This has got to be a joke

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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