We had a little earthquake here in the San Francisco Bay Area the other day, and they reported that there was no damage. Think I should call someone about my desk chair? The one that I peed in when the three storey office building I work in (on the 3rd floor, natch) started to rumble and shake.
Kidding. I didn't pee (much). Really I said, "Duuuuuuuuuudddddde," and then I stood up and grabbed onto the scrawny wall of my cubicle (because particle board covered in grey polyester will save me from all the heavy shit about to crash down on me!) and looked into my boss' office and went "Aahhhummmmmahhhhwaaaaaaaahhhh."
It's hard to work so far away from home for this very reason. What if I get stuck 35 miles from my kids and have to walk down Highways 280 and 85 and several surface streets in high heels, assuming I am not crushed by the total implosion ** of the building I work in? I worried that the kids were scared, especially the girls, who are younger. That they'd want me and I'd fail them by not being there.
A half hour later I was so busy with work stuff I'd forgotten about it completely. I didn't ask the kids about it that night, because, hello! bad dreams, DUH. Instead I asked the next day, all prepared to soothe them and tell them we're okay, which is a lie because we very well may not be okay as far as seismic luck goes. None of them felt it, though.
Why do I live in California if I'm afeared of earthquakes? (And I am scared of them. Very.) Because every place has some sort of something that can kill you: fires, tornados, hurricanes, lightening, floods, venemous snakes, bad guys, improperly prepared fugu; the list is practically endless. I know this is true, because when we were little, my brother and I used to spend hours trying to think of a safe, natural-disaster-free place to live. We checked and there aren't any, and if there are, you could still get hit by a bus. Might as well live here, where I can drive an hour and spend the day in a place like this
**which is different, by the way, from a partial implosion
we are under a tornado watch all day today. i worry about my kids being in different buildings, too.
glad you’re ok.
I was just thinking the other day about how scared I was of earthquakes when I first moved here. Now I hardly think of them at all, but I still get way weirded out when I feel one.
I was freaked out about earthquakes for the first couple years I lived here. And then I got over it. Coming from a place where death could come from above any season of the year (hurricanes, blizzards, tornadoes, you name it) and having lived in places where death crawled the earth (spiders, scorpions, snakes), earthquakes just don’t freak me out anymore. Much.
Mamadaisy – Hope you are ok! do they still tell you to get in the bathtub under a mattress?
Lizriz – yeah. I’ve lived here since I was 10 and they are scary, no two ways about it.
Sean — exactly 🙂 I’m from Texas, so I can include the sun as a potential killer, too. (srsly)
Hello from your prepared [paranoid]friend who always has a pair of shoes at the foot of the bed and it’s not because I am part of a cult: Please put a smallish (everything about you is smallish!)pair of tennis shoes, a bottle of water, a power bar and if it will fit, one of those anoraks in a sac in a small backpack and keep it at work.
-end public service announcement-
That is an excellent idea. I’m adding airplane size booze bottles, too. The teeny ones, not actually airplane-sized.