I lived directly above the San Andreas Fault (that's the big one in California) for a while. Long enough to develop the state neurosis - never being fully comfortable in a house without an earthquake kit. Okay, that's one of two neuroses -- the other being Hollywood. The Powers That Be spared me that one, thankfully. As a kid, I lay on the floor at night to read well-thumbed paperbacks in the thin knife of light that crept under the door, and more than once leaped into bed, the book hidden under the covers, because of what I thought were angry, avenging adult footsteps stomping towards me, which actually turned out to be a ~ 4.0 earthquake.
One of my chores was tending the chickens, hardy half-wild brown and black striped aracunas who laid pale green and blue eggs and crouched and huddled with wary practicality before an earthquake. So I developed amazing earthquake-prediction-powers. I'm sure my mother, biologist, knew from whence these mysterious abilities came, but she always accepted my pronouncements with dignity, and gave me work trying to get the silver-rimmed china plates stacked on the barred and reinforced shelves, as pale blue and fragile as the eggs snuggled into their nests.Things broke, shelves fell over, we lost power, we lost water, there were fires, San Francisco was partly toppled. Never was a single chinablue aracuna egg broken, though.
February of last year, Seattle had an Earthquake, a 6.8. I was lounging upon
I wonder if
So.
Today is what
But.
I have eggs to safeguard, as well. Silver and green and blueblack crow-feathered ones, concrete and brick and ivy and fern.
Rambly. I should not post without sleeping first, I think.