. . . it's not over yet. We're still having big earthquakes, almost five years to the day of the earthquake that started them all. Sunday's one was a bit of a shock to the system. The boys and I were round at a dear friend's place. She and I were sitting in the sun on her porch, just chatting away, enjoying a brief respite from the small humans, when it all kicked off.
It's kind of hard to explain, but there's a brief moment at the start of an earthquake when you're in this strange sort of waiting game - waiting to see what happens next. You're poised, ready, but not moving because you're half expecting it to fizzle out. Mostly it does, but occasionally it doesn't. And that's when you move - fast.
We both ran for the kids and got everyone outside in a matter of seconds. All was well. Kids were fine - hardly fazed. In fact Little Man, who has been so fully indoctrinated in the ways of the earthquake drill from school, wanted to re-enter the building to find a table to 'turtle' under. I'm very lucky that Little Man isn't at all traumatised by earthquakes. He was too young to remember the worst of the earthquakes and aftershocks, and a broken city is all that he and his brother have ever known.
When we got home we discovered a bit of a mess . . . though if I am honest with myself, much of it was just the usual chaos of our daily existence and I am choosing to blame it on the earthquake, for appearances' sake.
Muz and I have become a bit complacent lately and have been careless with where we've placed things - glass bottles on top of the fridge in the garage, for example. Suffice to say, they are no more. The teapot and coffee pot, both with liquid in them, had danced all over the kitchen floor in a spectacular way. And as we're a townhouse, things get a bit of a sway on by the time you reach the third floor, so stuff in the bedrooms took a bit of a hammering.
Mostly, Sunday's earthquake was just an annoyance. It was a stinking hot day, Muz was away, and I was left to deal with the clean-up on my own, with only two ratty, overtired small humans for company. And I use the word 'company' lightly.
I took this photo of the shower floor because for me it really epitomises the irritation of earthquakes . . .
See that blue chip in the bottom right hand corner? That's the lid of a shampoo bottle (directly above) that balances on its lid - a 'lid-sitter', if you will. It doesn't stand up the other way. Now, if I want to avoid shampoo leaking everywhere, I have to prop it up on its rounded end . . . and that mostly doesn't work. That sort of shit really pisses me off.
So for the life of that shampoo I now have a constant reminder of the earthquakes, and just how damn annoying they are.
