The finishing touches go on my face and I smack on my favorite red lipstick. The letters in a stack on the table remind me somehow to check that the coffee pot is off as I scoop them into my purse on the way out the door.

A loud, low rumbly sound like a truck catches my ear. No, not a truck. A plane? Is that one of the jets taking off from the airport? If it is, it's too low. Oh, how nice. We're about to get hit by a plane.

I think all these things in the seconds it takes for the sound to amplify to a roar all around me. My feet are wrenched to the left and I hit the ground with all of me, hard enough to know my face will be carpet patterned. The ground is heaving and shaking so that I can't get back up. I get on all fours and crawl under my teak dining table that I bought just for this reason. It weighs a ton and is strong enough to protect me, but I misjudge the distance and my head slams against the leg a few times before I get all the way under.

"Oh shit, Oh shit, Oh shit, Oh shit!" Is the only vocabulary I can summon when my vocal cords work again.

I stare at the carpet fiber, I don't have the presence of mind to look around and see the movement. The beams of the house creak overhead and my heart hurts as it races. I scrunch up in a ball so that if the roof comes down, the table will protect me, or squish me. One or the other.

I hear smashing glass in quick succession as the wine bottles fall off their temporary shelf in the garage. I was going to move them to the kitchen after I rearranged, but I won't have to do that now. Thirty bottles of wine, that's going to be a mess. The pictures are throwing themselves from the wall. More crashing sounds. I hear water running. I don't remember leaving water running. Uh oh.

I want this to stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Oh, now, there, it's stopped. I listen for a clue as to what is next, my mind stunned into uncharacteristic quiet. No birds, no machines. Running water, oh yeah, I better check the water.

I stand up and look around me. My house looks about the same, but stuff is on the floor all over the place. I head toward the garage. No, I better check out back where the gas is. Wait, where is the water? I'm glad there is not a video camera watching me, I've just spun around four times and I feel like a dolt. Focus. The worst problem would be a gas leak, then water. Right, gas first. I step outside and the ground looks normal. There can't have been enough movement for a gas line to tear, but it sure seemed like a lot of movement.

No hissing gas, so the water is next. I peer over the fence to see the neighbor's sprinkler line broken. Good thing the water runs to the front of the houses. That's a later kind of thing. Oh boy, I bet Jake is scared. My watch says 11:15. School will be a . . . he's not at school. Winter break. He's at a Bible School across town.

I need my cell phone. I hurry to the car where I know I left it last, but there is no service, of course. I'll just drive there. I get in the car and turn on the radio, the local stations are off the air, but I get a San Francisco station. The traffic lights are not working, everyone is being polite, hurried but behaving. The DJ says that there's been a big earthquake in LA. My heart stops. We are two hundred miles from LA. If that big an earthquake originated in LA, the area does not exist anymore. Oh shit, Oh shit, O shit, O shit!

I get to the place where Jake has been all morning and he's totally unimpressed.

"Can I finish my sandwich before I go, Mom?"

He was outside and felt it, but didn't get the whole noisy, creaking, something-is-going-to-fall-on-you effect I got inside a building. He gets in the car and we head for downtown.

I've been trying to reach my husband, Kevin, the Division Chief for our city fire department, since I got my mind back, but no luck. We've always had the deal that I would appear in the flesh so he could stop worrying and concentrate on his job.

I have no idea where to find him, but as I get closer to the fire station, I see a huge cloud of dust and debris about a block north of where he works. I head that direction.

He's easy to spot, white helmet, commanding presence. There are hoards of people, two buildings in the downtown have collapsed. The bricks and dust lie everywhere. A handful of cars sit crushed at the curb. My neck is tight and I hold Jake firmly by the hand.

"Daddy needs to see us so he can know that we're safe," I remind Jake.

He's six and brave. We walk into the middle of the street and I wait for my husband to turn around and see me. It's only been half an hour, but the men have a plan and tasks already.

As if he senses me there, a hundred yards away, he turns and holds his hand up, acknowledging that he sees me. I wave back and turn around immediately to walk back through the crowd so that he does not feel compelled to leave his duty.

"Why can't we stay, Mom?" Jake asks in a little voice.

"Daddy has work to do, and we have a big mess to clean up. Will you help me?"

"Sure Mom, anything." Jake says in his most comforting tone.

LA is still standing, the earthquake was only twenty-five miles from us, here in Paso Robles. That makes me feel better, I think. I finally see my husband three days later, when he's relieved of his command for some rest. I saw him on CNN a few times, but somehow that doesn't count. We are thankful to be spared any real grief and help those not so lucky as to have only lost wine.

Years later a loud rumbly noise will still get my attention, head cocked, listening for it to become a roar and waiting for the earth to heave.

Kevin was in paramedic school at Stanford when Loma Prieta (6.9) hit in 1989, and I was working ambulance in San Luis Obispo and got responded to San Francisco. That’s the longest dispatch I ever got, and we got to Greenfield before being cancelled. That’s about 90 miles.

I was on the third floor of Bakersfield Memorial working Cardiac ICU when Northridge (6.7) hit in 1994. Boy, those buildings on rollers sure do sway.

So we’ve both had some large earth moving events. We plan none for the future.

Our Earthquake days are over now that we’ve moved to Alabama. I hope. We’ve traded that threat for hurricanes. Um. Well. Wish us luck!