I didn't know if "BEFOGGLED" really is a word, but knew it described what I was feeling after tallying the page views for my authorial themed blogs for the past week and found them shy on comments but 2,736 page views heavy. Befoggled... to me, it's a good word...so I Googled it and these are some of the images I came up with. As you can tell, they are not in any order... nor do they center around one easily recognizable visual definition... So IS there a definition? I guess I'd better check WEBSTER...the final authority in word recongition. There IS befog...a verb...meaning, obscure, confuse. So if you BEFOG someone doesn't it stand to reason they would walk away from the experience BEFOGGLED? So I'm still not 100% sure if it really is a word or not, but I can tell you, it most assuredly IS an emotion because I am thoroughly BEFOGGLED!
Living on the east coast of the United States has, for the most part, allowed us to live in a magical state of oblivion when it comes to some of Nature's most violent rages.
Until last year, we had not experienced tornados...although by comparison, ours are small when stacked against the F4 and 5 terrorizing Tornado Alley in our middle states, they do touch down now often enough we are no longer wide-eyed over reports of their visits.
I grew up having very few strange weather events. One occured when we'd gone to the hardware store in Newtown, PA. While we were gone, a storm hit. We didn't think anything of it. Storms were...typical. Thunder, lightning, winds, driving rain...the usual...until we got home. We had a huge picture window across the back wall of our farm sized kitchen. It blew OUT, not in while we were gone. How? We never found the answer, but Dad had to pile himself back into the car and head back to the hardware store for a healthy length of pane glass. Another weird event happened when I was about
eight. I loved running around in the rain storms...Nature's water game...It was pouring down with delightful intensity and so cool against my bathing suited flesh...Zig zagging like a loon, I zig zagged across the street and froze. How come it wasn't raining over here?
Right down the middle of our road, (Township Line Road), the rain sheeting created a wall on one side and nothing on the other. How bizarre that was. I never learned what caused THAT phenomenom either. Over twenty odd years ago, the ground felt like it had exploded and the sound made our ears hurt. Earthquake, we all thought...until we learned a nearby factory had exploded...we were feeling and hearing the resonating shake and bang.
But today we found out we are not immune from the fury of ground shakes.
They are saying the epicenter is near Richmond, VA and it was a 5.9 quake at 0.6 miles deep and it spread. I am hearing from some as far north as Toronto. I don't know about that. I know we felt it here in NJ.
Never would have thought my apartment building, comprised of brick and concrete was so inconsequential it would shake back and forth and up and down the way it did. Was it a water main break? That was my first guess when the first teeny tremor hit, but the tremeor increased. Nope, that was NOT a water main break. (We've had a lot of those...in fact we had one just last week and went nearly an entire day without water.)
I met neighbors I had never seen before because we all raced from our apartments in a state of mass confusion. What happened? We were to find out shortly. Twenty-thirty seconds that was all it took. The news stations went on full time covereage alert. We had been shaken by the rippling fist of a quake centered in VA, and we were not the last stop in this quakes journey to remind us we are fools to think Mother Nature cannot send our world into immeidtale upheaval any time she wants to. Hurricanes, nor-easters...even the rare lake effects snow storm in August...we know them and know them well...we have come to know tornados...and now an earthquake.
When I went in to check on this quake I learned Colorado was also hit, and yesterday Trinidad was hit. Mother Nature is truly flexing her punch, and although this strike was not monumentally destructive, she must truly be ticked at us.
We exist on a living, breathing, ever changing VIOLENT planet...there's nowhere to escape Mother Nature...unless you want to try inhabiting the Moon or Mars. All you'd have to dodge is...well the temperature and a meteor or hundreds. Mother Nature NOT mankind is ultimately our Mistress, no matter how much smarter we think we are.
Now that I am shaken and stirred...(yes it does leave you queasy)...I am going to lie down for a bit and hopefully regain some dominion over...well not the ground beneath me obviously, so my own body. Bless you all and be safe.
