9.02.2008

 

With a banjo on my knee

So I'm blogging tonight from Mobile, Alabama. Yes, Alabama. We decided this afternoon that it was time to leave town, and during Kent's hour-long nap, we packed everything we needed and then hit the road after he woke up. The danger from the storm had passed, but Baton Rouge got hit so hard that the entire city was without power last night. It was dark, windy, and crazy quiet. We heard on the radio today that about half of the city would have power restored in the next several days, while the other half would get it back in 3 to 4 weeks. This all depends on whose substations got demolished and whose didn't, and since we had no idea which group we fell into, we decided it wasn't good for Kent for us to stay in a hot house with no way of keeping food cold (or milk, especially). We did okay yesterday (lost power around noon) and today with the food we had in the fridge while it was still cold, and we had a nice supply of soup, granola bars, applesauce, and baby food, but since everyone in Baton Rouge was scrambling for resources, I was feeling the increasing pressure of not enough food to last however long this outage might be. It was getting kind of scary.

After we got on the road with a plan only to drive east, I called my mom on our way out of town and had her find a hotel for us, and we were thankful we only had to drive 3 hours from home. I realize how lucky we are to be able to just pack up and leave town, given how many people in south Louisiana are without transportation or infrastructure. Gustav hit so much harder than any of us thought it could. Baton Rouge has apparently never seen destruction like this.

We had qualms about leaving our cats, but we left them with a lot of food and water, and we plan to call friends tomorrow and find someone to come feed them every day. I grabbed our church directory while we were hastily packing, so we ought to be able to get in touch with someone near us if none of our close friends are in cell phone range (which is pretty spotty throughout the city). I was definitely in a post-apocalyptic mentality and have only gotten over that in the last couple of hours, after we got a hotel reservation. It's incredible how we can be so used to having everything modern and fast and easy, and it can all just go away like this and throw us into survival mode. I would have felt a little crazy anyway, if it had only been Jack and me, but now that we have a child, everything is more complicated. Exponentially moreso, I think. I was practically beside myself last night with worry, kicking myself for not leaving town when I could have on Saturday (though there were SO many unknowns) and wondering what in the world we were going to do. Everything feels better now. And we're just taking things one day at a time, hoping our neighbors will call soon to let us know that our power is back on and that our lives can start to get back to normal.

We have wifi here, so I'll post more later. Keep your thoughts with everyone affected by this enormously destructive storm.

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Comments:

Our thoughts are with you and all our friends and family still in Louisiana...I'm in awe over how much damage has been done. When are you thinking of returning?
 
So glad you're ok! That sounds scary. Take care and update when you can!
 
I am so glad you are safe, we've been thinking about you!
 
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