Waiting--still or again, depending upon perspective--for Verizon. No Internet, and I am distraught. I spent hours yesterday trying to find another service provider, but there are none. Cable One comes to my so-called town, to my so-called street even, but stops before reaching my so-called home. At&T did not seem convinced that my location even exists. (At&T may be onto something.) I'm stuck with Verizon and correspondingly distraught. Sierra and Alfie take all their classes online, I take and teach my classes online, and the state of Internetlessness is lethal.

Did I mention that I am distraught?

I've been so profoundly sad/angry re last week's travesty of justice. The only thing I know to do with this sadness, this anger, is push it down and focus upon something else, something useful. Hence, my English paper, which has drafted out at seventeen pages and hot the point of petty damn good. (Whether my instructor concurs is another and actually minor-ish matter, as I trust my perception of "good" over this instructor's.) (Eh, maybe not so minor-ish, as I'm not the one dispensing grades...)

So I've been focusing upon my paper, upon trying to get Verizon to restore my Internet, and upon my puppy Pi. I've been focusing upon watching her be happy, because she has an amazing tendency towards happy. While Fraction is usually all wound up in worry (like me, Fraction worries even in her sleep), Pi is all doggy joy. The weather has been very nice and when I feel myself slipping into a deeper level of despair, I grab a Diet Pepsi or a Keystone Light (depending upon time of day and whether I have actually called it a proverbial day on the English paper), and go sit outside and watch Pi and all my other nonhuman animal companions.

Pi seems to have stopped growing at what looks to me to be a smallish-to-middling size of about forty pounds. She seems to be an oddly assembled dog. Her body is long, almost weasel-like in its sinuosity and sleekness. Her tail is long and heavy and after a certain point tends to curve downward in a wide U as though she cannot quit control its gravity. (Sierra says that Pi has a "dinosaur tail" and this is pretty accurate.) Her almond shaped eyes are bright, clever, and close togetherish in a way that is oddly simian. Her brownness has segued to a shiny Labrador blackness with a white chest and white paw tips. She looks to be just a plain, strangely proportioned mixed-breed dog, and yet she has what can only be described as preternatural powers of athleticism. Even as a seven-week-old pup, she could climb the child gate blocking my doorway; now, she effortlessly scales the farm gate. I mean, it looks truly bizarre to see her go from ground to the top of the metal gate that is chest-high to my 5'9", pause there a second, and then sail over. It doesn't look possible from a perspective of physics. I can't quite figure out how she does it.

Pi's other talent involves moths. In the early evenings when I sit outside, Pi goes mothing. Pale, mid-sized moths rise out of the grasses, flutter up into the gathering dusk, up, up into the cooling air, and Pi leaps up and up and up to snatch them from the sky and then, well, eat them. After a while her dark pretty face is all dusty with moth powder and she'll come to me panting, smiling her happy dog smile, and rest by my blue plastic chair for a while before being irresistibly called back to her mothing.

It makes me happy, watching Pi. My sadness/anger brings me to constantly worry about her. I'm convinced that the way things are going, I'm going to lose her. Lose Pi. I'm scared all the time that she'll die. I tell myself that this is unlikely, but it doesn't feel unlikely; it feels completely likely. I try to watch her all the time. When I go to park at Panera, siphon their free wifi, I bring Fraction and Pi in the car with me. When they are snoozing in the backseat, I feel unworried enough to do all my online work stuff. I can't seem to bear having them out of my sight.

I better go. Who knows when or even if Verizon will show up? I better shower.

                                   A girl needs a gun these days on account of all the rattlesnakes.

                                                          --Lloyd Cole

Verizon is supposed to come and fix the phone line tomorrow. They will be here between 8 a.m. and 9 p.m. and I can't decide if a thirteen-hour window is funny or not. We need to clean up as much as possible between now and then. I hate having people in the trailer. I'm always so afraid they will, idk, call some sort of authority, charge me with something, get the place condemned, try to take the kids. Something; I don't know.

I know this is unlikely. At eighteen, Sierra is officially an adult. Trinity at seventeen is an adult in Texas. I'm just always afraid; after CPS accused me of witchcraft and removed the kids in 2002, I'm always afraid.

I'm working very hard at not thinking about the court thing. Sometimes blocks of minutes will pass and I'll realize that I haven't thought about it in that time.

The good thing about losing child support is that we'll qualify for food stamps. Every cloud/silver lining, right? The bad thing is that House Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan is proposing a budget that would cut food stamp funding by 17 percent. If it passes, I'll explain to the kids that they simply need to cut down their daily food intake by 17 percent. No problem, right?

It's way, way, way past time to get out of here. Out of Texas, out of the entire nation. Did you know that a whole bunch of universities in Finland are looking for professors in my field? They're even okay with courses being taught in English. In four, five years I'll have my PhD. I'll have experience, stellar refs, a CV plush with published work; I can pack up the dogs and head out to Finland. When I still had Internet, I checked into Finland's bringing-pets-into-the country laws and apparently it's super-simple. No quarantine. No hassle. My nonhuman animal companions just need proof of their recent shots and they just get off the airplane as instant nonhuman animal citizens of Finland. (It'll probably be harder for me, actually, to achieve permanent citizenship.)

But I'll probably never get out of here. I'll die here, still living in this trailer.

I wish I were twenty years younger. What I need is an extra twenty years. I'm feeling my age. I feel slow, I feel tired all the time. I feel constantly not-quite-well, always a little bit sick. Oh well. Oh well, right? What am I going to do about it? Nothing. This's another one of those things: Nothing to do/it doesn't matter.

So. Work-work-work on paper today. Drive somewhere where I can get Internet. Check stuff. Try to pick up a sub job tomorrow. Call tomorrow and try to find out why Medicaid hasn't yet approved Sierra's PT. Try to figure out how to correctly put the belt I bought last year upon the mower (I can't go another summer not-mowing). Pick up a new 12-gauge, shells. Fence in garden area. Pick up bare necessities at Wal-Mart. Figure out my class schedule for Fall 2012. Keep shoving it down.

So briefly, court yesterday. The AG's office asked the judge to end my child support and nullify the $15,000 in unpaid back support and the judge did it. The judge said that the social security auxiliary benefits the kids will get until they are eighteen will make up for this. I suppose they will--I just whipped out one of my bedside calculators and checked--but the fact remains that Fran has managed since April 2002 to pay very, very, very little child support. And he is off the proverbial hook for all the years of unpaid support and any future support. He phoned in his testimony because he is too depressed to travel. He told the judge that he is chronically depressed and will be on disability for depression for the rest of his life and will never be able to work to ay support or pay down the arrearage. The AG office had told me they were charging me with a federal crime and "illegal homeschooling" and although none of this was brought up (I wish now I had asked about these fake charges in front of the judge), the AG woman was extremely happy that the judge took away my arrearage.

The lawyer I'd consulted had told me that they can't retroactively take away accrued arrearage--that there has to be a court order for future, not retroactive, modification. But they did it.

So okay. I'm trying to not-think. Not think about it. I cried and cried in the car after court. Because it seems so unfair. And I cried some more in rage against myself, for even believing in "fair," for having some stupid expectation of "fair."

Apparently, there are some things that a woman of my age just can't do and expect to bounce back from the next day. Too much crying is definitely one of them. (I suspect tequila is another and accordingly, for years and years and years have stuck with cheap light beer and wine.) I look like crap today. Oh well. No matter.

Oh well. No matter. Oh well to all of this. What am I going to do, right? There's nothing I can do about it. I have to not-think, I have to just get on with all the things I need to do.

It's just... All these years of being so poor, of Fran not paying child support, hiding his income, his inheritance. And I kept thinking that someday he's have to at least pay the arrears. But now, no. It's gone. Completely nullified. It feels like the court, the AG, the entire system is saying: Fuck you. Fuck you and your stupid poverty.

It doesn't matter. I was probably never going to get that fifteen thousand anyway, right? So it doesn't matter. Thinking that Fran should be held accountable is a huge waste of time, too. I mean, has he ever been? No. So whatever. It's okay. It's even okay the way the AG woman did this to me. Whatever, right? I should have known better to cross them about the "illegal homeschooling." They hold the power, they win, regardless of "right."

I'm so angry at myself for not remembering this. Did I think that because I'm in college that I could prevail?  Did I think that my GPA gave me some sort of strength to assert myself? Heh. I may instruct college classes, but I earn $1,280 each month. I live in a trailer. I'm barely covering my monthly bills. I have no way of backing up any sort of "right" or "fair." It's hilarious that I could have forgotten this.

So okay. I have to not think about it. I still have no Internet. I have to park somewhere and take care of the classes I'm teaching/taking. I have stuff due. I need to get stuff done. I don't have the time to think about this now. I need to put my energy elsewhere.  It is what it is. I can't change it. Wishing that Fran and the AG woman would die is a waste of focus. I need to set it aside for now, add it to my For Later file.

Okay.

I tried to drug myself to sleep last night. Four Ibuprofen PM and three Keystone Lights (ugh--the poor woman's Ambien) and I did kind of sleep, but my brain kept trying to drag me to wakefulness. I'd wake up, and I'd be all, "What's wrong? I know there's something wrong, something bad. What happened?" The first time, I must have been still dreamingish, because my I told myself, "It's the Internet. There's no Internet. The Internet has been taken away from women." And I slid into some dream about some law banning all women from the Internet. In my dream I was trying to figure out how to get around the law. The dream seemed to go on for hours. I was trying to get online,  I was trying to figure out how  the system knew to ban just women, I briefly wondered if Frankie could get me online, and then I got scared, thinking they'd punish him for helping me.  And then I was waking up again, doing the, "What's wrong? What's the bad thing I'm trying not to think about it? What is it? The bad thing?" And my brain goes, "Women can't use the Internet anymore. That's the very bad thing." And I fell asleep again.

So the dream is pretty obvious. The amalgamation of my real and current lack of Internet access and the powerlessness I felt in court yesterday.

I need to just get going. Finish my horrible English 15-page draft. Start/finish my horrible weekly English discussion board post. Park somewhere I can siphon Internet. Check my students. Email. Take care of everything. Get everything done.  Move on. Keep going. Whatever, whatever, whatever.  Don't think about it. Push it down. I cried (and cried and cried) yesterday; that's enough. No more time/energy. Another event, a couple more people on the list, filed in For Later.

I hope that my fortune improves. I hope that I live long enough to get to that file, to every single issue on that list.