Bringing Up Babies in the Natural World

Apropos to Tina and my fertility treatment, parenthood in nature:

via Atheist Media

**UPDATE** I’ve put the other four videos below the fold.

D’Souza says he can prove NDEs, I mean, “Life After Death” (11.4.09)

Dinesh D’Souza proves how weird he is once again. Evidence without evidence is complete idiocy.

D’Souza provides hope for those who already had hope in such things.

Faith? We live in a “secular culture”?

His approach to science is about as non-scientific as Answers in Genesis.

Spicy Chicken Tortilla Soup

Monday’s dinner, spicy chicken tortilla soup topped with chopped cilantro and crumbled feta.

Let’s Go Trick or Treating at the Fertility Clinic

Just an update for all who are following our pursuit in fertility, Tina and I started shots on Friday evening. At the time, we still had guests over from dinner, but we had to get the shot done at around 8 p.m.

Tina, Tina’s cousin Kelly and I went into our bedroom and shut the door. Kelly held Tina down and I plunged the shot into Tina’s abdomin so hard that it knocked the wind out of her.

Not really .

Fortunately Kelly was there to help me administer the injection. Tina is deathly afraid of needles, and for the first couple doses, I decided that documenting the live action through video might not work right now. It would be interesting to view as a case study, but I’m not sure Tina would sign off on making that public. She’s the boss, so we’re going with that.

Basically, Kelly talked Tina through it. Tina’s emotions and adverse hate for needles made it difficult to be calm enough to go through with it. Once it’s done, the pinch is harsh enough to bother Tina. But I think she’s starting to see that it’s going to hurt a little. But after 10 minutes, the pain is gone and we’re golden.

Friday night, Tina complained of nausea, which is a common side effect. This might also been mixed with the entire emotional side of the first dose, and her adrenaline subsiding may have adversely affected her. Sunday morning, Tina complained of feeling bloated, which is a common side effect. She had to take her wedding rings off. Today she felt okay, but she took off her rings before bed, so who knows.

How it works (at least how I understand how it works) is, we give a series of 5 or 6 shots of a particular hormone that lead up to one major shot that causes a surge in fertility. The dose I’m giving Tina is 150 mg. When the allotted days are up and Tina enters ovulation, There is a window of time to deliver yet another semen sample into a cup. We bring the sample to the lab where they “wash” it and administer another injection into Tina with a blast of super sperm.

The super sperm fertilize 60 eggs and all grow and develop with amazing super human powers. In 9 short months, we’ll have a small population of super Wittifini’s that will be the beginning of the end of the universe.

I’m really not sure why there’s not a super hero based on fertility treatments.

There are possibilities of multiples in this treatment. Quite frankly, I would love to go ahead and rock out two to 90 kids. Okay, 90 might kill me Tina. How about three on the high side.

Three might be a little wacky, but hey, fertility fate may have different ideas for me.

In case you’re curious about it at all, here’s a quick video I found of a woman who is not affected by the pain of injection:

Holy Holly Holy Day Tree Yahoo Hooey Canoey

Julie over at Attempts at Rational Behavior wrote an enjoyable post about the Holiday Tree Hooha. <<– Go read it. It’s good.

The war on Christmas is the most manufactured hooey canoey since the birthers’ long-running and still perpetuated obsession with old Obama’s background. I saw yet another attempt to forward this load of easily disputed tripe in my inbox last week.

I’m quite positive that my own family considers these ideas to be major threats to their “freedom”. I don’t get it. I didn’t get it as a Christian, and I certainly don’t get it now.

I would love to have access to a liberal conspiracy theory that had any legs. Please, somebody, for the love of candy canes, tell me something of equal bullshit levels as the stuff that runs amok in the conservative bowel movement.

 

Are You Controlled by Hate?

Did Suicidal Tendencies have that much of an influence, or should we report this guy and his lovely lady to be the next shooter(s) in a homeland terrorist-style shooting?

Thanksgiving Started on Wednesday

On Wednesday Tina and I drove to Grand Rapids, Michigan to my maternal grandparents’ home. They live in a not-so-assisted-yet-slightly-assisted home. We rolled in around 6:30 or 6:45 eastern time from Chicago, and we immediately gathered around a small table with my Gs, my Ps, and my sister Kelly. We ate my mom’s excellent pea soup and some pigs in blankets (best I’d ever eaten) that my grandpa bought at a church bake sale.

The pigs were more like sausage in a crumbly, buttery dough bread. The ones I grew up eating were hot dogs wrapped in Pilsbury-style croissants.

After dinner, my dad and I walked over to a game room equipped with a couple computers to print out directions on how to get to his sister’s house in Waukegan, Michigan where we’d have Thanksgiving Dinner on Thursday night with the Witteveen clan. Thursday morning at 11 a.m., we had reservations at a restaurant to gather with my mom’s side of the family.

While dad was bumbling around on the computer to check his mail and search mapquest for directions, I found a Nintendo Wii hooked up to a flat-screen TV on the wall. I turned it on and bowled ten frames. My brother Jon called while I was on the 4th frame to tell us that he and SiL (my sweet Sister in Law) were decorating the house for Christmas. We got off the phone and I noticed I had bowled to frame eight.

My dad saw me bowling and wanted to give it a try, so I set up another Wii controller. He proceeded to kick my ass through the first 6 frames and I told him we should get back to the room before I had a temper tantrum mom killed us for being gone so long.

Wii Wii Wii all the way home

Not pictured: My sister Kelly and myself

 

The whole family ended up traipsing down to the game room for a romp on the Wii. It was fun.

No More Grumpy Kitty

Zoe gets a little jealous and grumpy when she shares her haunts with strangers. The last of the Thanksgiving guests have left this morning. My parents hit the road about 3:30 a.m. local. They’ll pull up in their driveway in North Carolina around 6 p.m. (1800). Driving is a bitch, but heh, it’s somewhat cheaper than flying, right?

I hope you had a lovely Turkey day and time spent with family was not only enjoyable and beneficial, but that every ounce of gravy was scraped out of that bowl called Love.

Thanksgiving Prayer William S Burroughs

Le Café Goes Batshit for Thanksgiving Holidays

It’s been relatively quiet around here the last few days. We’re gearing up for a holiday extravaganza. Tina and I are driving over to Michigan on Wednesday afternoon to spend T-day with my folks and as many of my mom’s family that will fit at lunch and as much as my dad’s family that will fit at dinner.

We’re driving back Thursday night, and we’ll be cooking for as much of Tina’s family that will fit in our house on Friday evening. My parents and sister Kelly are also going to be driving to our place on Friday too and will stay until Sunday morning. We are going to have a house full on Friday, 13 total. We couldn’t be more excited.

Although in French culture, if you’re scheduled to have 13 people at dinner, you set the table for 14. I’m going to put down 14 plates and put a nametag that reads “Yeshua” on number 14.

Honk.

It appears that we are going to be starting the shots for IUI this week, possibly Friday. So we’re really looking forward to that.

Apparently the possibility of twins is high for this kind of fertility treatment. That’s exciting, right? We could get a playmate out of the way straight away. I think I already like the second born better. Which one do you like?

Honk honk.

I would like to point out a conversation I’ve been having with a student named Micah from Bethal College over at my review of the “Collision” discussion panel. By all means, jump in on the conversation. We’ve talked about where morals come from and free will.

Micah is outshining most Christians I’ve ever had a conversation with in a legitimately intellectual conversation. I would go so far as to say he fares much more likable and positive for faith than Dr. Meister did. He’s hands-down more intelligent than every Christian who’s made an attempt to comment at Le Café. Kudos to Micah for outshining Naham, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi. They all have failed miserably.

In fact, I’m probably faring worse than he is at this point in terms of likable perception. He should be proud of himself.

He has a good eye for photography (as you can see). If I had one constructive criticism of his photos, it’s that he often frames out his subject’s feet or legs (which is ironically a metaphor for absence of foundation). But his use of available light is good, and frames for the most part are solid.

I’m not sure how much updating I’ll do on Wednesday to Sunday, but be sure to check in, for the occasional splattering of a quick bit or random picture. I’ll be taking lots of pictures and notes to update when we quiet down again, fo shay bitches.

Happy Thanksgiving. Thank Lincoln for giving us Thanksgiving and for the bright bulb who made it a recognized holiday, so we could take the day off, be surrounded by the love of friends and family and stuff ourselves silly like true Americans. If you can, lend a hand at a Thanksgiving for those who may be less fortunate.

I won’t be doing that year, unless you count some members of Tina’s family. Those unfortunate heathens. But you should definitely volunteer at a soup kitchen.