I had intended to update my blog every day during the month of August and while that doesn't seem like an overly daunting task, these days it is. Not because I lack things to write about but because my doctor has put me on a medication that completely knocks me out at night, so I lack the ability to sit and type without drooling all over the keyboard.
That being said, if I had stuck to my goal of updating my blog every day, today would be the eighth day. Hence the title of this post. Clever, no? My next trick will be to update my blog a total of 22 times between now and next Wednesday.
Oh wait! There are 31 days in August, aren't there?
Okay. Make it 23 times.
(Surely, I'll need a new keyboard by the time it's over.)
Sticking with the concept of EIGHT, I'm posting an eight word sentence that is most fitting for the situation today in Virginia: I Feel The Earth Move Under My Feet.
As in, the earth was moving from a magnitude 5.8 earthquake that totally rocked our house and had the whole family running outside (with a partially clad poop smeared child under my arm) thinking that a gas line was about to explode.
Gas line because earthquakes that SHAKE structures and nearly cause mirrors to fall off walls ... that kind of thing doesn't happen around these parts. Right?
Having lived in California for 20 years, I've been though several earthquakes and as a geologist, I'm always fascinated by them. But today's situation was unlike any California earthquake I'd ever experienced. Today, while the house was rumbling and I was re-thinking our decision to buy an all brick home ... the ground outside seemed completely still. Had this been a California earthquake, I could just imagine that the earth would be rolling like waves on the ocean.
I might have continued to believe this was some kind of freak isolated shaking occurrence if not for the neighbors who were spilling out of their homes on to their front yards, as the windows in their homes looked like they were about to pop out. Within minutes, our telephone was ringing off the hook with friends and family calling from around the country who wanted to know if we were OK because apparently the Pentagon had been evacuated.
For the record: we're fine, our sturdy brick house is fine and although one of our children screamed out of terror, the other three squealed with joy.
Can we do that AGAIN?
No I'm sorry, kids. But just wait! Mother Nature's sending a hurricane our way NEXT!
In other earth shaking news, yesterday was my first day back to work after 10 weeks.
For the next two weeks, I'll be working part-time as I transition back in to a full-time routine. To be perfectly honest (which I probably shouldn't be, it's a major flaw I have) the thought of going back to full-time fills me with dread. As much as I enjoy the work that I do and the people that I work with ... I really don't believe that I can (or should) go back to the way things were. Years ago, I could have done it and would have thrived. But now that I'm the mother of small children, the game has changed. And despite my best efforts, very soon I know that I'll be sucked in to the crazy work hours and unbearable stress and that damn near killed me once.
And once was more than enough.
Besides, today when I walked in the front door from my four-hour stint away ... less than 10 seconds before the big EQ ... I was greeted by our sweet children. Their father was in the midst of throwing in a load of laundry downstairs and was absentee for a whole five minutes.
In that time...
William had ambushed my make-up drawer and had painted on his forehead a huge Harry Potter scar with my long-wear lipstick that is unremovable even with mineral oil. His little brother was wearing his sister's pink leotard which was wrapped around his knees as he was shuffling towards me yelling, "HI PRINCESS MOMMY! THERE'S POOP! WIPE MY BUM!" And the girls had gotten in to a scuffle over a Halloween costume catalogue that arrived in the mail and were ready to choke the life out of each other.
I'm quickly assessing who demanded my attention first when ... WHAMO ... earthquake.
Really. If I'm going to collapse from the crazy, I'd much prefer to do it at home.
