I’m guessing most of you already knew that.  There have been four earthquakes in my life that I’m aware of, and actually I’m not sure of one of those.  Only three have occurred in my adult lifetime.  Two of them took place in the last 24 hours.  I did not like the experience- not one bit!  I was actually awake when the first tremors hit our area.  The window in the bedroom began shaking without any of the advanced warning you’d feel during a thunderstorm.  It sounded like a freight train, or at least close enough to trigger my panic instincts. 

You see, friends of ours had lived through a tornado that leveled many homes in their neighborhood a few years ago and they described it as hearing the sound of a freight train and then the tornado hitting their home before they even had time to grab the kid(s) and get down the stairs.  Thankfully, their home did not suffer major damage and they were kept safe.  Ever since I have drilled the procedure in my head- hear the sound, yell at DH, grab two kids and run for the basement. 

So, that’s what I did.  Well, first I muttered some mild expletives under my breath, as I don’t handle stressful situations well.  Then I hissed, “grab the kids, grab the kids, grab the kids” at my poor befuddled DH who had been sound asleep at the time.  He gathered his thoughts enough to ask what was happening and my brilliant reply was “I don’t know, just get the kids and go, go, go.”  So, we did.  DH later reports that on the way down the steps his charge, my 7-year-old son asked, “Why are we going downstairs?” to which DH could only reply “I don’t know. “  I may need to work on my communications skills.  

Anyway, the local news was already airing their sunrise edition when the first quake hit, a 5-point-something, so at least I had proof from an unbiased source that I was not insane. 

So, after waiting a few hours for the adrenaline in my system to dissipate and the nausea to go away, I was able to fall back asleep.  Oh ho, you say, foolish Midwesterner, didn’t you know?  Earthquakes have aftershocks.  Well, no.  Apparently despite having heard the term many times, I hadn’t put together what “after” and “shock” meant.  So, I’m sleeping away (yes, very late in the morning) when the entire bed starts to shimmy.  I get up and go downstairs to ask my DH whether there was another earthquake and he says “no.”  In fact he’s so certain that there was not another tremor that he told me I must have dreamed it.  Well friends, dreams don’t shake the whole room.  I tuned into the local news to learn that this one was a 4-point-something.  Again, I was relieved to have my sanity confirmed.  Apparently I am the only one in our household who notices when the walls start shaking. 

You know how cats just seem “tense” sometimes, a little jumpy?  Well that was me for the next few hours.  Despite the fact that our house was fine, we were fine and there was really no consequence from our experience- I just don’t like the earth moving underneath me in quite that fashion. 

So there you have it.  Earthquakes are unsettling, literally and figuratively.