5:10 am – Phone rings. Husband’s work. He gets up, showers, goes in earlier than normal. I’m trying to lasso the dream that is quickly evaporating…something about a Hogwartsian spiral staircase with manually-collapsible stairs…
5:30 am – His alarm sounds. Wishin’ I had turned off the Devil’s Handiwork when hubster got up. Put the pillow over my head cause it’s waaay too inconvenient to scooch over and turn off the blasted thing!
5:37 am – My bed starts shaking.
5:37:02 – WTHeck? MY BED IS SHAKING! (much the same as when Aussie jumps up on the side, hoping for an invitation up)
5:37:12 – I call out to the dog, "Aussie?"
5:37:13 – No answer, so I sit up and say louder "AUSSIE?"
5:37:51 – I KNOW my daggum bed is shaking, but I feel CRAZY. I think "earthquake???" thoughts.
5:38:24 – Lie back down, snuggle under covers, dream-weavin’ again.
6-something – Get up, cut on radio, AND THEY’RE TALKIN’ ABOUT A FREAKING 5.4 EARTHQUAKE IN ILLINOIS…and tremors being felt in MIDDLE TENNESSEE!
I live in middle Tennessee.
I wasn’t imagining a vibrating bed.
I’m not crazy.
What was it like closer to the epicenter??
Vindication can be just as unsettling as the tremor itself.
I was recounting the above with my children a bit later, and my daughter said, "I FELT IT, TOO!" She had set her alarm for 5:30 a.m. to get up early, so she was awake already. Funny, she thought it was our CAT jumping on her bed, then decided when it continued (and there was no marauding cat), it was her own shivers she was feeling from snuggling deeper under her covers.
Apparently we have Pets of Unusual Strength (PUS) to have imagined our dog or cat shaking the timbers.
Ahh yes . . . memories of earthquakes while sleeping. In the Spring of 89 (yes, that’s 1989 for those with lesser digits in their age than I), we had a 4 point something while living in south San Jose. Hubs & I had a waterbed at the time (remember waterbeds?) and it was kind of cool, cause it just made my bed do a gentle wave roll. No worries – I went back to sleep.
Flash forward six months – October 17, 1989 – 7.1 Loma Prieta earthquake. HOLY COW! That one definitely rocked our world. Having lived in Colorado most of my life, I was quite unaccustomed to responding to the real deal. Fortunately, while standing in a quaking Taco Bell, my cousin did know the routine. “Get away from the window. Get under the table.”
So we laid under the table and giggled and laughed and giggled some more. Cause that’s what we always did together. She said it might have been the biggest or second biggest she’d been in. It was definitely the biggest.
The sad news? No one would sell us any food. And we were seriously hungry after a hard day at work in Silicon Valley. But without power and having just experienced an enormous earthquake, all the fast-food employees decided that no one should be fed. We tried other places and finally went to our college since foraging was futile.
I mean as if? Couldn’t the good folks at Taco Bell (who all ran out of the restaurant, btw, so they could get hit by something falling) just slap some stuffings into a tortilla and hand it over? Apparently not.
Didn’t mean to write a book, Robin. Guess it will become my own post now. LOL!! 😀
That’s crazy Robin!! Apparently we had an earthquake here the other day…I never knew!!
Guess y’all ain’t as accustomed to them as we are. Welcome to my world. We usually sleep through the 5’4’s. It’s gotta be a 7 or above to get us to take any kind of action. 🙂
I heard about this on the radio this morning when I was on my way to work! YIKES! That is some CRAZY-NESS!!!!
I live in Illinois and blamed it on the cats too! LOL It was the rolling thunder that convinced me I was totally nuts.
We used to get them quite a bit in Mexico. The first time I felt one I was convinced it was workmen drilling the road! It feels very odd doesn’t it? We used to have to do earthquake drills rather than fire drills at school.
Why is it the pets get blamed when an earthquake is going on? I did the same thing in Ohio long time ago, during a quake. I was yelling at the dog to stop hitting the chair. When I finally turned around to give the dog my evil eye look, he was way on the other side of the room looking back a me. And the chair kept right on thumping.
Dear robin. Wow, you survived an earthquake! Actually, I read the headline about an earthquake in the states yesterday, I didn’t realise it was in such an usually quiet spot, geologically.
My first earthquake experience was while visiting LA as a teen. I heard the windows rattle and thought it was a sonic boom. (At home we lived in the flight path between two Air Force bases – heard a lot of booms.) I wondered why I hadn’t heard the boom. Then I remembered I was in LA – home of the trembler.
I always blame it on something — and then realize what it is.
You always rock, robin — so we could blame it on YOU!!
Yeah – whenever an earthquake happens, I don’t realize it until later. Once – I hard the stuff rattling on my dresser and asked Dave, “Was that an earthquake?” (it was about 5am – he never even woke up).
Hey – even better story:
In the late 80’s, Amanda and I were playing the game “Battleship”.
I said, “G7” She said, “Hit” – and suddenly, the whole house started shaking and we both yelled “Earthquake”. It was wild timing.
My kids and I were talking about earthquakes the other day, and I said, “Yes, but we never have earthquakes here.” Then last Sunday a friend was talking about one we had here a few years ago (which I totally don’t remember) and now this. Weird…
I Live here in Mississippi and my brother and son felt it. I didn’t! They said, I think, that 16 states felt it.
My family live really close to the epicenter (25 miles or so). My sister said she thought their ceiling fan was going to crash down on her bed.
Are your PUS related to Rodents of Unusual Size? 🙂
I share similar memories of the Loma Prieta earthquake with Dianne up at the top there. I remember it well!
And then in 2003 there were several lesser temblors that awoke us with the shaking of our bed or the rattling of our dresser pulls.
Now that we are up here in Canada we don’t so much get earthquakes (yet anyways) but we have plenty of snow… so there’s always somethin’! LOL
oh, I laughed out loud at your PUS comment…ROUS…Rodents of Unusual Size…Princess Bride anyone?
PAH HA HA! Too funny…we had it here in Indiana too, but I slept right through it! 🙂 I am laughing about you “imagining a vibrating bed”…hee hee!
Welcome to my world
(& Hi btw)