Zany like David Weisner's Tuesday-- but substitute an earthquake

about 5:39 a.m. Eastern Standard time. . .

Aunt Ruby, who up until that moment had been sleeping peacefully on an air mattress in the newly refinished dining room, heard the house creaking and the huge windows rattling lustily. She thought that a helicopter must be flying alarmingly low.

Nora, whose biorhythms normally tell her to awaken around this time and whose senses told her something was up, began to scream hysterically for her mother.

Ian-- who does much of the night duty to aid the cessation of night nursing-- glanced at the clock at Nora's first cry, and heard the house creaking as he attended to his wailing child. He assumed a large wind but surprised when no more sounds came.

Jen, similarly awakened by Nora's howling, felt the bed moving and figured that the cats were vehemently attacking the scratching post at the foot of her bed. Kittens. . . always up to something. . .

Granny, unsure whether was the movement of the house, the rattling of the windows, the racket from Nora, or the combination of the above that woke her up first, tried to go back to sleep.

Fiona, who slept blissfully through the entire thing, didn't experience the sound of rattling until another shakeup at almost lunchtime. She had, up until that moment, been forced to use solely her imagination to guess what all the fuss was about.

It's very exciting that a 5.2 magnitude earthquake near West Salem, Illinois can shake up sleepy people for such a vast distance. Some vacation excitement can't be planned!