I lay in bed early this morning, groggy but panicked, listening to the thumping and roaring of the earth and the screeching of the birds. I felt the shaking, but still didn’t believe it could be an earthquake. I had never felt one before and this rhythmic movement was not what I had imagined. My next thought, strangely enough, was that John had put a load of laundry in (during the middle of the night?) and the spin cycle was unbalanced. Like I said, I was groggy. Disoriented. Uninitiated.
“John! Are you doing laundry?”
John jumped out of bed and, a little quicker on the take than his wife, realized it was an earthquake.
Chip sat up in bed, confused. “What’s that?” he asked over and over.
I read it lasted about 5 seconds. I sure would have guessed a lot longer - I lay in bed for a few seconds trying to figure out when John would have gone down to do laundry, then I said something to him, then he jumped out of bed and looked out the window, declaring it was an earthquake while I hoped the girls would wake up so they could experience it as well. Could we have possibly done all that in 5 seconds?
At one point John and I talked about how loud the birds screeched during the quake. Chip found this intensely interesting and so we had to talk about the birds for the next 5 minutes. Where they live (”the birds live in the trees, sweetie, in their nests”), what they said when their nests shook (”oh my! my tree is shaking! I don’t like this! Squawk squawk squawk”), where they live, what they said…
I figure John and I owe Chip big time for this one. If he hadn’t been keeping us awake from 1:00 on every night this week, I might have been sleeping more soundly and missed it. Maybe.
