Mother Nature...

...does love to have her own brand of fun. This morning at 4AM, it was a 4.4 earthquake, shallow, basically epicentered right under us. I happened to be awake with a screaming head cold, and was closing the bathroom window when it hit. For a second, the way the house moved, I thought the window had fallen out of it's frame. I had an instant to think, Ah, swell. A broken window at 4 o'clock in the morning... THEN, I got bounced straight UP and straight DOWN again, with the floor basically slapping me on the soles of both feet. Odd sensation, and damn did it sting!

By then I knew what it was, and moved to the bathroom door, waiting for it to either 1. Get worse, or, 2. Go away. Today it chose #1. As the noise increased, I saw my husband stir and start to get up, so I called to him and my daughter, 'Earthquake, get up, get in the doorway!' which is our family earthquake response. Even small quakes are great for practice for this.

When you grow up in earthquake country you learn to quickly gauge their potential. Since this one was continuing to bounce the house and making LOTS of loud, I'm-not-kidding-around snapping/cracking sounds, I went to my daughter's room, flipped on the light and helped her out of bed, bringing her to the Designated Doorway in our house, my husband joining us. Meanwhile the birds were flipping out, but all we could do was call to them that it was alright. It was over pretty quick after that, not much rolling afterwards.

We stayed up a bit after, but nothing else happened, so back to bed we went. After the sun came up, I did the usual house inspection inside & out, but found nothing more than an extension of an already existing earthquake wall crack in the front room.

I found that my kitchen wall clock had turned completely upside down, and a few other things had been knocked over.

It also woke Geraldine, the tortoise, up from hibernation in my pantry, so she came forth today.

I can only assume she'd left a wake up call with Mother Nature, and this was it.