The more time I spend in this part of Louisiana, the more its charm rubs off on me. I love everything about the cajun culture, especially the way they talk and their slang words (aside from the use of axe for ask). Everyone in this town is damn proud to be from here and everyone is incredibly open and friendly to me.
So this past week was pretty boring at the office, just your typical outpatient stuff for the most part, however the beauty of working somewhere that is 20+ miles from the nearest hospital is we get to do EVERYTHING. I did an incision and drainage on two people in one morning one day this week. I am getting to be a pro at suturing and administering lidocaine... It is really fun! It does seem that A LOT of people here get Staph infected abscesses, perhaps a hygeine lecture would be a proper thing to do? Or it is just the kind of work a lot of them do. Many of the men here work offshore (I think drilling) or do other manual labor. People are much different here. They are less concerned with money and material things, rather then spend time with their families and are always outside. I kind of feel like I've gone back in time. It's refreshing.
The Frog Festival is in Rayne from Wed-Sun. Wednesday night, my barnmate, Michele, and I went to 'family night' at the festival, which was just being able to ride all of the carnival rides for very cheap or free. So, naturally, we still thought we are 12 and would LOVE these rides. NOT.SO.MUCH. The first ride we went on was one of those rides that takes you straight up a tower and then drops you. I love this ride at a legit theme park, probably because you never feel as though you are plummeting to your death because it has sturdy hydraulics. Well, I think deciding to try this ride that was fresh off of a truck bed and being operated by drunk/drugged up carnies was probably not one of my finer moments. Basically it took us up a tower, incredibly slowly I might add, and then just dropped us from the thing connected to the tower so we were 'gliding' (really FALLINGGGGGG) down the contraption. I have never felt so close to death in my life, nor have I ever made the scream noise I made during this ever in my life. Needless to say, we didn't go on anymore of the carnival rides. Instead we thought we'd just walk around and admire the strangeness of the Carnie operators... which were not from Rayne. By 'strangeness' I really mean utter and complete creepers. We couldn't walk by one of their poorly put together game booths without being harassed by a toothless, smoking dude who's skin looked like a football's. But, it was definitely an experience, and on a brighter note... there weren't any clowns. Thank God.
Friday night I decided to venture back to New Orleans since one of my best friends, Erin, was there for the AMA conference (American Medical Assoc). Every time I return to the city, I fall in love with it. It is a totally dirty city, but the charm is unreal. We went to dinner on Bourbon St and ate fried alligator and Boudon Balls (Cajun hush puppies...) which were delicious. We got to watch all the people on Bourbon as we were eating, which, if y'all know me well enough, you'd know people-watchin is my thing. The most notable person who walked by was a dude (yes, DUDE) dressed up like the Queen of Hearts from Tim Burton's version of Alice in Wonderland. Not only did he/she/it walk by but it also came into the restaurant for dinner. Weird.
We did the typical Bourbon St going out, hung out w some weirdos and then went home... pretty uneventful but incredibly fantastic as well. (Oh and we went back to the Dungeon... naturally).
So today I attended some more Frog Festival activities. I went to the Frog race/jumping competition and also the Frog Derby pageant. The Frog jumping contest was cute. Little kids rented Frogs and then were all excited watching them race. I didn't feel as though I should've competed because if I lost to a 5 year old child I wouldn't be able to show my face at the clinic anymore. On the flip side if I totally dominated the competition I still wouldn't be able to show my face because I would be the ass that didn't let the cute little 5 year old win... you see my dilemma. The Frog Derby pageant was where teenaged girls dressed in jocky outfits and then dressed up their frogs (yea, actual living frogs) into costumes of their choosing and those costumes were judged. After all the queens were crowned they had a Grand Parade on the Blvd (the main street in town). That also was an interesting experience. The whole parade pretty much was just all of the different pageant winners in cars, throwing candy, wearing their GIANT crowns. Pageants are huge here.... it's like toddlers and tiaras, but worse because they keep doing it through high school... yea. Ok, so let's talk about the candy throwing... I am pretty sure some of these "queens" were intentionally chucking lollies and jawbreakers at people. I had a tootsie pop nail me in the back of the neck. No idea how it hit the back of my neck, but you get my point.
I decided to go to the festival tonight to watch some of the bands. My barnmate is still in NOLA and my other coworker (who I went to the parade with) was busy with her baby girl and husband, so I was flying solo... but Oh man I am glad I went. I didn't last long, partially because I got creepily hit on by a 50 some odd year old man who also attended this fine gathering by himself. I did, however, get to walk around and admire the festival. They have an area for campers and tons of people were camped out and BBQing. The music scene here is insanely awesome. They had their Cajun music and also this type of music called Zydeco, which I must say is pretty awesome and y'all should all look it up. Anyways, I am really glad I got to experience even just a little of it. Anyways, that's all for now...
Oh perhaps I should explain my title... for some reason people often respond with "Shy Baby," usually when referring to a cute child or something but also in response to someone saying something ridiculous or in a comforting way. It is almost like an "oh hunny" I think, but I like it.
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