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It’s been one of those weeks.
We were babysitting the youngest grandkids, Guilia and Luca, this past weekend. They are usually able to keep themselves busy, are well behaved, get along most of the time, and are always very entertaining. It was a rainy day so we decided to take them to the Mall, have some lunch, and go to the grocery store. The Mall has a play area, a Merry-Go-Round, and some cars that rock if you put in a bunch of quarters. There is enough to keep them busy, moving, and get them somewhat de-energized. The plan was to wear them out by the time we got home since their parents, stuck in different airports because of the weather, wouldn’t be home until the next day. We wanted them to have fun and then get a good night’s sleep so Scott and I could get a good night’s sleep. This is the same plan we utilized with Aidan and Riley when they were very little and it always worked.
I combed their hair, washed their faces, and made sure they had on clean clothes. Scott put Luca into his car seat, and I checked that Guilia was securely fastened in her booster. The first problem was discovered in the Mall parking lot upon our arrival as we were getting the kids out of their car seats. Guilia, who had arrived at our house with a suitcase holding at least 4 pair of shoes, did not have any shoes with her. I’d checked them both before we left the house and I swear she had shoes on. It was obviously an illusion. She assured us that it was ok; she didn’t really need any shoes. We decided the easiest solution was to go buy a cheap pair of flip flops so she could get into the food court which, just like all eating establishments, has a policy of no shirt, no shoes, no service. As we were getting the kids back into their car seats to go to Wal-Mart for shoes a bee flew in the window. Scott and I, acting and sounding like people who needed to be put in white, locking, restraining jackets, moved to a windowless room with padded walls in a big white building somewhere out in the remote countryside, finally trapped and smothered the bee with a tissue, but not before it stung my finger, only adding to the whole atmosphere of hysteria. The kids misunderstood, thought we were entertaining them, and laughed at us as though a couple of clowns had come to the Mall parking lot just to entertain them. Finally, sanity seemed within our reach.
Lunch went smoothly because of the allure of the Merry-Go-Round which we told them only went around, up and down, and played music if children ate a good lunch. As we were working our way to the play area, Guilia realized that she needed some lipstick. I, a reasonably intelligent and sane person most of the time, took her to Simone at the Estee Lauder counter at Macy’s and bought the 4 year old a $21 tube of lipstick. We then left the bag with the lipstick on the seat of one of the rocking cars that had swallowed up all our quarters, leaving us with no quarters and no lipstick.Guilia has a dead cell phone she plays with. She puts it up to her ear and talks for long periods of time to some imaginary friend. Sometimes Luca gets to talk on the dead cell phone, but it’s a real contest and the one thing they always fight over. She began to talk on the phone as we drove home, and Luca was becoming extremely impatient and upset because he needed to make an important call. Guilia was not going to part with the phone under any circumstances. Things got very heated and the argument was causing Luca to cry. Scott and I begged Guilia to give her brother a turn with the dead cell phone. Guilia lifted herself up in her booster car seat, put the dead cell phone under her little butt, and said to Luca, “You can’t have it. The phone is charging.”
Scott and I had no idea phones could be charged this way, and I’m betting it’s news to you, too. We’ve always used a plug-in charger for our cell phones. On Tuesday, sitting in the sun at the pool with the girls, I suddenly felt a little shaky. My water bottle started shaking and it seemed like the earth was moving ever so slightly. Was I getting sick? My friend Patty also looked startled and shaky. The other girls didn’t seem to notice anything and so we both said, rather loudly, “DID YOU FEEL THAT?” Then, not wanting to alarm anyone, we both quietly said that we felt something weird —like things were shaking and quivering. Maybe groundhogs had a tunnel underground and were running through it, having groundhog sex, or giving birth to baby groundhogs, shaking up the ground underneath us. The other girls thought we were joking.
In fact, the earth had moved. Soon the news was out that there had been a 5.8 magnitude earthquake in central Virginia that had rattled the whole upper east coast. Earthquakes are destructive and terrifying. But this was not an earthquake like the ones people in Haiti or Japan experienced. Those were extremely serious, damaging, massively devastating events causing loss of lives and traumatic injury to thousands of people. But still, this earthquake merited quite a bit of news coverage. Here in the Pittsburgh area we saw the photographs people took of the effects of the quake they’d experienced: a lawn chair turned on its side, a wall picture hanging askew, lipstick missing a woman’s mouth and ending up on her nose, golf games being disrupted, plants falling over. People told horror tales of spilling their beer and feeling dizzy. Well, that could have been because of too much beer, not the earthquake.
The line of the earthquake must have travelled in a straight line directly from me to Patty who was sitting right across from me. We were quite shook up but we got no sympathy. Things might have been different if there had been a follow-up pool tsunami. We are both experiencing a little post-traumatic stress — mine exacerbated because of the whole shoe, bee, lipstick, phone ordeal— and to speed our recovery we may need to relax at the pool more than usual, maybe with a couple of Margaritas or Cosmopolitans.It was reassuring to see how our country survived a 5.8 quake. Many other places in the world might not have been as lucky. It’s so good to be an American, with only a tipped over lawn chair or a shaking bottle of water, instead of a collapsed building with hundreds of people in it as a result of an earthquake. No serious injuries were reported, no electric or phone lines were downed, and television went on with its regular programming. Modern technology quickly assured us that we were okay. When the electric goes out and the phone lines are downed due to earthquakes or storms or whatever, we get upset and sometimes panic, but we can still use our cell phones to communicate or call for help.
And if we need to recharge the phone all we have to do is stick it under our butt and sit on it. Who knew?
