What a Weather Week....

A couple of days ago, I experienced my first earthquake.  

And the funny thing was, I didn't even know it was an earthquake until after it was over. 

Oh, I knew something weird was happening.  

I just thought it was my kids.  

Absurdly, I thought they were jumping on the bed upstairs and that was causing the whole house to shake. 

Earthquakes just don't happen in Virginia, so it literally didn't even cross my  mind.

So there I was, hollering up the stairs at the kids, 

"WHAT ARE YOU GUYS DOING?????"

and watching them come out of their rooms with puzzled faces saying,

"Nothing, Mom...why is everything shaking?"

Then I looked up in my entryway and saw my chandelier swinging back and forth.  

And I felt pretty dumb for thinking the kids were physically capable of making our whole house rumble.  

Which it did.  

A quick check on facebook confirmed that many of my local friends (and some not local) had also felt their houses shaking, so it was indeed an earthquake.  

I felt dizzy for a couple of hours that afternoon......it was like my whole equilibrium was knocked off course in that few seconds of shaking.  

And now Hurricane Irene is menacing our coastline.....

I pretty much blew off the warnings about her earlier in the week because in the seven+ years we've lived here, none of the hurricane threats have come to fruition, other than a couple of tropical storms and a nor'easter or two.  

Now, it's looking a lot more serious than that.  

We live in a pretty safe place as far as flooding goes, our neighborhood is actually the highest elevation in our whole community, but that doesn't put us out of danger of downed trees, power outages, that sort of thing. 

The last major hurricane that hit this area was Hurricane Isabel - she knocked Virginia for such a loop that there were people out of power for multiple weeks, countless homes damaged by falling trees, that sort of thing. 

Supposedly, if Irene doesn't change course, she could be more intense than Isabel.  

I'm not excited about that. 

I look out my window right now and see the sun shining brightly, a gentle breeze blowing,  a normal summer day.  Yet several people I know are already evacuating the area.  

There are no D batteries to be found in town, so I hear from friends, which is unfortunate because we're running pretty low. 

I did get 12 gallons of drinking water yesterday when I had the chance.  I'm going shopping again tonight to get more non-perishable food and such.  

And I'm praying like crazy that we are spared the horrific damages that people are panicked about.  

Any of you East Coast readers feeling the anxiety also?