Spinal Staircase

Parenthood is an aching back from shoveling snow for hours coupled with a sincere and gentle request from over 80 pounds of daughters to be carried up the stairs to be put to bed. Something's gotta give, and it's gotta be the back.

March to the Sound of Nones

I got home today and immediately had a sense something was wrong. The sort of sense that something is out of place, or that something imminent was loitering in the air, or, that's it, something is missing. I stood for a moment, and I could hear myself breathing. That was it, I could hear myself breathing. The house was still, somehow even more still than when I awaken at 5:30'ish in the dark hours of the morning. Maybe it was the contrast of coming back home from a hectic day at work as opposed to coming downstairs right after waking up, but it was the most still sensation I have had in a long, long time. Five seconds after closing the door, I knew with complete confidence that Wifey and the children were out of the house running errands, which was perfectly fine. If they were not coming back, that would not be fine.

Having adjusted (more or less) to the daily pace of a young family and the centrifugal struggle of having three children and their energy flowing through our home, this one moment was positively shocking. And, cosmetically, I would expect to treasure any moment of peace. Surprisingly, I missed the energy, I missed the focus, I missed the purpose of having every second balanced on a knife's edge of joy and exhaustion.

The thought of living without children, maybe even combined with retirement down the road, seems like a husk or cruel facade of a life. This is enjoyable, so long as my youthful strength and vigor hold up.

Shady 3/2 Acres

It was a nice day to read books in the shade.

Serial Tiller

What a great weekend! After working a few small jobs in the wonderful Spring weather I to have some man-time, sweating in a shirtless toil as my skin slowly browns. Well, in the name of full disclosure it must be noted I'm redding, then browning. Full disclosure-plus mandates I note that laying down on a bench and lifting when reddened/browned is very uncomfortable, to boot.

But I digress... I found myself clinging desperately to a 100 pound, iron oxide coated monster augering its way through my garden. A kind friend loaned me a rototiller, all the better to engage in dominion over the wilderness that is (has been, really) my modest garden. The beast is about the same age I am, was clearly built before aluminum or stainless steel were commercially available, and was quite a handful to control. Knowing that, it was all the more remarkable that the machine, which I dubbed Tirpitz, started on the second pull and ran without fault for the whole morning. And that thing could chew up some dirt, I tell you what! The rototilling was preceded by extensive slashing, clipping, sawing, and digging to clear the lot, then burning all the debris along with extra piles of branches from the pear and apple trees (shown above with Sarah Joy).

This is all good news. Wifey has seedlings coming up (including about 1/2 dozen chestnut trees), the blueberry bushes are no longer choked out, and all the derelict trees that threaten structures or safety are down. And we have a tire swing up for Sweetness and Sarah Joy! Our property is slowly, painstakingly, taking shape. There will be work to do as long as we live in this blessed house, but it's starting to look less like a wildlife preserve and more like Eden. Or, at least our little slice of it.

Here Comes The BOOM, Ready or Not

In early autumn, there were 2 days of very high winds. One of those days the long-dead tree on our property came down. Hard. Wifey and I looked into our backyard to discover the tree, which was easily big enough to wipe out the deck and part of the house, fell lying almost perfectly north-south. No structural damage to our house OR the kindly 75 year old lady who lives next door. Very fortunate we are. To sweeten the deal even more, I was able to parlay this event into the purchase of a chainsaw and a maul for the clean-up. Let's just say we have ample firewood.

Rotted out completely at the base

One foot, two foot, cut right through foot

The beautiful looks & cute outfit are from Mommy, the mug of coffee on the job is all Daddy

First fire at the new house!

Christmas

Do you remember when Christmas was THIS awesome? I don't just mean getting this fired up over some long-coveted gift. I mean getting this fired up over finding things like Tic-Tacs in your stocking.

Merry Christmas from our family.

Merry Christmas from the military-industrial-congressional complex

My Fair Ladies

The family recently spent an evening taking in a local fair. Where else can you:

• watch riding lawnmowers belch white smoke and take corners at 25 mph
• spend $23 for a greasy (albeit tasty) dinner and walk away thankful that the lady didn't charge for the bottle of water
• see your child defy gravity
• think it's OK that half of the teenage boys are wearing their high school football jersey
• spend some quality time with livestock

The ladies are pumped for the carousel

Good looking? Yes. Resembling her father? No.

Sarah Joy momentarily decides the fair is overrated. Wifey momentarily decides Sarah Joy is overrated

Radial acceleration=(velocity^2)/(radius of rotation)

Daddy, the #4 tractor is running a little rich

Where's my soundtrack? I wanted 'Ride of the Valkyries'!

Raise Snorkel

Raising snorkel; it's what most of the world's submarines still do every so often as a way of getting a breath of fresh air. We have been beyond busy the past month or so. Bulletized rundown:

• Samuel is doing GREAT. He has yet to catch up to his sister's for weight at 8 weeks of age, but he's smiling, and even laughing now. Very jovial, borderline jolly, he may be destined to be a gregarious fat man.
• Sweetness just started her second year of preschool. The socialization is good, but the academics of Pre-Kindergarten aren't going to benefit her much, since she now reads letters & cards she gets in the mail on her own.
• Sarah Joy is now talking, combining words and getting clearer by the day. Her feats of strength are already legendary in the toddler community. Seriously, she's BOSS, I'm afraid her build will be more like mine than Wifey's
• Wifey has really bounced back well from the delivery of Samurai. In the past few weeks she has absolutely slaughtered the furniture & appliance market (see next item)
• On the home front, I've cleared many vines, with more to go, prepared & sealed the deck, we're getting cable TV Sunday, have hosted many friends, purchased a used 21+ cubic foot freezer (like new, from acquaintances, $125!), Two wingback chairs (about $800, after an extended warranty), a futon for guests to sleep on (less than 1/2 price, $115!), and a patio set (couch, 2 large chairs, coffee table, originally $800, today only for $250!!!)
• Think about this: we've been in this house for about 12 weeks, and have only had DVDs to watch, and not really missed a thing. Only football convinced us to get cable.
• I've averaged 50 hours a week at work the past few weeks, and next week promises more of the same. Great timing! The gremlins have been at work again at our companion shipyard down South. It's worse than the papers let on. The best day had me at work at 5:00 A.M., leaving for 2 hours to pitch a softball game that went an unheard of (for that league) 90 minutes (we rallied from down 14-2 to win 22-21!), then back to work until 11:30 P.M. Wifey has been very supportive, but it's tough on the kids.
• ...and Paul K. finally retired at work. The last guy with more experience than me at work. A 70 year old Vietnam Vet (USMC). I will miss that man. Not just for the extra burden I now have on the job, but for a little perspective.
• Fantasy football starts in earnest on Sunday. I got Drew Brees as my QB... but I had Tom Brady last year.
• Go Lions
• Go Tigers
• I bought a chainsaw, hope to break that out in a little over a week. Pray for my fingers.
• I listened to the Neil Young album Harvest Moon last night, it was the first time I've had the time to enjoy an entire album at home in some time. I cannot recommend it highly enough. It's a warm campfire, throwing off gentle light that somehow just makes the surrounding darkness even more overwhelming and oppressive.

Hopefully I won't go 6 weeks before posting again

Receiving to Ourselves Samnation

Samuel Stewart
Sarah Joy greeting in the way of her people

The lesson, as always: Don't leave you sunglasses behind when visiting the hospital, because sick people will find them

More syrupy sweetness

We have met our newest family member, all 7#, 7 ozs. of him. Samuel Stewart arrived at 11:07 P.M. Thursday night, after Wifey labored for 15 hours. She managed to hammer out the delivery in only 2 pushes once the time came, which was most impressive. That all the more so, since there were no pain meds whatsoever in Wifey's body when the active labor began. An impressive performance, and she and our new son are both flourishing. The staff and facilities at the hospital were great. Best of all, Sweetness and Sarah Joy both really took a liking to their baby brother. We kind of expected Sweetness to enjoy him, because she was very excited during the pregnancy, but we were completely blown away that Sarah Joy was so enthusiastic to hold the newest member of the family. I'll save the syrupy details, but it's been great. The icing on the cake is that Samnation slept great the first night here. That is likely to change as time goes on (like tonight, maybe), but it made for a nice first night home.

We were fortunate enough to receive a dinner provided by another young family from the church, which is part of a ritual I like to call Fellowship By Carbohydrates or The Great Casserole Siege. It's awesome, especially if you like to eat, as I do.

Good To Be Back

Sorry about the absence. A combination of technical difficulties and rough schedule have conspired to keep me away for some time. An update of what's been going on:

• Our house sold, then, due to the buyer's credit record, unsold. A word to the wise: If you're financing 100% of the purchase of a home (haven't we learned that's not so wise?), make sure to keep up your student loan payments.
• Sarah Joy has begun using words. This is a serious upgrade from grunting and screaming.
• Sweetness turns 4 years old Sunday. We took her to the doctor to get a vaccination, she stared at the needle the whole time it was in her arm, and she didn't even whimper. Impressive. I have lately found myself doing foolish things and internally saying "my 4 year old daughter is better than that. This provides some parenting insight: we are more intelligent, faster, stronger, more mature, and more experienced than our children. We are not better, and to think otherwise is to become a stumbling block to raising our children into upstanding adults.
• We discovered that the baby Wifey is carrying, due mid-July, is a boy. Could not be more excited, so to explain any more would just fail to convey.
• My job has shifted, for the moment, from checking calculations and putting out fires to acting as a sort of iron-mongering interior decorator for submarines. Want a giant hatch? Need some motion synthesis for a linkage? Will that be a power screw or a hydraulic cylinder? For a dork, this is a breath of fresh air after rooting out old mistakes on drawings and new mistakes on 400 page calculations for over a year. One thousand, one hundred, fifty pages and counting in the past 9 months.
• I was just patting myself on the back for pioneering the use of "monger" as a verb. Alas, a quick self-check of Merriam-Webster (who needs editors if you proof read?) showed that I am no pioneer, after all. Ergo, mongering is the word of the day.
• Started playing Warhammer: Dark Omen for original PlayStation on my PS2. Awesome game, makes me want to bring back words like "stoked". I'm sure I'll follow up with an entry on this gem.
• Wifey and I watched Stranger Than Fiction a few weeks ago. Strange, but very sweet movie. It really drew me in, and I loved it.

That's enough for now. More to follow, hopefully soon.

Michigan, Again

We headed across the upper reaches of the U.S. again this year to visit my family for Christmas. We made the veteran parenting move of taking Sarah Joy to the doctor the day before to ensure antibiotics were available to combat her persitent head cold. The I Tell You What family does not advocate antibiotics to counter mild and transient illnesses, but you DO NOT want that spreading into a major respiratory thing as you drive cross country and sleep in unfamiliar surroundings. Just trust me. We were very fortunate on the trip to my grandmother's house, the worst weather we encountered was rain until about 50 miles from her home. Then it was the usual Michigan grind of ridiculously heavy snow.

It's remarkable to span so much distance in a single drive. The beginning is from coastal Connecticut through hilly Massachusetts and eastern New York. The hills fade to pancake-flat western New York and southern Ontario, with raptors (this kind, not this kind) acting as sentinels every mile or two in the treetops. Then it's into the woodlands of Michigan once you exit the Thumb area. There it's forests, forests, and forests. The snow was deep, and the dark nights there mock your car's puny headlights. As we approached our destination we saw deer (naturally), turkeys (a foot from the windshield!), an elk herd (only me, everyone else was napping), a bald eagle, and, once we reached my mother's house, a pileated woodpecker big enough to fly off with one of the children.
The time with family was fantastic. Being in a rural area truly does slow things down. You can wait an entire day for something to happen, and it doesn't feel like you're missing anything else important. It was also an opportunity for Sweetness and Sarah Joy to enjoy some things we don't get much of on the coast.

1. Chickens- My mother has a bootleg-egg production up & running. It's great for the girls (Sweetness, here) to get a look at a small farm. Not many people really get an intimate look at where any sort of food comes from these days. I can't wait to see what else is in store for Grandma T's 20 acres of paradise.

2. Sledding- When snow is abundant, there is one thing that is easy to arrange. This is one of the downhill runs where Sarah did not take out her Grandpa at the knees.

3. Snow machines- My cousin rode her (that's right, her, and she could beat you in a race, I'd wager) snowmobile over to our grandmother's house on Christmas day to join the family celebration. All the great grandchildren were offered rides. Here is Sweetness taking advantage of the offer. This is how we celebrate the birth of Sweet Baby Jesus in the Winter Wonderland.

Did Somebody Leave The Parking Brake On?

I recently completed the second and final run of the 2008 I Tell You What race circuit. The EBAC Fall Challenge provided a little bit more challenge than the previous weekend's Tarzan Brown run. While the course was shorter, I had a stomach ache so did not eat much breakfast. Also, I am optimized for cold weather running, so low 60's and humid causes me to struggle a little bit. As a result, my pace was notceably slower (6:57 per mile) than the previous weekend. It was still a very nice outing for the family, as the girls were able to play by the beach and were gracious enough to cheer for me as I sputtered my way across the finish line. My time was still OK, better than any year I've participated in the Fall Challenge. Having Wifey prepare me breakfast and being consistent with my training runs (with a 22 year old to pace me) certainly helped. Now that I've had time to recover and rest, my overworked knees are feeling much better, to boot. Here are a few photographs of the morning:

A little time with my ladeez
Relaxed/fatalistic beforehand

My fans, minus Wifey

Gratuitous submarine picture from race morning at Ocean Beach, because that's how we get down on I Tell You What

Wheezing my way across the finish line, ending the 2008 race season

Super Mega Garden Monsters

The sprawling I Tell You What estate includes a small garden. This not only provides some fresh produce, but also allows Sweetness to learn a bit about the world around her. I Tell You What, every kid should have a chance to be around plants to understand where so much of our food comes from. This year, we all learned a little bit about some garden monsters. This is in addition to the ongoing Great Wasp War.

I apologize for the poor quality of the photo above, but this picture of a tobacco hornworm is the only one I took that provided any sort of perspective. What a juggernaut! The thing was fierce some, it looks as though my daughter's hand is in jeopardy. Fortunately, hornworms are harmless. I was very surprised to discover that the white things on its back are not the eggs of a parasitic wasp, but the coccoons of wasp larvae that had already done their damage. Indeed, the hornworm hung on that branch for a few days before croaking. Not that I felt bad for the beast. It consumed an entire branch (almost 2 feet long) of our enormous cherry tomato plant, and at least a half of a large beefsteak tomato. This is the equivalent to Sarah Joy eating an entire giant pumpkin.
Last week I had a much more rewarding insect encounter. While mowing the lawn I saw an adult praying mantis running for the cover of our hydrangea bush. What a fascinating critter! Sweetness was enthralled by the hefty insectivore, but was a little intimidated. The praying mantis was a great study. She (I think it was a female) moved around a bit on our deck, but mostly hung out and cleaned her arms (equipped with iron maiden grip!) After a short while, we released her into one of our large blueberry bushes. Maybe she will lay an egg sack, and next year we can have a few more of these auspicious critters around.

These were great experiences for the children and adults of our family alike. I Tell You What, though, if I see these guys mixing it up in our back yard, I'm moving back to Michigan:

The Good Life

The Good Life, as illustrated above, is having that biscuit and never havin' to risk it. The intriguing Hunter S. Thompson once wrote that you can turn your back on a person, but that you can never turn your back on a drug. If by "drug" he meant "fat baby within 18 inches of a cheddar biscuit", he was right on. Sarah really thought she was getting away with something by nabbing the unattended baked goods straight off the table, as Wifey turned her back for an instant to address some need of our other daughter. A few brief seconds and two bites later, you can see all that remains in the picture. I suppose the cheddar biscuit tastes so much better when you think you're a rebel.

Look at that picture. Could anybody possibly think that she needs to steal food to get her daily nutrition?

Incomplete Sentience

Sarah Joy has made remarkable strides in development in the past few weeks. She is pulling up to a standing position, making attempts to speak, and making waving and clapping hand gestures. This is exciting stuff, from a parenting perspective. She is also, as pictured above, showing a trait fundamental to the ability to reason intelligently: being drawn to the game of football. Of course, her path to awareness is not complete, because she hasn't figured out that she can't hold the ball that far from her body for very long without fumbling. I'm excited, as usual, for the start of football this year. As I write, most NFL games from the season's first Sunday have been completed, and NCAA football is 2 weeks into its season. This season holds less promise for me personally for the following reasons:

• The University of Michigan offense is about as consistent as coach Rich Rodriguez's sense of ethics. All I can say to this point is that we are 2 games closer to the end of his tenure.
• The Detroit Lions. In general. Pick your reason. I will cheer because I am beholden by honor, but I am not deceived.

In the meantime, there is a Sunday night game about to get going. I need to watch.

Confessions of a Bad Person

• I recently was pulling giant vine roots up from our backyard when the time came to go inside and bathe the children. Wifey was out on an errand, and it's normally a fun time for everybody, so this was a good thing. I was pretty dirty from my outdoor labors. I washed my hands, but upon inspection they weren't really "clean" in the literal sense. Should I continue to scrub vigorously so that my precious children have clean hands bathing them? The decision: there is soap involved, so just toss the kids in the tub and we'll all scrub clean together. Not like the kids care, judging by the things of questionable nutritional value that they try to eat when outside.
• I play basketball sometimes with the boy across the street. Matt is about 12 years old, and not particularly good at basketball. He constantly asks me to play, and I do like to oblige sometimes because his own father is pretty sick and definitely is not going to play any basketball any time soon. Normally, I let Matt hang in there, or even get a lead, before "squeaking" out a close victory. The other day, though, he got pretty cocky, and jacked me in the face while I was driving to the hoop. The hit was accidental, for the record, but it's happened a few times before. Now fully motivated, I ripped off about 8 straight points (game to 13 by 1's) and finished the game with a dunk. Of course, this was possible because Matt often lowers his roadside hoop to 7-8 feet from the regulation 10 feet. Still, I dribbled by him, had a clear path to the hoop, and put down a double-clutch, two-handed, thundering, nasty, this-is-how-75-pounds-of-bodyweight-and-10-inches-of-height-bigger-than-you-gets-down. I've never gotten to do that in any sort of game, so it was fun. And Matt got to play basketball, which was good. And he was pretty tired, so I really think he wanted the game to be done. Still, I think my apartment in heaven may have gotten knocked down from a 1 bedroom to a studio for the evil way that I enjoyed winning that game

The Future's So Bright...

How do you maintain a cool image when you are bald, dress primarily in overalls and singlets, are robustly chubby, and don't even have a smooth manner of speaking? Accessorize:
It doesn't hurt to hang out with a posse that knows how to party

If ZZ Top saw this abuse of cheap sunglasses, they'd be suing for royalties.

See You On Down the Oregon Trail

My mother and grandmother spent the last week or so at the I Tell You What residence. It was a great visit. We normally drive out to Michigan to visit them, and the simple act of traveling 900+ miles in a car seat leaves our daughter ragged before we even arrive. Then throw in excited relatives, sleeping in unfamiliar beds, and the occasional travel sickness, and it can be wearying. In other words, it was very convenient for us to be the hosts this time around. Sweetness slept well every night, didn't have eat a single happy meal, and got her naps in. Her personality has really developed, and it was great to see her interact with her grandmother and great-grandmother. Except for her pleading with them to stay up later when her evil father was putting her to bed. Of course, it was also the first time anybody from my extended family met Sarah Joy. This was also great, because she's a very happy baby, and looks eerily like my father. My grandmother also had time to tell a lot of stories from when she was younger. I heard a lot of stories about family members who I never even met, and a few about family members that I am familiar with. I was dismayed to discover that my ancestors from that side of the family came from... (sob)... Canada. I'm still not over that one. I like to pretend that they headed straight to Buffalo, NY, from Ellis Island, then marched through Ontario before realizing they had committed a navigational error, and crossing back to Detroit. One thing that was abundantly clear: life in rural places was hard work. If a person lectures you about how easy you've got it, they are simply a scold and you wish they would leave. If you ask them to tell you, it's enriching. These people lived an existence that was a struggle to keep your head above water, but every action toward preparing for the next season was a fruitful one. You busted your tail, hopefully avoided disasters beyond your control, harvested, and prepared for the next planting season. A trivial comparison that keeps coming to mind is Oregon Trail. You get cholera, the kids get dysentery or break legs, and your wagon wheel falls off. Then you spend 3 days hunting and only get some rabbits and squirrels. And all that is just to have the chance... to bust your tail farming on the West Coast instead of in Missouri.
I think there are still plenty of pitfalls in modern life. It's just that those pitfalls can not be avoided or overcome through physical vitality and work ethic. Is your 401K money invested prudently? Is your home worth less than you bought it for? Is the cost of living overwhelming your stagnant wages, in addition to having added children to your family? Do you work year-round, when even a farmer could cool his heels during winter? At times, it can seem preferable to take your chances going to bed exhausted from outdoor work, free from concerns about your child's down-the-road college education, and thankful that nobody has fallen sick that day.

Last Man Standing

I apologize for the break in posts, but it has been a tough few weeks, with the return to full-time work and Sarah Joy's failure to understand the night is for sleeping while the day is for exploring the world around her. Wifey (see Heart Matters link on the left side of this page) has been doing a fantastic job, and last night was one of the most peaceful yet, so I still hold out hope that we can make this work. Speaking of work, there have been developments. I have been at my employer for 6.5 years now, and have learned a lot. As I am fond of saying, you learn something new every day if you are not careful. I've been shuffled between a few different mechanical systems, and, through focus and a few errors, have picked up valuable lessons about how to analyze, troubleshoot, and even how the industry works. This is a great thing, except this works best when you have somebody more experienced to shelter you from the big mistakes. The highest form of this art is becoming the Old Man In The Back (OMIT-B), the guy who always knows what questions to ask to come to a quick resolution of any problem, and who is really just killing time until somebody approaches him with something novel or new for him to entertain him. Well, my engineering group has had such severe attrition over the past year that the only person remaining for me to lean on for help was the OMIT-B. My group went from something like 12 to 6 people in that time, but as long as the OMIT-B was around I could hold my own. Now the company is reassigning the OMIT-B to work on another project. Yes, the move is for the greater good of the company. Yes, he'll still work for the same company, but he's being physically moved to another location, and will certainly be too busy to spend much time helping my group out. That means that over a period of just over 6 years, I am the Last Man Standing working on the mechanical portions of the weapon systems of our... ahem, product. Not through guts, guile, or gumption, but simply staying in the same place long enough to learn a few things and for everybody else to just... go away. I guess life really is mostly just showing up.

By the way, that picture up top is Arnold Schwarzennegger as Dutch in the movie Predator. After defeating a 7' tall intergalactic hunter in man-to-whatever combat, he truly was the last man standing. That may be a worthwhile post in the near future right there!

Lies, Damn Lies, & Statistical Methods

This post is very long, and boring through significant sections. It is essential that you read the introduction and the I Tell You What big finish. The discussion section is optional, but hopefully informative.

Introduction: Due to some past events, Wifey and I found ourselves at the Yale New Haven Hospital. Right, as if there is a Yale Albany to confuse people. This is a world class institution, beyond a doubt. There those world class medical technicians were, performing tests on Wifey to evaluate if everything was OK with the pregnancy. The tech paused, and really lingered on one shot. Wifey & I exchanged a glance, because you're supposed to breeze through these things, right? The image was similar to the one below, and she was zooming in on the neck area until the resolution looked something like one of those fakes of a Sasquatch roaming the forests of the Pacific Northwest.

We were informed that the nuchal thickness was either 2.8 or 2.9 mm, depending on which side of the fuzzy gray pixelated line the tech chose for her measurement. The doctor was called in to review the measurements, and this questionable data was coupled with a quad screen to inform us that the pregnancy was "positive" for Down Syndrome. Some days you eat the bear, other days, the bear eats you.

Discussion: This doctor (hereafter: Dr. Who) was in for a surprise, as most swamp Yankees or NYC socialites referred to him are not (A) educated in statistical sampling and test methods, or (B) of generally dour and dorky disposition. I proceeded to fire off questions about his criteria for test, for evaluation, and how they compared to other accredited institutions. It seems that:

• Some relationship was developed between this measurement and the likelihood of a 11-13 week-along baby to have Down Syndrome (DS)
• Above this "normal" measurement the likelihood of DS is increased, although not guaranteed, and continues to increase as the measurement increases
• "Normal" is often well over 3mm in terms of a "positive" DS result
• Dr. Who personally adjusted the "positive" criteria back one standard deviation to the mean

Confused? Don't be. A sample spread (many are shifted, or flatter, or steeper, but this is a good example) of any population characteristic may be illustrated as below: I do not recall how many standard deviations this doc pulled towards the mean, but the result is this: more "positive" results. I'm roughing the numbers, but if the normal incidence of DS for a lady in her 20's (best case scenario) is 1/1500 (0.06%), you're almost 5 standard deviations from the mean. Given a normal false positive rate of this sort of screening is 5% (see Table 1 here) combined with ratcheting the criteria to, say, 4 standard deviations, you increased the confidence interval by about 0.06%. This means that on top of the existing 5% false positive rate inherent to the testing methods, Dr. Who has DOUBLED the number of ultrasounds reporting "positive" for DS.

Normally, such a move is great for the patient. By invoking greater scrutiny on a borderline or within-sight-of-the-borderline patients, you are more likely to catch conditions and allow treatment to proceed.

Did I mention there is no cure for DS? It gets better.

We were sat down with a "genetic counselor" to discuss Dr. Who's flux capacitor results alongside a quad screen, which is a blood test of both parents. Let me interject that quad screens, per Wikipedia, have a 7.5% false positive rate. Anyway, Wifey & I Tell You What have pretty good health, and a reasonable genetic slate. No Olympians in our clan, but no complaints. Long story short, something like a 1 in 50 chance of our baby having DS. Our options were presented as follows:

• Abortion
• Amniocentesis
• Wait for further testing in 8-10 weeks and pray for good results

I took option 1 off the table immediately, and amniocentesis, which is essentially sticking a needle in to draw off amniotic fluid for direct DNA testing, was never a realistic option for us since abortion was not in the cards. We informed her that we would wait for Round 2 of testing before deciding to keep our baby anyway. The lady was... lukewarm to my approach, but she had no authority to make any decisions. We put our faith in God to give us the strength to handle whatever happened. Now, through no credit of our own, we have our second beautiful, and quite healthy to this point, daughter from that pregnancy.

I Tell You What!: One critical statistic, where I can site the Washington Post, Wikipedia, or Time Magazine, is that over 90% of pregnancies with a DS diagnosis result in abortion. Why is this critical? For doctors to allow a high false positive rate is often benign, because early treatment is a desirable thing and more invasive subsequent testing can correct false positives. With DS, that is not the case. There is no treatment that can help the baby, other than to prepare the parents for the surely difficult task of raising a DS child. Additionally, if the mother is willing to consider abortion as a "cure", then what are the odds she's going to wait for further results, if that means staying pregnant for 2 more months (no cakewalk) or have a needle stuck in a very uncomfortable place? Judging by the 90%+ number, not very likely at all.

But why are false positives really allowed in the first place? Insurance companies (the guys writing the checks for all this testing) are mavens for cost efficiency. Some live, some die, keep cost down, because that's the way it was meant to be. BUT, extra false positives mean MORE testing, MORE doctor visits, MORE screenings. Insurance companies hate that sort of stuff. Unless... they are fully aware of the likelihood of a positive DS screening result. Based on my knowledge of miscarriages, a D&C is an outpatient procedure. It involves an OB, let's say it costs $1,000 to $1,500 (guessing, folks). It is also the coup de main of an abortion. Now, a full term pregnancy, following the decision point of this DS testing, will involve a handful of doctor's appointments, perhaps including a few extra ultrasounds because of the initial "positive" result. This is assuming no additional complications, mind you. Then there is the delivery, which may involve a few trips to the hospital triage room for monitoring before being sent home. When the baby is actually delivered, you're looking at 2 nights in the hospital, a battery of tests on the newborn and THEN 18 years of dependent care, largely covered by... the insurance companies. And I have to assume that if the child really does have DS those medical costs, especially the portions covered by insurance, skyrocket.

Folks, I haven't even touched on the wellspring of material provided by the argument that people with Down Syndrome are, well, people. I may have gotten kicked out of the living room by my mother when I was a kid for making fun of Corky Thatcher, but I never would have denied him his humanity.

Time to wrap this up, it's late. Special thanks for inspiration to Patricia E. Bauer of the Washington Post of Friday, November 16, 2007; Page A33. What have we learned?

• The bodies that God has designed are not yet fully understood by modern medicine
• Doctors are making assumptions, just like you are when you head to your typical gas station because the price there is normally lower or buy size 11 shoes because they normally fit well
• There are always pressures in our societies coming from directions or levels that we often do not expect or realize that provide motives for the people we interact with. That motive can be expected to involve money.
• Sarah Joy's recent arrival was a blessing, and worth the wait