the perils of living in the northwest

i had a dream last night that i still remember pretty vividly, so i figure i'll share it. it started with an earthquake. i can't remember what building i was in, probably not any real building, but i remember feeling the ground moving in one direction, like a large chunk of land mass was sliding. so i jumped up and stood in a doorframe like you're supposed to do in an earthquake. only it didn't stop, it just kept going. i could see where it was going - we kept sliding out into the sound, then busted through some bridge (if there were a bridge across the sound around here), and kept on sliding until we were pretty far from where we started. so we decided to evacuate. at first this was done by running as fast as we could in the same direction as we were moving, trying to get to where we could see the ocean. my dad was there. he said that we had to get off of the moving land before it fell off the continental shelf. that sounded scary. suddenly there was a big hill in front of us (that i remember someone called "mt. hill." ha.) that i couldn't make it up. and then we saw other people, and they were all going the other direction, back towards the land. at this point we realized that what had happened was mt. rainier had blown, and we were on one of the lahars that was moving out to sea. so we started moving in the other direction, first stopping back at our house to grab stuff. i tried to stuff frida into my backpack but decided against it. i think i ended up carrying her off. so then we got into a car somehow and were driving back towards the land, trying to outrun the still-moving land mass and get to safety. someone mentioned something about "you think we're screwed, i just heard that car dealership central is completely demolished." somehow i knew that car dealership central referred to the renton/auburn valley. we kept on going, driving as fast as we could in the clogged 2-lane street to get to safety. then i woke up.

so then i started thinking about the inaccuracies of my dream. first of all, lahars don't carry large land masses and things with them, they just blow them out of existence. second, if mt. rainier really exploded, we here in seattle would have at least some advance warning to evacuate. i'd put my kitty in her carrier, rather than shoving her in a backpack or carrying her by hand. and then we'd head north on i-5, as fast as traffic would allow. and auburn and renton would probably be nonexistent. these are things you gotta think about, living in the shadow of the most dangerous volcano in the country. not obsess about, mind you, but at least be aware of, so should that day ever come, you can deal with it without completely panicking.