While Mathilde was here we happened to be having dinner at a park near the ocean just prior to sunset. When I commented I’d never actually witnessed a sunset it was decided we would be going to the beach so I could do just that!
And we did.
And it was beautiful.
My happy place
Back from the doctor and as 99% expected, she is pretty sure the lump isn’t anything serious. It is on the ‘non-boob’ side of the armpit and is most likely a blocked duct or hair follicle which will hopefully go away with antibiotic cream. If it doesn’t go away with the cream it will likely turn into an abcess, I am most certainly hoping for the ‘go away’ outcome.
Now I can stop worrying and make the most of what is going to be an awesome week, with my sister and niece arriving on Wednesday! I haven’t seen them for almost two years and cannot explain how excited I am about seeing them!
Yay for good updates!
I guess this day naturally calls for a blog post.
Just around the corner from our house
4.35am, September 4 2010. I woke up to my bed shaking. My brain registered it was an earthquake, but because I was torn from a very deep cycle of sleep, I couldn’t for the hell of me think what to do.
So I hid under my covers.
By the time I realised I should be under the doorframe the quake was over. I stumbled out of bed and tried to turn the light on. It was a no go. With the power out I started to freak out about my kiddos. Gabrielle was 3 at the time and Emersyn was only 10 weeks old. Luckily both had slept in my room that night, so I didn’t have far to go to check on them. Emersyn? Sound asleep. Yeap, in her little baby world she had managed to sleep through a 7.1 magnitude earthquake. Gabrielle was awake but seemed rather annoyed at me for asking if she was okay, all she wanted to do was go back to sleep.
Yeap. Mum – the only adult in the house – was the only one freaking out.
Text messages started coming through. My mum, my sister (yes, the quake had woken her up hundreds of km away), my friend Lauren, my friend Emma, my ex-boyfriend, Gabrielle’s father. It was nice to be able to share a quick ‘wow, that was scary’ text message or 20. Then there was another big quake, an aftershock, and being wide awake by that point, it really scared me… as well as Gabrielle. Emersyn was still asleep.
My plan was to take a walk along the river and cross over where I usually did. Then I found this.
I heard voices outside and decided I should go and make sure everyone was okay. The elderly lady next door invited me inside to listen to the radio, and it was then that I realised how bad it was.
Roads torn up, buildings down, flooding, liquifaction, roads closed, emergency services were out, no water, no electricity…
It wasn’t until Emersyn woke for the day at 7am and was demanding a bottle that I realised I had no way to make her bottle. What the hell was I going to do? I went against advise and left my house, headed for my parents, who had plenty of bottled water and a gas stove so I could actually heat the water.
Only on this trip did I realise how bad the earthquake had been. A bridge very close to my house had pretty much separated from the road, there were cracks all through the road, the river was incredibly muddy and high… but most alarming, as I drove closer to my parents, I saw more and more houses which were damaged. It was scary and I realised how lucky I had been.
When I got to my parents house they were listening to the AM radio. Wow. It was too much to hear, houses down, injuries, roads completely ruined. The only positive thing was that there had been no reported loss of life.
And there wouldn’t be. No lives were lost in the September 4th earthquake, maybe in part because of the time of day it hit?
It was incredibly hard not to be on edge. Each aftershock made my nerves grow more and more frazzled, until a particularly large one sent me right over the edge and I spent the best part of two hours crying… through aftershock after aftershock.
None of us realised that September 4th was just the beginning. Mother Nature lured us into a false sense of security, the big one had past, it couldn’t get any worse, right?! Things could only get better, right?!
Then February 22nd 2011 happened.
12.51 February 22nd 2011. 6.3 magnitude. 185 people dead.
My dad was close to being one of them. He was in the CTV building only half an hour before it went down. He had just walked passed it on the way back from the chemist when the quake struck. He used to work in that building in the early 2000’s. My sister went to fitness college in that building. My family had so many connections to that building… and to have it collapse… I can’t explain how traumatic it was.
I am going to leave my feelings about the February 22 earthquake for another day. Likely February 22 2015… I can’t put myself through it right now.
I was thinking this morning about how much has changed since the first earthquake.
Happy times! Me & my chief bridesmaid
Gabrielle is now about six weeks off turning eight
Emersyn is four!
I have a beautiful niece (who, ironically, was born on Feb 24 2011) who is three
I fell in love with my best friend, Lauriel
I moved to Wanganui to live with her and her kiddos
Lauriel and I got married
I am now half way through my Bachelor of Communication
I have had writing published (online, but it still counts!
I have made some really amazing friends since moving here
That list up there ^^^ is enough to make me realise I have so much to be happy for, so much to be proud of, so many reasons to smile. At times it can be hard to forget that, and I know it is something I need to work on!
Emma Knits 