  I can now pass that GOOD part of love down to a child, God willing someday.

Thanks, Dad.  I'm glad you are spending Father's Day in peace with YOUR dad AND your Heavenly Father.  Now that IS a reason to celebrate!