Party Time!

I was back in Reno a couple weeks ago for a baby party (“shower” doesn’t do it justice), and what a party it was! I cannot thank Nicole O’Neil enough for planning, inviting, hosting, and catering the most fabulous celebration despite her own pregnancy woes. Nicole, you are the best!!!

There were so many others who helped, too, with games, making food, coordinating a group gift, set-up, clean-up, etc. and I SO appreciate everyone’s efforts. I know there were many who had to arrange babysitters so they could be there and others whose lives are super busy, but still made the time to come. I called David afterward and told him how I was totally overwhelmed with the outpouring of love and friendship I felt. On behalf of all three of us: thank you, thank you, thank you!

I don’t have many pictures, but here are a few (thanks KK for your photography).

The hostess with the mostest (kind of a funny angle of my tummy)

Leave it to the Lynchs to find the best seats in the house!

Louisiana 2-1-1

I am happy to report that we escaped Gustav's clutches unscathed. After three solid days of rain, the water never breached our driveway line so those of you who were looking for pictures of me on CNN floating down the street on my air mattress with 72-hour kit in tow (Lindsay H.) must have been sorely disappointed.

There were, however, many in the state who were not quite so fortunate. I volunteered at the Louisiana 2-1-1 call center which is supposed to be a resource where residents can call for information and assistance. When the coordinator explained what I'd be doing, she said they'd been getting a lot of phone calls from people wanting to know where hurricane shelters were located and needing directions of how to get to them. I decided not to tell her that spatial awareness and sense of direction are not on my list of "talents" especially in a new place with no mountains. When I told David what I was going to be doing he said, "Oh, boy! Some poor guy is gonna end up in Florida looking for a shelter." (please note that Hannah AND Ike were headed straight for Florida at that point).

I am happy to report that there were only a few calls requiring direction-giving, thus minimizing the damage I could do. There were lots of requests for tarps to cover damaged roofs, people wanting to know where they could get water and ice, and lots of people wanting to know how they could, "git my money from the gov'ment."

When I volunteered, I envisioned being stationed at a Red Cross check point handing out vital, life-sustaining supplies to the needy. Instead, I was answering phones as the bearer of bad news: "I will take your information for a tarp and hopefully (doubtfully) someone will call you back with a distribution location in the next 24 hours. Yes, I understand there is water gushing through your roof and destroying all of your personal belongings so I'll pass your information along right away;" "Well, I'm in Shreveport, so I can't tell you where to get ice in Baton Rouge, but try asking around." (I refrained from adding, "Of course, asking around is going to be difficult since everyone else in Baton Rouge heeded the mandatory evacuation and got the heck out of town!!!"); and finally, "Sorry, ma'am but because this storm damage was not declared a national catastrophe, there is no money available from the gov'ment."

There were many people with whom I spoke, however, that just needed a listening ear and those conversations made the day seem worth while. So, we bid a fond farewell to Gustav and send our best wishes to those preparing for Hannah. It looks like I'll be skipping town just in time for Ike to make it our way. Reno, here I come!:)

Gustav

This week is going to be interesting for the good people of Louisiana. The evacuation orders have been issued for the southern cities and the north-bound traffic in our area is heavy with several shelters here in Shreveport. Every public school is closed until at least Thursday because they sent all the buses down south to help evacuate people. David said they are slammed at the hospital with all the transfers from New Orleans.

We got out our 72-hour kits on Thursday when it was announced that Gustav was projected to hit Louisiana. We had a few things that needed to be replaced so we went to Wal-Mart and it was a mad house with jugs of water in short supply. Fortunately, we were able to get the things we needed without too much trouble. People at church today were talking about trying to go to the grocery store last night (just 2 days after our shopping trip) and being told by the Fire Marshall that no more people were allowed in the building.

It looks Gustav should be a tropical storm by the time it hits us in northern Louisiana on Tuesday/Wednesday so we’ll only get 75 mph winds instead of 150mph…phew! We’re bracing ourselves for a lot of rain, flooding and potential power outages, but should be just fine. Thank you to those who have called, emailed, posted blog comments or just sent thoughts our way to see if we’re OK. We will be sure to keep you updated.

Does this mean we have to cross “Gustav” off our list of potential names for our first-born son?

By the way, when updating our 72-hour kits I came across the most delectable, high-calorie snack: those construction-zone orange crackers held together by highly processed cheddar cheese filling. David noticed the empty wrappers (yes, that is ‘wrappers’ with a plural ‘s’) on the coffee table and said, “What happened to the crackers?” I sheepishly replied, “The baby thought they looked good.”

Does this picture make your mouth water, or is it just me?

PS-Yes, I did publish 3 posts in 24 hours. Can you tell that David is pretty busy at the hospital?:)

Gems from the E.R.

Tonight is David’s last night on the Emergency Room service. He has gleaned some valuable tidbits in the last month which I include for your reading pleasure.

• If you ever get in trouble with the law and the cops have a dog with them…don’t try to run away!
  
• When confronted by a paranoid schizophrenic who is high on cocaine, keep a safe distance in case he takes a swing at you.
  
• If you’re native language is Chinese and you’re learning English, stay away from telling the lady at the gambling hot line, “I want to start life ova” as this can land you in the ER on protective custody under a suicide watch regardless of what was intended by the comment.
  
• When conducting a rectal exam, reassure the patient by saying, “Trust me, this ain't fun for me either, buddy!”

My favorite text messages I received from David while in the ER:

• Great day…just got exposed to lice!!!
  
• If I have to look at one more vagina, I’m gonna scream!

Sounds like fun, don’t you think?

Service project

We have a friend here who is also a first year ENT resident at LSU named Jeff. He bought a house when he moved to Louisiana and when we were over at his place the other night he was lamenting the fact that the weeds in his front yard have gotten to be quite unruly. Being no strangers to unruly weeds, we ourselves owe a massive thanks to the young men of the Foothill Ward and their leaders for clearing our backyard so we could landscape before we moved. In an effort to pay it forward, we surprised Jeff by pulling all of his weeds while he was working at the hospital on Friday. We learned several valuable lessons from this experience which you will find below titled, “Things to consider when doing an outdoor service project in Shreveport in August”:

*Start at 5am instead of 7am as there is no escaping the blistering rays of the sun after 7:30am.
*Wear sunscreen…duh!
*Apply a generous amount of bug spray prior to rummaging through flower beds to avoid the lovely appearance of red dots covering your calves, shins and ankles the next day.
*Bring one complete pair of gloves for each member of your party. If you only have one pair and are forced to split the gloves between two people, be sure that you are not both right-hand dominant. If this cannot be avoided, be prepared for spasms throughout the muscles surrounding your phalanges after 4 hours of intense, one-handed weed-pulling.
*Bring an endless supply of cool beverages; preferably a combination of water and electrolyte replacing sports drinks.
*Keep said beverages in a cooler and do not leave in direct sunlight as doing so will turn the beverages to the temperature of snake pee within a matter of minutes thereby decreasing the extent to which they will refresh you.
*Have access to a car bigger than a Civic to haul away the 9 huge trash bags full of weeds.
*Check intensity of neighborhood watch program in advance of your project to avoid having the cops called on you. If this reconnaissance is not available, stuff your belly with padding so you look like you’re 6 months pregnant. This will make you appear less menacing and therefore less likely to scale the wall to crawl through a second-story window.
*Reward yourself with an Icee afterward and ignore the woman working at the register when she looks you up and down and says, “Wow, ya’ll been…runnin’???”

Despite the things that didn’t go so smoothly, we were quite happy with our work at the end of our 4 hours. Now if we could just get the lactic acid buildup to drain from our back and finger muscles, we’d be in good shape!

Here are the before shots…

The after shots…

And one of He-man with his spoils…