I was in the eighth grade that year, my last year in public school. Middle school was rough, but I was lucky enough to have some good friends. That was about all that I was lucky enough to have because otherwise, that year was one of the roughest of my young life. And that fall was the cherry on the top.

I was completely awkward.  You know that stage where your arms and legs have been growing faster than the rest of you?  I was tall, gangly, big-footed, skinny and large-boned.  I didn’t know what to do with myself.  I was shy around boys and wouldn’t have interested anyone if I wasn’t because like I said… AWKWARD.

One of my friends was a girl I had known since my days in preschool.  She lived in the same neighborhood, several streets over.  She was a grade behind me in school, despite being a couple weeks older than I was.  Still, it was nice being at the same school (we’d gone to seperate elementary schools) and we often hung out with one another after school.  This clear, sunny Tuesday was no different.

We were up to some sort of mischief that afternoon.  I’m pretty sure it involved a boy.  And I’m pretty sure that boy was the kid who lived across the street from my house.  I thought he was cute.  But I was awful at flirting.  My subtle tactic was either too subtle or not subtle enough.  You know, plus the whole AWKWARD thing.  After our shenanigans (which had involved the telephone… oy vey), my friend’s mother asked if we would mind riding our bikes to the store to pick her up some chicken to fix for dinner.

If there was one thing we liked to do back then, it was ride bikes.  Despite having my own ten-speed, I always borrowed my friend’s mother’s bike.  They had newer mountain bikes and were a lot more fun to ride.  We biked over to Safeway and picked up the requested items.  My friend had a bike rack on back of her bike that we secured our goods to before setting off for home again.  It was starting to get a little on the late side, but not quite late enough to part ways.  We decided to head over to my house to do some discreet spying on the boy across the street, after my friend dropped off the groceries.

I stood out in the driveway with the bikes while she ran into the house.  The sun was getting low in the horizon, but no clouds obscured it on this day.  My friend was just running back out to the driveway when it started.  A rumbling off in the distance that got louder and closer until it was rolling underneath our feet.  Having grown up in California, I was no stranger to earthquakes, but I was used to them tapering off after a few seconds.  This earthquake didn’t taper off.  Instead, it grew larger and more ferocious.  I had the fleeting thought of, “What if this doesn’t stop?  What if it gets a lot worse?”

My friend and I tossed our bikes down and for whatever reason ran into the middle of the quiet street.  We were laughing at this point.  I’m not sure what we were laughing at.  It felt like we were jumping up and down, like on a trampoline, and maybe we were.  Or maybe that was just the earth bouncing us around like a couple of bouncy balls.  It seemed like it went on forever.  In actuality, it was more like 15 seconds.

As soon as the shaking stopped, we turned to see a labrador retriever run up to us.  We screamed, not because we were scared but because our nerves were shot and we were feeling rattled.  (Pun intended.)  We ran into my friend’s house to see if her mother was okay.  She was; she had just shut the refrigerator after putting away the groceries.  Things all over the house had fallen down, broken, cracked.  There were several aftershocks that sent us back outside where we felt it was “safe”.

After a few minutes, we decided to ride our bikes back to my house and see how things were over there.  I will admit, immaturely, we were excited at the notion that this would make seeing the boy across the street much easier since everyone in the neighborhood was standing outside right now, listening to the news on their car radios.  The scope of this earthquake was still beyond us.

At my house, the story was much the same.  Things had fallen, broken, cracked.  Our pool in the backyard had sloshed around so badly that half of the water was gone.  My mom reported watching the chandelier in the dining room swing back and forth so violently that she worried it would break loose and crash through the front windows.  I was starting to feel more shaken.  Especially once reports started filtering in, little by little.  A freeway had collapsed.  The Bay Bridge had collapsed.  How many people had just died?

That was the start of a very long night.  I didn’t sleep much.  Every aftershock pranced on my nerves, causing my adrenaline to skyrocket.  The power eventually came back on and the night was spent watching the news reports come in, one after the other.  It was horrifying.  Even worse was hearing that what we had just experienced was not “the big one”.  Nope, that was still looming in the future like the boogeyman.

The Loma Prieta earthquake struck the Bay Area at 5:04pm on Tuesday, October 17, 1989.  That was NINETEEN years ago.  I remember it like it was just yesterday.   To those who didn’t live in the area, the details may be surprising.  The epicenter was located far closer to where we lived and Santa Cruz than it was to San Francisco.  More lives were spared because of the World Series, featuring the Oakland A’s and the San Francisco Giants, and the number of people who had either left work early to watch the game or stayed late for viewing parties.  That meant less people on the roads, where the damage was severe.

Now, I can’t feel a ripple without having that stab of fear.  I immediately think, “Will it stop?  Will it get worse?”  The memories of 5:04pm live on.  Did you live in the Bay Area in 1989?  Do you remember this earthquake?  What were your experiences?

I’m just too clever for words, aren’t I?  And I am SO glad to see Friday.  Was it just me or was it a LOOOONG week?  Of course, there are no guarantees that the weekend will be smooth, calm, relaxing or pleasant but a break is a break.  And I need a BREAK.

Anyhow, I wanted to share some pictures with you today.  Because it’s a Friday and it’s time to let our hair down and just take it easy and look forward to doing some fun and easy things, right?  And what is more fun and more easy than photos?  NOTHING, that’s what.

Is there anything more precious than a toddler squatting to play with toys?

You snap enough pictures of Evie and eventually you get one of her looking pleased with herself.

Pup/Holly/Poptart (dog of three names) misses Harry while he’s in Elko

A couple of these pictures were taken with a camera Kile brought home from work and I am SO IN LOVE.  I hardly had to edit this in Photoshop, it came out so well.  It’s my new favorite picture of Liam.

I’d like to know who on earth could ever resist those dimples.

Beetoe.  The work camera also worked great on her.

Brit sent us a little “care package” including some of her cloth diapers, a tie dyed onesie for Evie, an ADORABLE drawstring bag and a Forks, WA t-shirt!  I love her.

FORKS, people!  I’m so wearing this to the “Twilight” premiere.