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| Missing my Mommy right about now. |
"This has got to be a joke," this was the thought running through my head as I was
walking home from school yesterday. By “this” I mean, my life; this has got to
be some type of weird joke the universe is playing on me. Two years ago, this
might have fallen under the category of, “This is not my life.” Any who, what
brought me to tears yesterday was this: my brother had called me at school and
we were enjoying a great conversation about something, probably politics or
religion or something, when Joel has to go. He says, “Call me later.” And we
hang up. The only problem is I can’t call him later because I can’t make
outgoing calls on my phone. Let’s back up to the beginning of this school year
….
I was involuntarily transferred out to Coffman Cove. Emily
Trackers know that I was less than pleased about this move and considered
quitting, but I didn’t. I moved back to Coffman Cove. In CC, there is no
cellphone reception, so when I moved into my apartment in September I talked with my homies at Alaska Communication Services about hooking up a landline. Two months later they made it to the island
and hooked it up. GREAT! I thought, it will be nice to have a phone at my
house, since I live alone, don’t have Internet access and all my friends live
on the other side of the island. YIPEE! But, there’s a catch: I can only call
people in Coffman Cove, ACS does not offer long distance calling, only ATT
offers that service here. For the record, I’ve needed to call somebody in
Coffman Cove exactly zero times since I moved into this place. So as it stood,
I just paid a lot of money for a phone that I had no use for. Any who, this
problem seems easy enough to solve, simply call ATT and ask them to hook up the
long distance, right? WRONG! I’m now having dejavu from living here before.
Without exaggeration I have spent several hours over the last week talking
to many different people in that corporation that have no idea what the hell I’m
talking about. All roads lead to one of these two conclusions:
1.
Have you thought about our wireless services? Why
don’t you just get a cellphone? (Answer: because there is NO CELLPHONE
RECEPTION here, why do you think I have a land line in the first place!?!)
2.
We don’t offer that service in your area
(Answer: YES YOU DO, everybody in this town has long distance calling through
you).
It was amazing to me, I had more than three customer service
agents just straight up tell me that they could not help me. Then I remember
(from last time), that I need to talk to somebody in AK to solve this problem.
So I call the people in Ketchikan (just across Clarence Straits) and they too
inform me that they don’t offer that service on POW, it’s Alaska Power and
Telephone (not true).
So, for like four nights in a row, after work, I leave
defeated, last night included. So as I’m walking home, I’m like, what the hell
am I doing? I’m living on a island in Alaska with no way of contacting anybody
that I love or care about … unless you consider the Internet, which I’m
grateful for, but I have to be at school to use. Anyways, I just start crying,
this is after James informed me that my plans (kayaking) for Saturday have now
changed because we have an archery tournament in Coffman Cove and I have to be
there. I am so jaded and tired. I’m sick of this school district trying to suck
the life out of me. Lots of teachers here justify it because (and I agree) they
say it’s a great place to raise kids, it provides a lot of opportunity, it’s
really safe, etc. Well guess what? I don’t have any damn children and I’m not
sure what I’m doing here.
I think the icing on the cake was that I wanted to go to a two-day
training next week in Craig to teach survival skills to kids. The training is
FREE. I thought I would have no problem getting clearance to go, as it’s a
great opportunity. My principal informed me that I would have to pay for my own
sub and use my personal days, and then tried to pass it off like this is
protocol. Which is complete bullshit. You might remember that when I was in
good standing with my district, they sent me to Juneau for Wilderness First
Responder training for 10 days and paid for the whole damn thing.
On the brighter side of things, I spoke with somebody in
Anchorage ATT today and was finally able to establish long distance calling on
my phone. Hopefully it will start next week! In the mean time, holler at me:
907-329-2211
