Rattle and Roll

Did you feel it?

Trystan was nearly asleep (again). He'd been up and down since about 3:30, so we had also. I had given up getting him to stay asleep in his own bed, so he was in ours. My husband thought it was a strong wind. Our house is a 2-story, walkout basement, high on a hill on some of the highest ground around for a couple of miles. We get wind that sometimes shakes the house. But there was no howling, just creaking and groaning, and that slightly seasick feeling like I'd just crossed the studio floor with pique turns. Wait, that was my ballet/exercise class earlier in the evening. So, the sound was off, and all of our patio furniture stayed put on our deck. Can't be wind.

A small sign reading "Condemned" stands warning to all who enter our office, for good reason. It hit the floor by way of the wooden door, and sounded a lot like the cross-slats of Charlotte's canopy bed. The bed is beautiful and graceful and made long before rampant lawsuits from the parents of home gymnasts, so those cross pieces aren't bolted and glued and nailed and taped into place. My husband ran in to find her awake, unharmed, her bed intact.

All four of us slept in our bed. I didn't sleep. One baby, now wide awake again, thought I was his pacifier. I suspect he's teething. Or his ears are still bothering him. The other was kneading my bare shoulders with her hands as she tried to doze. Sleep and my alarm came at the same time, along with a very confusing dream involving separating half a dozen eggs for some kind of dessert made of chocolate. I don't know what I was baking, brownies?, but the directions made very little sense. Much like the rest of today after such an exhausting morning.

Maybe the height of our house didn't affect us as much as our location, because I just felt an aftershock, like kids bouncing in the room next door. I work the basement of a heavy cement and steel building.