I’m home! Home, home, home! No clinics to teach, no shows to attend.

To welcome me home? A 5.8 earthquake, epicenter only an hour or so away.

After 10 weeks of feeling like the sky was falling, the earth opened up. Awesome.

But the chaos appears to have settled for now, though apparently there are theories that there could be more quakes—even more sinister ones—to come. Let’s just say that tonight I’m eating dessert first.

I was in the barn holding a horse for Dr. Casey, our wonderful chiropractor/acupuncture vet. Being a Midwestern-born and East Coast-educated person, I had the same reaction as a lot of my fellow Virginians: Weird—a semi truck somewhere is having a hard time stopping. Or a helicopter is landing. On the roof.

Oh crap.

Tim and I high-tailed it out of there, but the worst had passed. No damage to the barn or our belongings; stuff didn’t even fall of the walls. The horses all looked a little rattled, to use a terrible pun, while we shook—poor Ella was flat out in her stall, having a snooze; she jumped to her feet pretty fast—but they settled immediately. And that was that.

Cell phone lines were jammed, so my poor mom, running on a treadmill and watching TV from a hotel gym overseas for work, saw the news and panicked when she couldn’t get a hold of anyone, but she eventually got us on the landline, and all was well. I’d been considering chucking that land phone and just using my cell for business; reconsidering that after today!

But we’re all fine, and we’ll all be fine, especially after I eat this slice of key lime pie. Life is unpredictable, y’all.