What's shaking?

"What's shaking?" was the question we heard from Tammy when we answered our phone Saturday morning. It was over an hour since the earthquake, but yet, my heart was still beating pretty fast.

Last weekend AKA natural disaster drill weekend, we woke up at 5:30 a.m. to an earthquake. A strong one. Benny yelled "doorway" as he went into Olivia's room to stand there with her. I stook in the doorway of our bedroom and because of the way the doors open we couldn't see each other. All we could do was wait for the shaking to stop. Eventually it did.

No damage to report. Olivia slept through the entire thing. We had two framed pictures fall from the shelves. That's it.

A few minutes later I climbed into bed, hoping to sleep in, when Benny's work phone rang. He received a mass notification call from the emergency response people. A tsunami warning for Okinawa was issued. Now I had trouble falling back asleep, even though we live/eat/work/sleep on the third story of a building that is already built up on top of a wall to protect the land from the ocean. Minutes later it was the phone again, but this time it was our Vonage line. Benny's sister, Patti, was calling to check on us.

Huh, that's strange. The earthquake is being reported in the States. We've had plenty of earthquakes here before, but never have the quakes been covered in Okinawan news yet alone American news.

That's when I got up and checked my Facebook. There was multiple messages asking if we were OK. We are.

Less than 2 hours later, the tsunami warning was cancelled. The threat was over.

The next day we went to church as usual. That's where we heard about the earthquake in Chile and the tsunami warning issued for Okinawa. The tsunami was scheduled to hit at 3:10 p.m. on the west side of the island, but emergency officials were telling us to plan for the whole island to be affected. This time Benny went into work.

Even though we would most likely be OK, I decided to take Olivia and head for higher ground AKA the Air Force base. I drove around for 20 minutes, enough time for the car's motion to soothe her to sleep, before I parked in a shaded parking lot, turned on the radio and opened my photography magazine. I listened as 3:10 p.m. came and went and Olivia slept in the backseat. All is well in Okinawa.

About 3:30 p.m. Olivia woke up, so we headed to the store to measure her feet. Yes, the O monster has been barefoot and proud her whole life, but since she will be turning 1 next week I thought it was time we got her some shoes. We went to the shoe department. I measured her foot and put some keds on her feet. She happily kicked and looked at her feet. When I stood her on the ground, she refused to take a step. It was as though she had no idea how to use her feet anymore. After some coaxing, I gave up and went to look at baby clothes while Olivia nibbled on that shoe.

At 5 p.m. the "all clear" announcement was made and Olivia started screaming (no one told me that 11 months, 25 day olds have tantrums), so we left her shoes behind and left the store.

Later I read an article online about the earthquake. Turns out it was a big one. Luckily it wasn't THE Big One.