As I type this I am taxiing on to a runway headed to DC on the first of four flights in my very near future. Today is the day! Almost… Tomorrow is actually the day. The first of four of the most important days of my pre-child life.
Before go down that rabbit hole, I must reflect a little on the past week (since I am finally actually sitting down).
What chaos and strangeness this past week has been. I anticipated it being quite stressful with many, many things to do and maybe some not getting done, late nights and early mornings, though I was comfortable with the plan and thought I had everything figured out. While I wasn’t “wrong” per say, this past week has far exceeded my expectations in high stress management, logistics, sleep deprivation, and general “shit-hitting-the-fan-ness”. The strangest part, though, is that it has shown me the kindness of others, stranger and friend alike, the compassion of community and the power of accepting help. Let me make that clear, there is no way I would have accomplished all of the things this week without a significant amount of help from my friends. In the week leading up to this very special day, I have worked 18 hour days, come home and attempted to do anything but fall out in bed, kicked off my companies annual conference (and then left right smack dab in the middle, thanks again bosses for being so amazing), packed, moved many flights around to accommodate this very crazy schedule, cleaned up a room full of dog diarrhea and then a couple days later shampooed projectile dog vomit off the SAME rug (someone please get that rug out from under my 700lb bed and throw it away), bathed all those stinky dogs and really attempted to clean my house (I didn’t actually get it done but THANK YOU Tammy and Jennifer for taking care of my business for me). I literally do not know how I did it. I used to fall asleep to a favorite tv show or movie playing in the background. Now a days, I’m lucky if I get my jeans off before I fall asleep. This morning when I was getting ready, I was literally so tired I couldn’t stand up to curl my hair.
Literally. But, while I was having an internal pity party about my utter exhaustion and taking in the literal picture of my life (see: carpet cleaner, makeup bag packed, artificial hormones, coffee and exhibitor badge) I caught sight of the coffee mug I inadvertently picked out of the cabinet in my fog this morning.
That’s the one. “Take a deep breath” And a picture of a whale in case you need to visualize deep breaths. If I had a Jackson for every time my mom has said that to me in the last three weeks, we would have our whole IVF stuff paid for again!! But, I needed to see it this morning. Take a deep breath, inhale all of the good, all of the promise of the rest of this week, all of the prayers, all of the good will from others. Exhale all of the bad, all of the stress, all of the uncontrollables, all of the anxiety. I had to remind myself there were only 24 hours at that point between me and the official start of my goal, there were only 8 hours between me and my flight to DC and there were only 45 minutes between me and being late and that I needed to stop taking pictures and get to work. I stood up, curled my hair, double checked all my bags, kissed my sweet fur babies and walked out the door.
All ready to go, even have my lucky socks courtesy of Aunt Paula and Uncle David!
Today is the start of phase two in DC and Gale and I were quite lucky to start it in style. I have many people to thank for this turn of events, but I especially want to thank my Dad. Sometimes your persistence annoys me when I have a lot to do, but I know that I got that trait from you, for which I am grateful, and sometimes daddy just knows best.
Our trip was, very luckily, quite uneventful. I was a nice easy flight, we made it to the hotel after a silly amount of walking and then had a bite to eat. Now I am finally relaxed. I am truly excited for tomorrow, but I would be remiss to not truly savor these precious moments of contentment.
It’s official:
I am going to truly crash now and enjoy a few hours of peace. I promise to give you all the updates from tomorrow, tomorrow!
Til then,
<3Katie
Pee on the sticks 
I am SO EXCITED!!!!
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