Actually, annoyed barely scratches the surface of what I've been feeling the past week. Annoyed. Stressed. Scared. Terrified, actually. Worried. Pissed off. Basically everything on the "not happy" spectrum. And here is the only place, besides with the few friends and family that know what's going on, that I feel safe ranting, talking, and crying...so here I am.

Let's start with last Wednesday and the DOC home visit during curfew. Three officers came in...two (boyfriends newest PO and one other) went upstairs and searched as usual, one (who we have never seen before) stayed downstairs, took my name, searched the downstairs as usual. Once the other two officers come downstairs and his PO searches his laptop, the guy that searched downstairs started asking about his situation, if he is supposed to have internet (which he's not), etc. So then he searches my boyfriends smart phone--and finds nothing except pictures of his daughter, no internet history, no WiFi connection history (because my boyfriend's not an idiot), NOTHING. And this officer goes on about how "this wouldn't fly if you were my offender" and "this could be enough for a warrant" and blah blah blah, saying that we weren't supposed to have ANY INTERNET ACCESS IN THE HOUSE without signed permission from my boyfriends treatment provider and the probation office. It didnt matter to the officer that there's a data block on his phone so he cant get online (and he doesnt hook up to free WiFi anywhere...like I said he's not an idiot). It didn't matter to the officer that the WiFi in the house is password protected, as are my iPad, phone and laptop, because they're "not mind readers, how are they supposed to know that he doesn't know the passwords."

When he first got put on probation and signed all of the papers with the initial probation officer in a different county, he asked about this. His paperwork says that HE is "not to access the internet from any computer device." He asked if that meant no internet at the house and the initial PO he had said no--we could use Netflix and do anything online as long as HE was not the one operating it. Okay, fine. When his case got transferred to our county's probation office, his old officer (who I'm actually starting to MISS because he seemed to genuinely care about my boyfriend's success) said that anything his first officer said still applied. When this new guy took over, he said that anything that the previous officer had said still stood. His current officer has SEEN him use his phone in meetings because he uses the calendar on there for his work schedule and uses the notes to save the important information. MULTIPLE officers and cops have searched our house, his phone and his laptop before now and said NOTHING about there being internet and him having a smart phone. This guy comes along 8 months before he's supposed to be off probation and questions EVERYTHING that has been fine up until this point.

So they leave and the third officer is giving me the stink eye the whole time because I'm watching them leave to make sure that the door closes all the way and that no animals get out. Oh, yeah, they kept getting mad that my dog was following them everywhere in our house, too. But that's besides the point.

I start freaking out at this point--we're talking full blown anxiety attack, crying for an hour because I'm worried they're going to arrest him for something that has been completely fine for OVER A YEAR since we've started with this mess. So far, nothing's happened and I figured if they were going to arrest him they probably would have by now. I'm still worried because he has a PO meeting on Tuesday but he's going to ask again specifically what he needs to do. He went and bought a go phone that has no internet capabilities at all to cover his butt, but he's going to ask about what to do in the house (if we have to get rid of it or what).

The second thing that annoyed me was he had to go down to the original court to pay a civil fee he had gotten a notification for and the clerk there told him he owed way more than we thought for his circuit court fee. Restitution was supposed to be $2700--we asked if there were any other court fees or anything when he signed the papers and they said no. Now they're asking for almost $3500!! And saying that if he doesnt start paying soon that they could violate him on his probation for not "showing progess" when we've basically caught up his probation fees and were told that we could pay the restitution stuff in one lump payment as long as it was before he was off in July. And now they're giving us a completely different story. He pays $600 a month in child support--he's lucky to have a job but between that and his probation costs, he's lucky to be making it (because I literally take on everything else). It literally is making me sick because I don't know how we're going to do Christmas at this point (if at all)--though really I just want him out of jail and for us to get our life back when this is all over (1 year, 8 months and it's all gone).

The third thing that has completely pissed me off is that one of our local news station ran a news story on how the DOC checked on over 1000 offenders in the county to make sure they were abiding by the Halloween curfew laws and that they were "protecting the children." The news story didn't even have the rules RIGHT, first of all, and were spinning it as "they're protecting your kids!" when the DOC spins the rules as the curfew protects the offenders. Either way, the story (and the subsequent comments on it on Facebook from followers) pissed me off. The comments were the worst--and it's really left me feeling helpless.

We live in a country where we're encouraged to use our right to free speech, to speak up against things that we think are wrong and try to force change. But no politician is ever going to touch this stuff for fear of not getting re-elected, and I can't speak up without being ostracized by society for being "for the predators." Most of these people don't realize what these offenders go through, what a lot of the people here go through as family, none of it. They don't get that here you can have to put up with this bull for peeing in public. They just don't get it and being powerless to do anything to incite change leaves me feeling defeated.

The whole thing makes me sick and I'm at my wits end. I'm so ready for it to all be over, but it's really starting to feel like they're trying to set my boyfriend up for failure when he's done nothing out of line or given them any reason to believe that he'll do anything wrong. I just want our life back.

If you've made it this far, thanks for reading my rambling antics. I'm gonna go be an weeping ball of anxiety now until he gets home from work and I know that he's OK at least for one more night.