Three hours later, it came back on again.
Last night, when I crawled into my already uncomfortable bed, it was wet. I adapted pretty quickly to the moisture and even tried to be grateful for it. It was a warm night, after all. I read a little and then shut off the light next to the bed. John came up shortly after that and crawled onto his crappy mattress. We tossed and turned, shifted and complained a little and then finally, we fell asleep.
Thirty minutes later, I awoke to my bed shaking. At first, in my dreamy state of mind, I accepted the shaking. It’s just the house, I told myself. But suddenly, I was conscious and sat up, turning on the lamp beside the bed. John sat up at the same time. He said that his brain told him that someone “fell down” and that was made the house shake.
“What do we do now?” I asked him.
“I don’t know.”
We sat there for a few moments in silence.
“Should we go get Lydian?” I asked.
“I don’t know.” He said.
We don’t really have a language that we can use to talk about earthquakes, I guess. It seems like we should try to “avoid” them or predict them or something. And it seems as though there should be some sort of dramatic response to an earthquake, however slight the shaking especially since the big one a few weeks ago. But we sat there, in the dim lamplight with nothing to do. Nothing to say.
Every now and then, in the distance, there was a flash of light. Another thunderstorm was rolling through to the north.
We finally decided that it was okay to go back to sleep.
In the morning I woke up to the sound of someone weed-wacking the lawn at precisely 6:45 AM. I got up and got ready for my jog. Lydian and I ran back and forth, back and forth. Then, I came in and sat down to do my work. Lydian was finishing up some homework and had some questions for me. She came up and sat on the bed beside me.
In the midst of answering one of her questions, I noted some insect bites on my arm. They don’t itch and they aren’t swollen. They don’t look in
any way familiar to me, which is unnerving to say the least. They definitely look as though some blood-sucking bug had a feast from a couple of the veins in my wrist. It or “they” must not have injected me with any venom because the insect bites don’t look infected or swollen. I’ll probably have to wait to find out what they are and frankly, I may never know. I know we have a cockroach problem and I also know that cockroaches do sometimes bite. Fleas? (Ugh) Perhaps. These insects are blood suckers too.
Lydian has had just about enough of the insects as well. We all feel them crawling on us anytime we sit and “relax”.
The only diplomatic observation that I have this afternoon is that homesickness can be exacerbated by illness and mysterious bug bites, earthquakes, and inadequate bedding. Dogs barking constantly and inconsiderate neighbors don’t really help either.
