Adventures in moving...Nature's Own Alarm Clock

And...once again, it's been awhile since I posted.

I had thought that once I got the move accomplished, I would be back to blogging on a regular basis. I was, as it turns out, wrong.

It isn't that I haven't had things to say. Or time to say them. But, adjusting to being in a new place, getting settled in, and everything that entails is taking more mental and emotional energy than I expected it to.

And, it isn't that I'm not happy to be here. I'm very happy to be here. It's just...oh, I don't know. Different. Even though I've moved back to the general area where I grew up, it's taking some readjusting to my surroundings. To adjust to living with different people. Even though I know them, I haven't lived with them before, and the rhythms of life are different from those I'm used to.

I have made some progress in getting settled. I'm getting quite a bit of work done on my writing projects. I (finally) got to the library to get a library card and checked some books out. So, I'm feeling on pretty strong ground on those accounts.

And...speaking of ground, steady and not, one of the things that has thrown me for a bit of a loop is the fact that last week on Monday I was awakened at 6:25 a.m. by what I have come to think of as Nature's Own Alarm Clock, also known as an earthquake. It isn't the first time that has happened to me, goodness knows. I've been in several large quakes, albeit not always close to the epicenter of them. Growing up in Southern California and then living in Central California, there were plenty of quakes through the years. But quakes in the center of the state are not the same thing as quakes in Southern California.

This one, which you might have seen referred to in the media as the Shamrock Shake, since it happened on St. Patrick's Day, was close enough and big enough (at 4.4 magnitude) to wake me up from a deep sleep and, frankly, frightened the crap out of me. I think that's because it took me so by surprise. At any rate, since then my anxiety level has been a little higher - although that's getting a bit better now. There for a couple of days, though, I was jumping at every little noise. Ridiculous, I know, especially for someone who has always lived in earthquake country.

Although, for some reason, ever since the quake, I feel like I've been welcomed properly back to the area. So, you know, it doesn't have to do that again any time soon as far as I'm concerned.

At any rate, I'm not making any more predictions about when I'll be back to regular blogging. I hope that it will be sooner rather than later, so watch this space. There are some things that have been in the news that I really want to talk about. I also have some things to say about getting reacquainted with the old stomping ground and the things that have changed since I lived here before...and the things that have, amazingly, remained the same.