(Entry written prior to posted date).

 

They decided to postpone my retrieval another day, to give one of my eggs a bit more time to grow to maturity. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about this whole process it’s that you must be flexible with your timeline. If you are not flexible with your time, you will be immensely frustrated through this process. They told me I have a total of four mature eggs, with an extra one that is almost mature enough. They decided to give it another day. I needed one last Ganirelix injection, which I paid for on my way out the door. Luckily, they had it right there in the office so I didn’t have to do any last minute pharmacy runs in a city I’m not familiar with, and staying in a bad part of town. If time is what it takes, I’ll do it. In fact, that’s all I really have right now is time.

 

 

Mom and I decided to get out of the dodgy part of town where our hotel is and get to the touristy part, Pike’s Place Market. It was a nice day but just a bit too hot. If you were to look at us you would be sure we were about to melt under the sun’s rays. I searched and searched the entire Market, on a mission to find a hat to wear, a simple baseball hat. Question for you Washingtonians, why the hell are there not more hat shops in the touristy part of town? In fact, I noticed many people walking around without hats. Yes, normally I do not wear hats unless I’m hiking or I know I’m going to be outside all day. But seriously, I rarely saw anyone during my entire week-long trip in Seattle who wore a hat. In fact, I could probably count the number on my one hand. What gives? I suppose maybe it’s more of an Alaskan thing to wear hats, and I only notice the difference outside of Alaska. Finally I found an artsy trucker hat that did the job. It was a nice visit to Pike’s other than the heat and the endless search for a hat. Note to self: bring my own damn hat. Hat rant ends here.

 

At one point we sat on a shady bench in the market watching people walk around and deciding where we would find water. It took a while to finally find a place to sit in the shade. We were half people watching and half trying to figure out which business looked best to get some water. We decided on a Greek bakery across the street. We must have sounded pretty beleaguered to the rough-looking skinny guy sitting on the next bench over. We had complained about the heat, complained how thirsty we were, complained about how there were not enough places to sit, where were we going to go once we got water because not many places looked shady by the waterside. We had already walked a long way to get to Pikes because I had accidentally gotten off one bus stop too early. So we had to walk quite a bit to get there, not to mention on the way we got slightly turned around because the GPS on my phone was acting weird. It took us exactly in the opposite direction for multiple blocks but looked as if we were going the right way.

 

 

So there we were, a crabby sort, bitching about the moment and the moments to come. We stood up to get our friggin’ water.  The guy that had been quietly sitting near us looked like he was living a hard life, most likely homeless. But he beamed ear to ear with a missing-tooth smile and said, “Don’t worry, be happy.” His whole face lit up with his smile, as if he was sharing the best gift he could give to a stranger, the gift of being in the moment. When you are going through struggles in life, especially infertility issues, it’s easy to get caught up in planning rather than living. This guy on the bench brought a smile to my face and I immediately was reminded that there is so much beauty around us, we just need to shut up and enjoy it. The timing could not have been better. I thought about it the rest of the day and I will probably remember that moment for a long time. I thanked him for his kind words and we enjoyed our water and walking around the market the rest of the day.

 

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