disaster dreams

Last night, I dreamed that there was an earthquake here in Chicago, a fierce one..something that started like a low rumble that could have been a train but ended in a jolt that made the building lurch like two feet to the left. My sister was lying on my couch (she tends to be around during disaster dreams) and kept insisting it had been a train or a truck and not an earthquake. I was looking out the windows at the firetrucks in the alley when the power goes out suddenly. Then, my mother was franticly calling my cellphone while I am trying to take a shower before all the hot water is gone forever (because yes, that would be apparently the WORST thing in the world, no hot water). I woke up a little panicky, though I didn't seem to be in the dream, where I seemed to just be accepting it as the sort of thing that happens. I'm used to floods and tornadoes, occasional fire, lots of plane crashes, but never an earthquake..probably becuase I don't really know what what feels like, though I imagine it would be much like that, the rumble and jerking suddenly in odd directions. As much as California has always seemed like this perfect place for me to live, I take enormous comfort in the fact that the earth below me is pretty much stable and isn't going to shift out from under me at any moment, at least in any literal sort of way.