moosh in indy.

So maybe you’ve heard of BOSSY.

Maybe you’re aware that she’s on a month long road trip around the country and is relying on the goodness of her fellow bloggers to put her up and make sure she makes it back home in one sane piece.

If you weren’t aware, there is a blogger named BOSSY who is on a month long road trip around the country and is relying on the goodness of her fellow bloggers to put her up and make sure she makes it back home in one sane piece.

The good blogger who will be putting her up tonight in Indianapolis is named Casey. Oh wait. That’s me.

Hi!

So here’s the thing. I’ve been following the road trip and am sorry to report that BOSSY may have a hard time here. Of course she’d never say it on her own blog because she’s a classy broad. But she’ll be spending the night on my couch, my small couch with a substantial bar that is probably about seven inches too short to accommodate her height. If she’s really lucky she’ll get an air mattress that will lose air gradually overnight until she’s smothered in a hammock of plastic, flat on the ground. It’s not going to get any better in the morning. I don’t drink coffee. There’s no coffee joints around my house for many a mile (unless you count the seedy convenience store down the street). And when I say house. I mean apartment, graduate student apartment with exercise equipment hanging from the walls.

About the only thing I have to offer BOSSY is running water and my cooking ability. But even my finest of baked good won’t help the situation as she claims she is so full from Pringles and swallowed air from all the gum she chews to keep her awake on the road that she has no desire for any food what so ever. Strike three.

Technically strike three would land me out of the game. But alas, there is a strike four.

BOSSY can’t drink when she drives, and she has written in length about the late night wine she has enjoyed with friends on her road trip. This is strike four, for there is nary a drop of liquor in my house unless you count the tablespoon left over from the whole pecan pie debacle of 2007.

In Utah they like to talk about “the big one.” Referring to an earthquake. Considering I lived most of my life right on the most gigantic fault in the entire valley I was prepared to kiss it all goodbye in a few shaky seconds. As a kid I would practice running from the couch to the nearest door jamb. In school we were subject to regular earthquake drills.

And yet in all my twenty four years living there I never felt an earthquake.

Blizzards with ten foot high snow drifts? Yes.

Earthquake? No.

So here I am in the Midwest where if it snows ten centimeters life shuts down.

Completely.

And there’s these things called tornadoes. Maybe you’ve heard of them. If not think Wizard of Oz without the gingham dress.

The tornado sirens have gone off four times since we’ve lived here and every time I’m sent scurrying like a burrowing rodent to gather the necessary supplies just in case we’re blown off to Oz. Or Ohio. Whatever.

What I’m trying to say is that every part of the country has it’s own little freaky weather patterns and geological quirks that scare a newcomer to death. (me + my first tornado siren = me crying in the Wal-Mart parking lot.)

I figured since Indiana is the flattest place I’ve been since, well ever, earthquakes weren’t of much concern.

Until one SHOOK ME AWAKE at 5:30 this morning. (The only way I have to reference how hard it shook is my boobs. Yes, my boobs shook me awake. Do with that what you will.) It shook Cody awake too, or maybe it was the shaking boob radar that all men seem to have. Regardless he very groggily said “Was that an earthquake or a tornado?” got up to pee and then fell back into death sleep moments later.

Meanwhile being the big girl that I am freaked out in a completely classic girlish freak out kind of way. I started remembering all I had learned from elementary about earthquakes. THE BIRDS! The birds weren’t chirping while it happened but they started chirping immediately after it was over! THE BIRDS KNEW! Animals know when there’s funny geological stuff going on!

So now not only am I afraid of being swallowed whole by a fissure, any sudden loss of birds chirping or odd acting animal is going to set off my Spidey earthquake senses.

Hope you have your 72 hour kits, because Earth seems to be going a wee bit crazy lately.

Goodbye 24 hour Mexican food.

Goodbye soccer star.

Goodbye birthday girl.

Goodbye Barbara and Johnny.

Goodbye perfectly blue sky.

Goodbye Aunt Cheryl.

Goodbye Katie.

Goodbye duck pond.

Goodbye beautiful friends.

Goodbye GiGi.

Goodbye Mickey pancakes.

Goodbye sidewalk chalk.

Goodbye Delaney.

Goodbye adorable strangers.

Goodbye Sissy.

Goodbye Utah.

We really don’t want to go.