Tremors.

An earthquake just hit us. Well, not so much hit us as rocked us gently.

I was sitting at my writing desk, browsing for options on my next trip and getting superly excited. Seconds later, i became conscious of a sort of vibration passing through my body. Now, there are times when the veins in my body act up and pound away, making the surrounding flesh go ba-doom ba-doom in time with the heartbeat. And, at the risk of giving away too much information, sometimes my tush booms away because of a partying vein. So when the quake happened, i figured it was the tushy vein partying again. I stilled myself momentarily, trying to see if it really was. Then i couldn't figure it out, so i let it be. The vibration went on for a good minute or so, i would say. And then it just stopped. I moved on with life, not giving it much thought.

Minutes later, Sister K messaged me. "Did you feel the tremors???" she asked, and i thought she was pulling a pun on me and would complete it with "the tremors of my love" or some corny stuff of the sort. Turns out it was an earthquake. Wowee.

But that's not the best part. My mother called frantically. "Your phone's switched off! Get out of the house now, go stand on the road just in case it happens again!" and in my head, lazy f*** that i am, i'm thinking dammit, i'll have to dress up properly and go. So i made conciliatory sounds, hmms and um hmmms and hung up.

Ten minutes later, she called again. Deep worry in her voice.
"Nebulous One, in my room there's a dressing table?"
I go, "Yeeeeees...?"
"Next to it, there's a stool?"
"Yaaa...?"
"On the wall, there's a sort of display area?"
"Haan...?"
"There's a vase kept there. Just remove it from there and keep it safe in the drawing room cabinet. I don't want it to break if the earthquake comes again. Better still, when you run out of the house, take it with you. It's irreplacable."

She was dead serious about the whole thing.

I'm just plain astounded. The shock of this will take longer than the shock of the tremors to go away.