This past weekend, Catherine apparently told someone that I live in Illinois, and that she only sees me a few days of month. True enough, but god, how depressing to hear your marriage described in these terms. Don't I live in Bloomington anymore? I don't really live here, so if I don't live there, either... As of today, we have only had 3 days together in October. We've arranged for us to be in the same town Saturday through Wednesday of next week, though, so that will give us an amazing 8 whole days together this month (one of which is our 15th anniversary). Then I'm off to Washington, D.C. for a conference, and then I have a different conference paper due, so I'll probably need to stay in Illinois and work....

Anyway, I type this because this is what distance can do to you. Catherine has told me a MILLION times that she was going to be out of town today. We'd even discussed the transportation possibilities. She needed to go Indy, and I obviously can't drive her because I'm in Illinois, so she'd arranged to take the shuttle up to the airport. From there, someone would pick her up.

I KNOW THIS. Still, I must have called her office ten times today, trying to get in touch with her. Unusual that she was away from her desk all afternoon, but it's been a little unusual all the way around at her office, so I guess that's okay. Still, she wasn't home by 9:00 her time, and she wasn't at her office. And she didn't answer her cell phone. I don't know how many times I called home, her office, her cell.... I'm embarrassed to admit it, but I even brought up the webpage for the local newspaper in case to make sure there was nothing going on in town. And then I looked at the campus newspaper...could she be at some Dalai Lama event??? *I even looked at the page for the local hospital, wondering, should I call?*

And this is when I realized there was a huge problem with the way we've been communicating. What if something was wrong? I don't have our neighbors' phone numbers. I don't have the phone number for her assistant curator--only his long expired cell phone number. Who can I call, after hours, to see if she was at work? I have one phone number for some friends, and I didn't think calling them and saying, "Hey, would you drive by my house and check in on my wife for me?" seemed very rational, so I didn't call them.

In the end, I checked Catherine's e-mail. That is so incredibly unethical, isn't it? But I opened it up, and discovered she hadn't read any of today's e-mails, and then that really set me in a panic. Where IS SHE???? But then I went to the second page, and saw the subject headings for two messages marked read from yesterday, from the airport shuttle company. Mystery solved, suddenly I remembered, oh....yeah....we talked about that. Multiple times. Yeah.

And then when Catherine finally called me (she'd forgotten her cell phone at home, and couldn't call me during the day), I burst into tears.

It sucks to be me.