Life: Like a box of chocolates

And then there was an earthquake, of all things.

Here I sat, rabbitting on about school and tears and expectations and feelings and yada yada blah and suddenly I thought "That's funny." It was as if someone heavy with a long stride was walking along the upstairs hallway, making the floorboards vibrate. Then there was more and I thought "Hmm. Is she awake?" Was Mabel jumping on her bed instead of napping? I headed upstairs to find out.

As I entered her room and saw her lying still asleep, my brain caught up with the facts and I realised it was probably an earthquake. An earthquake on this side of the US is about as likely as one in Ireland, but I've been in an earthquake before (a 4.2 while staying in a house on top of the Hayward Fault on, like, our second night in San Francisco in 1994; probably the same day we watched the live TV news showing an actor I'd never heard of called OJ Simpson being chased down the highway by a lot of police cars) - so I'm a pro, you know. I ran back downstairs with my dozy baby in my arms, frantically wondering what I was meant to do. Hide under the stairs, right? No, in a doorway. No, wait... oh, it's over.

So that was that. I pretty much regretted waking her up because it hampered my Facebooking for the next half hour, when the Internet was buzzing with people all telling each other the same thing.

It's not really that it puts things in perspective, because nothing terrible happened. It's just that you really do never know what's going to happen next. An unexpected day off school is just what Monkey needed to get him recovered from the stresses of the last two and to set him up well for the next two.  But an earthquake day just when I wanted it (they're off today while the county inspects the school to make sure it won't fall on their heads) was pretty much the last thing anyone could have predicted.

 I like it.