Yesterday, the wife and I made a trip to Lebanon, NH (see previous post). Before we even left town, I was finishing up a pipeful of tobacco. There wasn’t anything left but dottle in the bottom of the bowl so, as I was cruising down the road, I steered with my knee, while cleaning my pipe out with my pipe nail.

I emptied the bowl out the window, cleaned it a bit more and once again, dumped the bowl out the window. In a cruel twist of fate, I bumped my arm against the window, which was just enough to make me lose my grip on the pipe. My poor pipe hit the pavement at 30 miles per hour. “Oh, Shit!” I exclaimed. My wife looked over at me (she was actually watching me with alarm because of my dangerous driving habits, so she knew immediately what had happened) and said “Oh shit, is right.”

I pulled over and turned into a bank parking lot, and ran back for my pipe. Dodging traffic, I looked at my poor, helpless pipe, straddling the center line. I could tell it was hopeless, even as I approached. The pipe had broken along the stem, splitting the briar wood neatly. I picked up the pieces and returned to our mini-van sadly.

My wife gave me a sympathetic “Serves you right.” As we continued on our journey.

That night, I went online and I ordered 2 more pipes from Cup O’ Joes.

These are relatively cheap pipes, costing about 25 bucks each, including shipping. They should arrive in a few days.

(Thats Lebanon, NH, not Lebanon, the small, mountainous, country in the middle-east.)

The wife and I are trying to have a baby, and currently, the wife is undergoing a Clomid Challenge to determine if she can produce an adequate number of eggs for the process. Since she had a tubal ligation many years ago, before we even met, we need to get pregnant by in Vitro fertilization.

Yestarday (Wednesday) was Day 3 of her cycle, so we had to get blood work done to establish a baseline. I took a day off from work, and we picked up our godson, Mathew whom Cindy babysits for, and headed north to Lebanon and the Dartmouth-Hitchcock hospital there. After they took her blood, we went to our chinese/japanese restaurant in downtown Lebanon, a little place called Tokyo Peking (or Peking Tokyo – I can’t remember, isn’t that funny?).

Next, starting on Day 5, she has to start taking Clomid, and then on Day 10 (next Wednesday) we go back for more blood work. We get the results a week later.

This post is about my step-daughter, Amber.

She just recently (last week) got braces. I had been meaning to post this tidbit, but I wanted to wait until I had a picture of her smiling with her braces. She’s a self-conscious 15 year-old, so you can imagine that my quest to get a picturre of her has resulted in lots of pictures of her hands in front of her face, or pictures of a swirl of hair, and the back of her head.

She is also trying out for softball this week. I borrowed a glove and some softballs from my brother-in-law, and I had to buy a second glove and a bat ($40 total) so we could practice. The tryouts are pretty competitive, and not everyone gets in, so i really wanted to get some practice in last week. We stupidly waited for the weather to warm up slightly — Didn’t happen.

So, this weekend we went out for a few hours each day to toss around the softball, in the bitter cold, and biting wind. It was shaky at first, for both of us, since neither of us had much practice. We improved by about 300% by Sunday, in both throwing and catching. I hope its good enough. Tryouts are Today through Wednesday. Hopefully we will have more time to practice tonight and tomorrow night.

This is an interesting, belated St. Patrick’s Day tidbit. Apparently, in Chicago, they dye the river green for St. Patty’s Day!!

Check out some live reporting from Chicago by local (to me anyway) blogger Lorainne: Green River: Hoarded Ordinaries

I’ve decided to track our “baby quest” here on this blog.

Our next steps, as instructed by our fertility doctor, was to take a Clomid Challenge Test. This is a test that Cindy will take in order to determine her ability to produce lots of eggs:

The clomid challenge test is an examination of female hormone levels which uses the medication clomid (clomiphene citrate) to enhance the findings of women with decreased ovarian reserve. The clomid challenge test is also known as the clomid challenge, the clomiphene challenge test, the clomiphene citrate challenge or simply CCCT.

Essentially, on the 3rd day of the next “Cycle” we will have to go in and get bloodwork done. On the 5th day, my wife has to start taking a medicine called Clomid. On the 10th day, we go back, get bloodwork again. About a week later we get the results. We’ve already identified that Wednesday we will have to go in for the first, baseline, blood test.

So, what then? If the hormone levels look good, we can proceed with the IVF process. If they do not look good, we will have to look at some other options, such as egg-donation, surrogacy, or adoption, pretty much in that order.

Jabberwocky

‘Twas brillig and the slithy toves
did gyre and gimble in the wabe
All mimsy were the borogoves
And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son,
The jaws that bite; the claws that catch.
Beware the Jubjub bird and shun
the frumious Bandersnatch.”

He took his vorpal sword in hand,
Long time the manxome foe he sought
So rested he by the Tumtum tree
And stood a while in thought.

And as in uffish thought he stood
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood
and burbling as it came.

One, Two. One, Two, Through and through,
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack.
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

“Hast though slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my armes, my beamish boy!
Oh, frabjous day! Calloo! Callay!”
He chortled in his joy.

‘Twas brillig and the slithy toves
did gyre and gimble in the wabe
All mimsy were the borogoves
And the mome raths outgrabe.
I typed the above from memory, if you can believe that.

I typed the above from memory, if you can believe that.Last night when I got home from work, my son immediately started in with me, wanting help with his homework. “I have to memorize this whole thing!” He said, and then he started reading, from a sheet of paper, the above poem by Lewis Carroll.

He stopped on the second line of the first stanza, and said “How am I supposed to memorize this whole thing!”

“Thats easy.” I said, and I proceeded to quote the entire poem for him. The look on his face was priceless, and I spent the better part of the night helping him memorize Jabberwocky.