At a time in my life where I have to invent things to worry about, it's refreshing when a day comes along that brings some excitment, especially when nobody gets hurt.
I woke up today to discover that we had no water in our apartment. We've only been here for about three months, but this is something of a common occurance. City water is unpredictable. The reason for today's drought was a burst pipe in the road right outside of our apartment. For the first few hours of my morning, the cats and I gazed out the window, watching thousands of gallons of water pour into the now closed down street. A construction crew arrived on the scene and dug a huge hole in the road...I'm guessing in an attempt to repair the busted pipe. As I type right now, they are still trying to fix the situation and water continues to pour into the street.
I mention the water pipe bursting because it will explain my reaction to the bigger news of the day...the 5.9 magnitude earthquake that hit the podunk town of Mineral, VA.
At exactly 1:13pm, I was laying on the couch watching TV...not exactly out of the norm for a typical day in my life. Suddenly, I felt what I thought was the baby having an intense kicking fit. Then, realizing it wasn't the baby, I flipped over to yell at my cat for shaking the couch with her scratching...but she wasn't there. Then my eyes fell on my glass of water on the coffee table, which was shaking in impressive rings, Jurassic Park style. I sat up as the floor began to rock and everything in the apartment began to shake.
My immediate thought was that they had overmined the road. When Dustin and I go on car trips, we like to wikipedia a specific topic and he reads them to me. Nerds. Anyway, not too long ago, he read me the history of Scranton. One of the things we learned was that the city had been overmined terribly, to the point where buildings frequently collapse because there is just nothing underground to support them. Living on the second floor of our apartment building, this was my immediate fear. At one point I actually had to brace myself against the sway of the floor. I don't know why my reaction wasn't to get out of the building, but instead I called Dustin.
When he answered, I heard panicked voices in the background.
"Our building is shaking and things are falling off the walls!" I blurted out, my extensive vocabulary temporarily pregnancy sapped.
"Yes, our building is shaking too, I'm in the stairwell trying to get out," he replied. For the first time in our relationship, I heard genuine fear in his voice. It suddenly dawned on my pea brain that Dustin works on the top floor of his building. There is a million ton antenna on the roof. There are no windows on his floor. And he had never been in an earthquake before.
I will pause for a moment in my story to say that I have been in another (also extremely minor) earthquake. It was my freshman year at SUNY Fredonia. I was in our health center, sick with a fever and a terrible sore throat that had gone for about two weeks unchecked because I had convinced myself that whiskey was medicine. I was pretty much delerious when the earthquake hit, but I remember watching a can of soda dance off of the edge of the health center's receptionist's desk and wondering why my dizziness had suddenly increased 20 fold. The sensation was just like today, except not as strong.
Back to my phone convo with Dustin. Upon realization that if this was a precursor to a big, Scranton-centered earthquake, Dustin would be in serious trouble in his old, antenna topped building, our conversation veered.
"Ok, get out," I said. "I'll get out too."
"Ok," Dustin replied and I hung up to encourage him to book it to safety.
Since the first tremor, I'd estimate only about 30 seconds had passed. The building was still shaking.
I was standing like a dolt, looking at my idiot cats. I cursed out loud. I was gonna have to carry these furballs to safety.
At this point, a heavy, decorative plate fell off of my wall, scaring the crap out of me. It jarred me into action. I decided that the life of me and my unborn child, if this was about to be a serious disaster, were more important than the cats. I felt sick to my stomach as I quickly threw on a bra, grabbed my wallet and phone and prayed that the cats would be smart enough to stand in a doorway if the building were about to collapse.
Now I need to rewind for a minute to point out something I found incredibly interesting about this whole thing. About five minutes before the earthquake, both of my cats awoke from their normal middle of the day slumber and were suddenly up my ass, acting very weird. My big fat cat literally jumped on top of me while the little one did a pee-pee dance by my feet, meowing loudly. Weird, right?
Alright so back to the quake. I waddled out of the apartment and down the stairs. By the time I rounded the corner to the exit, Dustin was at the other end of the corridor, sweaty and a little out of sorts from the experience. We decided to go outside, just in case there was about to be a bigger disaster or the building was about to collapse.
We live in Downtown Scranton, among mostly businesses. The streets were lined with people, chattering about what had just happened. We called some relatives on LI...some felt it and some didn't. We later learned that the reason it was a little more intense in Scranton was because Mineral, VA is pretty much directly south of us and Scranton is connected to the epicenter by bedrock. Most of the buildings here are anchored in said bedrock, so when it shook, it REALLY shook.
We meandered around for a bit, learning details from people on the street and Dustin's blackberry before deciding it was safe to return inside.
We didn't experience physical aftershocks, but the rest of the day was earthquake tainted. I started to think about our upcoming move and not being able to have Dustin close enough to literally run home. We discussed how scary it is when something like this happens, something you have no control over. I beat myself up for not getting out of the building immediately to protect the life of my baby.
Funny how a little rumble can do more than shake you up.
In other news, a Sonic opened in Scranton. We actually went on the grand opening night. I'm still shocked we got a stall. Sonic is THE most convienient way to get fat. Even though I just ate taco bell about an hour ago, I have informed Dustin that we will be visiting Sonic later on tonight.
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