So I keep forgetting I have a diary here now. My friend is on here as well & keeps having to remind me. :-)
Lots going on. I leave for Europe with my friend Jen in less than 3 weeks now. We had a big earthquake here in Napa about 2 weeks ago or so (24-Aug), and we’re still trying to recover from that. It was a 6.1 magnitude, but they are saying, because of the way the shockwaves went out & how violent of a quake it was, that it was stronger than the 7.6 magnitude quake that hit San Francisco in 1906. Not sure I believe that, but I wasn’t in that one so I don’t know. What I DO know, was that I’ve been in 3 “larger” scale quakes, and several others that were just little ones, and this one was the worst I’ve ever felt. I started writing about it just on my own computer, I guess I’ll just copy that here:
It started out like every other natural disaster we’d been in. Well, except for the fact that this one woke us from a deep slumber, in which most of us were enjoying as it was a rare commodity. It was 3:20a.m. And then it began. The ferocious growling, some flashes outside as the transformers blew out, and our street, our entire city, went pitch black. When my eyes snapped open, the walls and floor were already trembling, as we tried desperately to right ourselves and stumble from our beds…only to find that the floors were already covered with debris and our bedroom door had slammed shut, pinned by things that had fell from the closet.
My husband, Ron, had started to try to shovel things out of the way so we could get to our son, who had actually been sleeping on the couch in the living room that night. I went to try to find our flashlight. We normally keep one on Rons’ nightstand, but the stand was thrown and the light ended up in a different direction altogether. I finally gave up on that, and found my iphone, knowing that it had been plugged in on my side of the bed so if nothing else, I could follow the cord. When I finally got the light on, we were shocked at what we did see. Everything, and I mean EVERY LITTLE THING, was on the floor. Bookcases were on their sides, books & knick knacks strewn in every direction. Things that we’d had on our dining room table (which I’ll admit, I use more as my storage area for paperwork and things when I walk in the door, since we eat out more than in) were no longer in their somewhat neat piles. Our kitchen…oh, god. Our kitchen…every single cupboard had emptied to the counter & floor. The dishwasher and refrigerator doors had flown open, and what fell from the cabinets above the dishwasher, landed in there and broke both the plates & mixing bowls, as well as what had been running through the dishwasher at that time. Our office, in the back of the house, was a mess. Our fridge is actually located in that room, since it’s just off the kitchen & gave us more room in our kitchen. The floor under it was littered with food. The huge jar of mayonnaise was everywhere, as the lid had broken. The back door had come open, and a large cabinet that I had bought at Ikea years ago, had come off of the wall (bolts & all pulled from the wall), and landed in the doorway blocking the door open.
We lost our cat, Anubis, who was just diagnosed about a month before with Diabetes, and now has to take twice daily shots of insulin. Since the door was open like that, I was so worried he’d gotten outside (both cats are indoor only). Thankfully, later that night, I finally found him so that wasn’t the case. But I’d spent most of the day wondering & worrying. I was so scared to start cleaning up piles because I thought I’d find him under one, crushed.
Anyway, so life moves on, and we’re moving on as well, albeit slowly. My husband had had to go straight to his office building, as they’d experienced all that we had plus the sprinkler pipes had broken, so the building was flooded as well. They also had gas leaking, but he turned it off as soon as he got there.
So, that about sums up my last couple of weeks. Before that, life was going along fine…Jonathan had just started back to school, had his first 3 days the week before the earthquake, and then missing over a week waiting on the school to get patched up & cleared so they could go back. The school itself had over $200k of damage, and most was the gym. That is still red-tagged & needs to be fixed before the rainy season gets here (hahaha, I live in California, so rain may never come).
I’m looking forward to leaving for Europe. I leave very, very early on Sept 26th, meet up with my friend Jennifer in Chicago, then we fly together to London thru Dublin. We’ll go to London area first, then Scotland, then Ireland. I am getting really excited to get away for awhile, but it’ll be hard to leave my son. He has PTSD from the quake & would prefer I didn’t leave, but I am hoping he will be okay once it happens. We’ll see.
Better get back to it. I still have no electricity in half of my kitchen, including the half with the dishwasher, so I can’t get the sink totally cleaned out (there is a TON of glass in there & I want to run it thru the actual dishwasher, not just wash by hand, to maybe feel better about the glass all being removed). So, I am washing dishes in our bath tub. We also have no dryer downstairs now (again, quake damage) so we can wash our clothes here, but then have to take them to a laundramat to dry & fold everything. I have never used a laundry mat so should be fun. We’d just buy a new washer/dryer set & be done with it, butwhen we remodeled the house about 10 years ago, we closed off the windows leading to the room the washer/dryer are located in, and there is now no way to remove, or get new ones in, to that room. The doors are too thin. We’ll literally have to cut new holes in our house to either make windows, or at least a way to get the new washer/dryer in to that room, then close it all back up again. THAT truly sucks. We actually wanted to buy new stuff 2+ years ago, but because of the above issue, we kept putting it off…and now, we have to do it bc the dryer is completely not working.
Just another thing on my list.
~Rebecca
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