I started off the day a little annoyed at myself for not remembering to grab a pair of earrings on the way out the door. It's not like I didn't have earrings. A couple of weeks prior, there was a great sale at Liquidation World. Bins and bins of costume jewelry for 10 cents a card. Most cards had more than one pair of earrings, rings, necklaces and/or bracelets. Sitting in my living room, was a big storage tub filled with hundreds of earrings that I was still trying to sort through.

I was driving, visualizing the pair I wanted - agate colored beads that matched perfectly the colors in my skirt - As I cruised down the freeway, I dug into the crevasses of my bag, purse and car (I have a Toyota Echo, these cars have many cubby holes, pockets and even a drawer). No earrings. Not even a simple pair of studs. ...And I wanted to look good that day.

I had just finished a grueling training program at work and it was the day of our big graduation celebration.  For four months, I had studied the art of enforcing child support orders. Just mix state and federal law with accounting and volatile clients - and that is the job. There were 5 of us in the class and we had worked our tails off. This was our big day.

8:15 am
I got to work just a wee bit late. Some days traffic is so bad, you are going to be late no matter what time you leave, sometimes you run late and you wind up early. Pure luck of the draw combined with how much aggression one is willing to exert during the morning commute.

8:30
The day had started off great. Our training group (the graduates) met with the head of the training department to offer suggestions for the next training group (in week six) and the training group that was going to start on Monday. Although the meeting was mostly business, we touched on the Marti Gras riots. Only a couple people watched the news the night before - I was not one of them. It was not brought up that the front picture windows of our office were broken out and had been boarded up. None of us noticed as we all use the employee entrance in the back.

All in all, it was a light meeting with lots of high spirits and laughter as we discussed the trials and tribulations of training team. We gave evaluations of the training materials as well as the trainers and our fellow trainees.

9:30 am
Back in our cubes, on the 3rd floor of a  6-story building, we put together little graduation gift bags for our trainers and ourselves. Not exactly Martha Stewart, I wrote glitter glue names on brown paper bags and decorated them with stickers the night before. We filled the bags with small treats, some handmade, some store bought. One handmade gift that a co-worker created was a refrigerator magnet that said "I survived the Rowdy Rookies - February 28, 2001" (the Rowdy Rookies was the affectionate nick name the trainers gave our group)

10:30
We tried to concentrate on our work back in our cubes. Lunch was being delivered by a BBQ restaurant down the street - a place I had been wanting to try out. The other training group was on the sixth floor, decorating a conference room for the graduation.

One of the other trainees came to give me a cash donation for the gift bags since they had not brought anything so, after objection, I took out my wallet and accepted his money.

... and remembered that I owed another trainee for lunch the day before. We had gone to lunch at Ned's in Pioneer square the day of Fat Tuesday and acquired a few beads at a safe time. So, carrying my wallet, I walked over to her cube and gave here some money. We chatted for awhile, mostly about how difficult it was to concentrate on work. I started walking to my cube on the other side of the wall. The cube wall shuddered a bit.

I walked over to see if my co-worker noticed. "Did you feel...?" and it shook more. "Earthquake." she said and we still shook. We stood there for a moment, I decided to be 'uncool' and dove under her cube desk/counter. My co-worker joined me. Then another woman in the office, also scheduled to graduate that day popped her head in and asked what was going on. We urged her under the counter with us.

We were three stories up, crowded together, laying tangled making an it a point to support each other's necks when the woman who just joined us began to cry. The other woman cooed words at her to comfort her, I just stroked her leg, and tried to keep from crying in fear as well.

We were shook so hard, I felt that we were surely going to start crashing through to the basement. I heard glass breaking and things falling over. We took a hard shake and I was clutching on to the other women with me, thankful I was not alone but scared - very scared. I have never felt so close to death.

My eyes were closed but my mind provided visions for me: Oklahoma City, Pompeii...

I forced my eyes open just in time to see the next big shake make us lose power. And it was still loud - the rumbling. Fear like I have never known shot through my body. I knew I should stay put but every inch of my skin was begging to bolt.

And the shakes were more like north-south jerks. Later I was to discover that of the jerks were secondary, caused by our building slamming into the building to the south of us.

We were still for a minute and a man came through and said, "Everybody out, just like a fire drill!"

The only word that I comprehended was "drill". I got angry - that was not a drill - and if it was it wasn't very nice because it scared me so much. But the suggestion that what just happened wasn't real allowed me to relax just enough to understand his entire sentence.

So, I did what I wasn't supposed to do and dashed back to grab my purse and jacket (w/car keys in the pocket). I glanced around for my wallet but there were papers all over. Then I made the mad dash for the stairwell where the woman who broke into tears was frantically screaming my name. I put my arm around her and we descended the dark stairs together. (I have never been in a building where the emergency lights functioned properly when needed.)

When we got to the door open to the outside, the sun streamed in illuminating huge cracks in the plaster walls.

We all gathered in our "space" mixed with workers in other buildings, staying with our groups to make sure everyone was accounted for. That was the worst. I don't own a cell phone. I am getting one now - not that it would've helped, out of the twenty or so people who had them, no one was getting a line out. The nearest pay phone anyone knew of was three blocks away and not everyone was accounted for yet.

We had been standing outside by the construction of the new stadium for an hour when we heard everyone was accounted for. There was a couple of people with cuts and bruises but that was it. We had no idea how lucky we were. We just figured that we would be let back into the building and we would go on with the day. But... I work for the state and that was not to happen. We waited, and
waited.

No one had gotten a call out so we didn't have any personal info. Every time a helicopter hovered above our group we smiled and waved, hoping to let anyone watching the news to know we were OK.

I was hoping my daughter and partner were ok. My daughter was in her 3rd grade classroom when it hit. She told me later that she pulled another student under a table with her. The kids were scared but all safe in a one-story school that had been rebuilt less than two years ago. My partner didn't have the car and my folks live only a few blocks away. I hoped someone would pick my daughter up - even if they were not released from school early. My dad wound up getting her on the way home.

I told myself repeatedly that I was sure Riley was all right. I mean s/he had to be. S/he's my big, strong protective butch! I knew s/he was at home - a townhouse in a fourplex apartment building. I figured that it would be a mess - as we spent last weekend before putting up shelves for little glass things and other fragile knick knacks. But I just told myself s/he was OK.

My darling husband/partner was seriously freaked out. Being so close to the stadium and the construction, we couldn't see too well what damage had occurred. We got snippets of news standing outside the building (some people had their personal radios): the shake rated a 7 (later reduced to 6.8), that it was south of Seattle (that equated 'Auburn' in my head), that the Fenix had been hit pretty bad (those shots were on the national news) but all we could see was several broken windows and a few big cracks in some buildings.

It was 2 when we started to make our way to the parking garage. It wasn't until then when we actually saw some of the major damage and the earth-bound bricks. The parking garage held, my car was fine and we turned on the radio.

The news was stunning. The announcer was describing the damage in our area as being the worst. We got out on the road and crawled. Once we spotted a pay phone, we stopped, the phone was dead. We decided to just jump on the road and get home. Had I known what the TV news feed was showing, I would've gone phone to phone.

Poor Riley was exchanging phone calls with my mother - every ten minutes. Watching the news it was amazing the difference a helicopter can make. We couldn't see the major damage that was so close to us. Television reports were showing the roof of the restaurant where we had ordered our graduation lunch that was collapsed in the kitchen area. Two buildings had what looked like big bite marks in them - and all in our neighborhood. So this is what Riley was staring at for hours.

I can drive the commute in less than an hour in even the worst rush-hour traffic - but this was worse. The trip home was horrible. Between the traffic and the lights being out in several areas and several closures it took two hours to get home. Once we got on the freeway, it got better for awhile. I am not someone who usually speeds - maybe 5 over. But here I was, with 2 co-workers - I qualified for the car pool lane! I zipped over and allowed that urge to bolt to escape. A bit later I glanced at my speedometer and cringed - I was going 90+ (in a 60). I have never rreally had the 'need for speed' and this was the fastest I had ever driven. I made a comment about it to the person in the passenger seat and slowed down (afraid I was giving more cause for fear). She smiled and said she was happy going south at any speed.

The clear area ended as soon as we exited the freeway and all of the stoplights were out. I dropped off my companions where their cars were parked at the train station and sped home.
Riley bounded out of the house before I turned off my car and I gratefully fell into hir open arms.

The quake was honestly the scariest thing I have ever been through and Montana or Arizona is looking really good today. The next day, I got a call that the office appeared to be safe but we didn't have to go in because we didn't have an official OK yet. We did return to the site on Friday - mostly just to talk to each other and walk off the fear of being in the building together.

A big part of me dreaded going back into the building and the longer the wait, the worse it got. But I made use of the day off sorting through my earrings. Making sure I have both a gold and silver pair in my car at all times.

I was driving home, starting to almost feel normal. (I now define "normal" as not being fixated on the end of ones mortality.) The light turned green. I took my foot of break, in preparation for a right turn, and let my car roll. I saw a pedestrian so I braked. A breath later... BANG!

I felt an impact and my car shook - IT WAS HAPPENING AGAIN! I tried to fathom how I would get under my dash board. "Wait, " I thought, "I am not shaking, someone hit my car!"

I looked in my review mirror and saw a woman covering her face. She hit my car! My new car! My just-made-my-fourth-payment car!

We pulled in the gas station and did all the exchanging you are supposed to do in an auto collision (my car just suffered a few paint chips - fixed the next week at the body shop).

I began to try to heal (again).

Two months later:

As a rare treat, my friend Mary and I decided to see Amy Ray and The Butchies at the Showbox. Long-time Indigo Girls fans, we were looking forward to hear the newer, harder material that Amy was going to play. I had also seen The Butchies before and I knew Mary would enjoy them.

True, we spent most of the time in the bar area - we could see everything from there. But ttowards the end, we went down to the floor...

It was exciting womens' energy - then the vibrating of the floor hit me. Vibrations from the music and people dancing in sheer joy.

My neck went tense. This was followed like a bad adrenaline rush - like the kind you feel when you almost fall on a staircase.

I tried to fight it. I had presence of mind enough to know that this was not a quake, it only felt like it. So I stood there. As Amy sang with passion,  I chanted "I am safe" to myself over and over again. Still, the sickening feeling would not leave my body, so I moved further away from the stage.