It must be over by now!

I came back from Wellington last weekend thinking, new term, back to less earthquake stuff - more future planning stuff.
I was woken that night at some time, I don't even recall, by another aftershock. The ground seems determined for us not forget its power and how little we are really in control. On the Friday of that week I was sitting next to a lady who is currently living in a motel - it is very far from over.
I remember when we were kids, there were days when the sun shone under the nor'west arch, lighting everything in a soft yellow like one of those old paintings in the art gallery. The nor'west would die down and all would be still. "Earthquake weather we used to say." I don't why we thought that. Earthquakes don't care for weather, they happen in brilliant sunshine, in the night, in the rain - anytime they fancy. I was thinking on Tuesday night as I was lying in bed, about how to describe the last week of aftershocks. It is hard to remember because they do merge into together. So there was one big enough to wake me on the Sunday night. I think we had a couple of days of no aftershocks that I felt and then there was a largish one that I didn't feel as we were in the car but when we arrived at school everyone was talking about it. I think there were a couple more littlies over the next few days. Saturday afternoon we had a sizable jolt. Monday there was another that had me doing the meerkat impression - stopping raising my head and looking about to see if things would worsen. Then of course in the early hours of Wednesday we had another large rattle. It woke three out of the four in our house. 3am shakes are bastards because it is so hard to get back to sleep and before you know it, the alarm is going off. It was one those aftershocks that made the whole house rock for quite awhile at the end of the major jolt, like it was rocking itself back to stock-still or we were on a boat crossing the ferry wake in the Marlborough Sounds. Then my brain stopped and thought hang on! This was the ground, it was not supposed to gently rock to a stop!
The next two days everyone was tired. Imagine a whole city tired from broken sleep on top of months of dealing with change, (the new positive word that is being used for the situation we find ourselves in), traffic is not pretty, nor that safe a place, to be at the moment. At least we are all in it together.