Earthquake recollections

Sorry, no pictures today. I didn't feel like taking any. Too fresh, too nervous. But here is what happened.

Around 11:30am I was organizing my closet upstairs when the shaking started. Little shaking at first, but I decided to start running to the baby's room in case it got bigger. It DID. As I rounded the corner in the bedroom the house started banging and moving side to side hard. I have educated myself about earthquakes, so when I saw the bedroom door flapping closed and open as I approached it, I was not surprised. I grabbed it mid-swing and ran through. I turned left and sprinted down the hall to the baby's room. The problem was, that the upstairs hall is more of a balcony. There is a full rail the length of it and it hangs over the hard tile of the downstairs entryway. The house was really moving as I ran and the hall looked bent as it moved. As I ran I heard a crashing to my right when the chandelier over the staircase swung into the wall 3 feet away from it. I entered the baby's room, thanking myself for securing the bookcases into the wall studs, grabbed the baby up from a sound sleep and turned to go out. The house had settled down. Miss I met me at the bottom of the stairs and we decided to go out and gather our wits in the backyard. The pool water had waves about 18 inches high, and the water was sloshing out of the pool. The phone started ringing as people called to check on us. I found a lot of new cracks in the concrete patio in the back yard. I don't see any cracks in the pool itself. Miss I was downstairs and said she saw the ground rolling in waves. Later when I went back upstairs I found a lamp in my bedroom on its side. A lot of upstairs drawers were open. The bathroom drawers were all open about 4 inches. Most of the heavy file drawers in the office were open about 8 inches. And the kids' clothing drawers were open about 8 inches.

The neighborhood grocery store is closed, too. Which is a bummer because I really need taco shells, or my dinner is going to be a little lacking. Oh well. We have to do the best we can, right?

The Walmart was open, and I bought 12 gallons of water for our earthquake kit. I was pretty embarrassed to realize that here was another important thing I had put off for tomorrow. What if the water mains had cracked and my huge family had nothing to drink! :-(