It's never what we expect to have happen even though we know it is inevitable and will happen. We live in earthquake country. There are so many fault lines that run through Humboldt County it would be crazy to not simply expect it. And yet when it happens it always comes as a shock.
We were jolted awake at 2:34 am on December 20th, in the dark of night. The house started to shake and shake, rumble and rattle. We heard things falling. We didn't move until it stopped. It was a very big earthquake. The power went out. We were completely in the dark, but because we plan ahead for this chaos, we both have flashlights on our night-tables. So we could look around and see what needed attention. We never really went back to sleep after that. We tossed and turned waiting for the aftershocks. Around 5:00 am Roger went and turned on the generator, brought in all the extension cords and hooked up our refrigerator so that our food would be okay during the outage. He ran the cords so we had electricity in the bedroom and office. For a short time our internet connection was still running. We read online that it was a 6.4 earthquake with the epicenter about 35 miles south of us. Then the internet service provider lost power.
With our generator running we were able to make our tea and toast and have a quiet breakfast. It was going to be a very long cold gray day without power. We cleaned up the broken teapot from my grandmother's collection that had fallen to the floor in the kitchen. It was the only thing that broke. We picked up all the stuff that had fallen off the fireplace mantle. We picked up the stuff all over the floor in the living room that had fallen off the top of the bookcase. The house was a bit of an earthquake mess.
We were without power until after 8:00 pm. It was such a relief to see our blinking clocks and hear our beeping phones. It had been such a long day of worry.
Wednesday morning all was well. We felt calm and relieved. And then this happened.
We were sitting at the table enjoying breakfast when the earth gave us a little aftershock. The little rumble didn't last long, but it reminded us that we live in earthquake county here. There was a very interesting article in the San Francisco Chronicle about all the fault lines here. I'm hoping you'll be able to read it.
One last funny thing about this earthquake. After all of the earthquake preparedness we've done, the practice for when that quake is happening... we didn't do a single thing. We didn't get to the foot of the bed and cover our heads with pillows. We didn't hide under a table. We didn't stand in a doorway. We didn't do a thing but hold each other.
As I type this all is well. We hope it stays that way, and that this will really be our last post until the new year. Wish us luck.
Happy Holidays, friends!
