Mammoth Cave Diaries

I don't keep up with a regular blogging schedule. Maybe I should try to do this more. Some sort of catharsis from everything. I can't freely express myself on Facebook. I used to have Twitter, but now I have too many followers that I actually know. I started a couple of Tumblrs, but that's more for showing some of the weird things I see in the world. And poop texts.

I think this will be the one that I use to try to figure things out.

Like right now. I've been working at Mammoth Cave National Park for over a month. It's great. I love this place so much. I could see myself coming back season after season. But the next year or so is going to be an incredibly difficult one that might prevent that from happening.

Before I left Starkville for the summer, we found out Cliff would be getting a one-year fellowship with NOAA in Washington, DC. This is fantastic considering just finishing his Ph.D., it gives at least another year to find a permanent professorship. I'll be finishing up class work and beginning my dissertation. Aside from the huge hoop that will entail and what scares the ever living crap out of me, I'm worried about the future separation and the effect it will have on our young marriage.

Every summer that we've been in Mississippi, I've been somewhere else. First it was Hot Springs. Then it was Vicksburg for two summers. Vicksburg was actually nice in that I could go home every couple weeks, or Cliff could come down for a visit. We saw each other fairly regularly. Then we got married. I'm now 8 hours away in Kentucky at Mammoth Cave. He came up here one weekend and it was amazing. We went on a float trip on the Green River, we went on the Intro to Caving tour, and saw the cave in a historic tour.

But that was just temporary. Now we're separated again. In the meantime, I've begun corresponding with a person I've been engaged with in an epic DrawSomething game since about March. In fact, he was the first person I ever played with. His name is Greg. We started IMing on June 26. It started out innocent enough and then escalated to flirting. Then we both admitted to being married. But that didn't stop us from continuing to chat and share this mutual secret. In the past week and a half or so, we've chatted everyday.

He's a wonderful person. Family man, 3 sons, plays in his church band, has been married for 14 years. That surprised me, that he had been married for so long. He's sent me some songs he's written and some he's just performed for church. He's been responsible for me reexamining things in my life. But at this point I think I'm becoming almost too attached. As much as I might want to do things with him I don't see that happening ever. Talking with him consumes most of my energy. Today I couldn't hardly do anything because I just kept waiting for messages that weren't coming. I think the more we learn about each other, the less fun this will be. I don't know how much longer the game will continue, either. On the one hand, I'm ready to basically call it quits altogether on DrawSomething. But I'm not sure how I would approach that on IMing. I don't know if he's tired of me yet or not.

And then there's the ever present Zeke. Zeke has been there for a while. Flirting is second nature. He reminds me a lot of Aaron. I hope he can find his way through life. He's had a rough go of things all of his life, and I hope that if he can go into the Marines or whatever he's planning next that he'll be able to do what he wants to do. At one point that was law school, but I don't know if it still is. Maybe he could be a JAG or something. Who knows.

So with these two in my life, in addition to that guy I committed myself to, I'm worried about our future separation. Cliff's fellowship is for an entire year. Next summer he expects me to work in DC. I've tried to explain to him that that's a lot easier said than done. But what I really want to say is, look. I have a job here and if they ask me to come back, this is where I want to be. Honestly, if I had something to do the other 9 months of the year, I'd gladly move here. Nothing against DC parks. It was once a dream of mine to live and work in the nation's capital at a place like the Lincoln Memorial. But not anymore. So I don't know how he's going to take that. And I don't know how much this separation is going to hurt our marriage. I don't see it helping it. I see it helping Cliff's career, and hopefully he can get on board at a university soon. Hopefully they'll need a spare historian or something.

Or something. That seems to have been my life plan this whole time. Except that it wasn't.