At The Helm

Hey, at least I got my picture thingy back! Yay! Have no idea what that was all about.


Last night when I left work it was 74 outside and I came home and sat in front of my fan in shorts thinking it was mighty warm. Tonight when I left it was 52 and falling. I'm sitting here in sweats and thinking about putting another blanket on the bed.

Man, you can have this midwest weather.

So tonight I was kind of left in charge. That was scary. Sgt Puddle was off for training and everybody else was just ...... off. Of course, that's how I ended up there in the fishbowl in the first place, if you'll remember. There wasn't anybody left and I volunteered.

They gave me Sgt Loompa and Miz Chatters. He knows some about it (how to work the doors and gates) and she can run the desk about as good as I can. But since she is going to run the desk tomorrow I took it tonight. And every time something out of the routine happened they looked at me and said "What do we do?"

Well, how the snap do I know? I've only been up here about two weeks! Ummm.... Here, try this and see if it works. Okay. Cool!

I thought I had a handle on the 4:30 count until my first set of numbers came in. From the Hive. Crutch called and said "We got 152." I looked down at my paper and it said 150. Nope, try it again. Call me back. In the meantime I am feverishly checking my numbers and still coming up with 150.

They call back. Still 152. Oh snap. So I start going over their numbers. We found the problem pretty quickly. They had locked up one from 3 house and one from 10 house during the day (about 1:00pm) and never called and told anybody.

Okay, we can salvage this. Maybe. If both 3 and 10 house call in one short then even if my numbers are wrong, they still add up and we're good. Nobody missing.

They did and it was and it cleared and I went out to smoke and hyperventilate a little bit.

Right after that Peggy Sue stopped by and I got to vent and got another big squeezy hug and things were much better after that.

Until the comm room called up and said they were missing a radio. Searched everywhere. Under the desk. In the racks. In the repair piles. Nothing. tried to call the last person who signed it out but he wouldn't answer his phone. Sgt Loompa got on the phone and called every single person on the camp with a radio looking for it. No luck. And Meany was up in the comm room getting pretty aggravated.

The Captain had him and Growl both write paper on the search and turn it in. We never did find it. Hopefully it shows up again.

And I felt a little bit guilty because it was supposed to be my night in the comm room.

Just a little, though.

About one minute before 10:00 count Lt farmer calls me and says "We are moving an inmate from the wobblehead house up here. Don't call count until we get him moved."

Ooookayyyy.... now what?

Turns out he had a death in the family and they wanted him up there when they told him. It seems that the last time that happened he went a little ballistic. They wanted more big guys around him this time just in case.

In the mean time my phone is ringing off the hook. "Did you call count yet? Did I miss the call?"

"No, I haven't called it yet. Something is going on. I'll let you know." Click.

Ring! "Did you call count? I must have missed it!"

Etc. Etc. Etc.....

Oy freaking vey.

If they stick to the schedule, I will be on the yard for the next two days. I think I'll enjoy that. Somebody else can have those headaches for a couple of days. I'll just go back to being a front line grunt and let somebody else make the decisions. Yay!

Thursday is going to be Felt Hat Day. Oh yeah. I'm all into felt hats. Wish I could wear some of mine to work. My derby or the fedora. I just look awesome in hats. It's also going to be Greenpeace Day, International Day of Democracy and Google.com Day.

Look that one up!

Lost In The Crowd

Let's all pretend that this is a kind of
neat "Where's Waldo?" picture,
shall we?

For some reason blogger isn't letting me post pictures. After several tries with different pics, I gave up. It was just pissing me off.

It seems that the inmates have decided that 9:00pm is the perfect time to fight. This was the second night in a row.

They used to fight right after the yard opened. We figured if we got past the first 15 minutes of open yard without a fight, we were going to have a good night. Now apparently it's 9:00pm. I don't know why.

Grasshopper had offered to do the radio check for me so I was sitting out of the way doing up my count sheet. He'd just gotten through calling the Lieutenants when:

"10-49! 10-49! Housing Unit six!!"

I'll have to admit he handled it better than I did. Outwardly, anyway. He called it very calmly then looked at me and said "Do I keep on with the radio check?"

I told him it would be best to wait until they cleared it.

So they cleared the fight and we went on with our business. Grasshopper finished the radio check. I left a space on my count sheet, figuring I would be getting a call from the Hive that they got two fighters from 6 house and I didn't want to have to erase a bunch of numbers.

I got my sheet ready and I had the lockup board ready to write down the names and I waited.

And waited. And waited....

Finally at 9:45, right before count, I called 6 house. KP answered. I said "I guess we aren't going to move those guys before count, eh?"

"We aren't locking anybody up."

"Say what?"

"I lost them in the crowd and we don't know who they are. They'll have to review the tapes and the Captains can't do that any more. They'll have to do it tomorrow."

"Really. Well..... Humph. Okey dokey, then! Thanks!"

And that is just a sad state of affairs. They spent a bazillion dollars to have this camera system installed but because some of the supervisors couldn't resist playing Gawd as Micro-manager with it, they no longer have any access to it.

We would have to get somebody to come in and access the system even if we were trying to find out who assaulted one of us, let alone an inmate.

Sometimes I'm amazed that they still let us come inside the fence at all.

Garrf! Don't get me started. I'd end up here all night, ranting and raving.

Ah, well. from the looks of things they are giving me a week away from the fishbowl next week. I'm not scheduled to be up there once. That will be kind of nice. I can take a break and do some normal CO things and maybe even respond to something if anything happens instead of just gnashing my teeth and beating myself in the head with the phone.

But schedules around here have a mysterious way of changing suddenly. Have to wait and see, I guess.

Wednesday will be National Creme Filled Donut Day. And apparently that is important enough to be the solo holiday.

Works for me....

Adrenaline Rush

I was pretty proud of myself early on in the day today. This marked the very first time that I handled the 4:30 count all by myself and got it right and cleared without a single screwup.

And I had additional things to account for. All last week education was out, but now they are back in session and I had over a hundred inmates in there from different houses. Laundry had over a hundred in there from different houses. And the maintenance guys had eight offenders from three different houses out working on a broken water pipe outside of Central.

I wasn't sure where to put them, so I just stuck them in a normally blank column on my count sheet and hoped for the best.

I actually got everything added up early and it all looked good. I was startled and pleased with myself. And it was a good thing it was right because Sgt Puddle left to go take care of something right after I called count so if something was wrong I was going to have to take care of it myself.

Testing me, you see. He's tricky like that.

When it all went well and count cleared I wanted to whoop and do nip-ups in the control center. But there isn't room for that sort of thing and whooping is frowned on up there. So I just sat quietly at my desk and clapped my hands and said "Yay!"

Things went pretty well after that. Only got fumblemouthed a couple of times and nothing too embarrassing. I was starting to feel like I knew what I was doing.

Like I said, things went well. Until a little after nine.

9:06, to be exact.

"10-49! 10-49! 10 house!!!" (that's a fight, by the way)

I said "Yeek!" and started to rise up out of my chair to hit the door and run. I got about halfway up and realized that I could not go. Oh snap!

And not only could I not go, I had to remain calm and coherent enough to relay that call over the radio. Take a deep breath. Push the button and lean into the mike.

"Raccoon Station to all radio units! 10-49 10-49 housing unit 10!"

And even worse than not being able to run to assist I had to sit there and wait for them to get control of the situation and then report that to everybody else over the radio.

That was an extremely long two minutes. That may not seem like a long time to you, but think about if you knew a friend or loved one was going into a possibly dangerous situation and all you could do was sit in a chair and hope they were all right for two minutes.

Two...... Long....... Freaking........ Minutes.......

That took forever.

I've got to tell you that really sucked just sitting there. I couldn't have told you without looking who was down there tonight. It might have been somebody I didn't really like. There's a few of those here. It could have been a close friend. That didn't really matter.

What did matter that some of ours were going into danger and I couldn't do anything about it other than to listen to the radio and report what I heard and hope they were all right.

I've got to tell you, that was bloody difficult. And by the time they called a 10-6 (no further help needed) I reached for the mike button and my hands were shaking from the adrenaline dump. I had to stop and take another deep breath before I could call it over the radio.

If there was much of that going on, I wouldn't be able to stay up there in the fishbowl. I wouldn't be able to take it. Even if I am old and fat and smoke too much and can't run very far, let me out so I can respond. That just eats me up inside when someone needs help and I can't go. If the situation had gotten out of hand I might have just burst into flames.

Those adrenaline rushes make me want to thump somebody. Insert Inmate A into Concrete B, then fold along the dotted lines. Trying to sit dispassionately behind a radio.....

I just don't know about that. I get a little excited.

We'll see how it goes, I guess. I'm up there again tomorrow. Transfer day with no Stubby again.

**sigh***

Tuesday is Defy Superstition Day (knock on wood), as well as International Chocolate Day.

I wonder if I can find a chocolate rabbits foot for luck?

Nobody To Snap At

If anybody happened to be standing outside around 4:30pm CST and hear a primal scream off in the distance, it was probably me.

I made a couple of boneheaded mistakes on my count sheet and didn't catch the error in time. Two of the errors cancelled each other out but the third did not. I ended up with a number that claimed I had one more inmate than I actually had. I tried to find it and Sgt Banty tried to find it and Grasshopper leaned over my shoulder and tried to find it..... nothing.

Finally, as Sgt Banty was on the phone explaining to Capt CJ why I hadn't called count yet (eight minutes late) I caught the mess up with a loud "Ah-ha!" How embarrassing.

In the meantime the phone is ringing off the hook with people saying "Did you call count? I didn't hear it."

At least down in the Hive I had somebody to yell at if things went wrong. There was always some dunderhead willing to say the wrong thing at the wrong time and get a quick blistering in return.

Now I gots nobody but myself to yell at. And I'm mean.

The only bright part of my day (besides going home afterwards) was when Miz Twang came up to save my bacon. And the first time she brought me a big cup of fresh coffee from the gas station and a brand new bag of wintergreen Life Savers. She pulled my dinkie out of the fire a few times tonight.

Why, if she wasn't engaged to one of my best friends and I was mumble-mumble years younger.... Ah well.

I really do wonder if I have the sense or the mental stability for this post.

Hopefully it gets better with time. They are all really pushing me to bid in up there at least for a six month stint. I have a feeling that I might be a gibbering basket case after six months.

I'll have to think about it. That will look good if I go ahead and try to promote.

(See the picture above for the sigh)

I got two days off and then it's back at it again...... Whoop!

So Saturday is going to be Swap Ideas Day, National Lacemaking Day (really?) and Suicide Prevention Day.

Sunday will be No News Is Good News Day, Grandparents Day, National Hug Your Hound Day, Patriot Day and Remembrance Day.

Monday will be National Pet Memorial Day and National Chocolate Milkshake Day as well as National Boss/Employee Exchange Day and Video Games Day.

I'm not trading places with my boss. No sir.

Got a One Day Break

Got a one day break on the yard and then it's back to the fishbowl again!

Gonna keep this one short and sweet. I slept poorly and arose too early and I spent half the night with a sore throat and trying to lose my voice. It was a good thing I didn't need it. I sure hope it goes away by tomorrow. It's me and Big'un and Sgt Banty and Grasshopper tomorrow.

Hoo boy.

Friday is going to be Teddy Bear Day and Wonderful Weirdos Day and Stand Up To Cancer Day.

And to all you wonderful weirdos, goodnight.

That @&$*!@% Murphy!!!

Let me see if I can get the chain of events clear in my head here.... My brain is still racing around like a chihuahua on crack. I feel like I got run over by a bus full of wobbleheads.

Yesterday Sgt Puddle said "If Stubby calls out again, I'm going to pull you out of the Comm room and up to the Fishbowl." I said I was okay with that. After all, I still need the experience.

He did and he did and I'm still kicking myself for agreeing to it.

I jinxed myself. I know it. Crowing about what a calm day it was on Monday being a holiday and how easy I managed to skate through a transfer day, all things considered.

I freaking jinxed myself.

Everything was fine right up to the 4:30 count. Then it all went to snit from there.

LB calls from the Hive and says "You're going to hate me, but we have a screw up. They released one from here this morning and never changed it in the computer. All they did was erase him off the board. But this guy aint here. He's in 10 house."

And sure enough when we checked the computer, it still said he was in the Hive. Okay. Bad, but fixable. If the Hive is down by one and 10 house is up by one we are reasonably sure the numbers match. Called 10 house and had them do a visual ID and make certain that guy was in there.

Then 30 house calls with a bad count. Tells me they have 292 in house and I knew that was wrong. They only had 298 assigned and I knew that 100 of them were in laundry and 4 of them were out on work crews and one was in the Hive. And Sore gets pissed at me when I tell him it's wrong.

Standard operating procedure at that point is to call all of the places on B-side that might be the problem for a recount. Dining, laundry, medical and main production. We call and start a recount there.

Sore calls back and says oops, they have 192. No, that's still wrong. He's mad again. Sgt Puddle is on the phone calling the Lt and saying we have a problem.

One more call. 195. Nope. Now I'm about two minutes away from having everybody sent back to do a recount of the entire camp. And when we do that we have to start calling people on the outside including the local police department to let them know our count is bad and we might actually be missing somebody.

I really don't want to do that. Really.

We actually stretch it for an additional two minutes and they finally call back with the right number. Whew! That took about 17 minutes longer than it should have and I was sweating bullets.

We get through count and chow and open the yards. About 20 minutes after the yards open we have a code 16 (medical emergency) for chest pains. I don't hear anything more on that for awhile. Next thing I hear is we need to clear A-yard for the ambulance that's "two minutes away"!

What? Umm..... We are the ones who are supposed to call for the ambulance and they have to tell us so we can have the paperwork ready before he can leave the camp! Aw, carp!

Sgt Puddle was out front talking to Peggy Sue and I wave him back up in a big hurry. I get another big squeezy hug in the process (hey, I'm 2 for 2!) and put him to work. I have no idea how to do an outcount like that fast enough to get it done before the ambulance arrives. Sgt Puddle can knock it out in a heartbeat and he does so then runs over to get it signed. In the meantime they pull some newbie we had up in the fishbowl and are sending him and Sausage out with the ambulance.

Right before the ambulance shows up we have another code 16 in 1 house for chest pains. Aw! What the snap!?!

Captain CJ calls me to get hold of the Major at home for her and he doesn't sound happy when he answers the phone.

I manage to sneak out for a quick smoke and to deliver a message to the newbie when I hear a call for a code 70 (fire alarm) in B-dining! Snap again! Trying to think. Who is here on the fire brigade besides me? My brain is toast. I can't think of anybody.

Run back inside and shout to Sgt Puddle "Who is here besides me?" He shakes his head. I think it's just you!" Snap squared!

Up to the comm room I go to get keys and a radio and truck across the yard towards dining. As I get near I see them taking an inmate in cuffs away from the chow hall and i screech to a stop. There's not supposed to be anybody in there this time of night! What the....

Turns out The Watcher (aka Phoenix Tears) was here tonight and he cleared the alarm.

Sgt Uncle T was driving by on the cart and saw the alarm lights going off. He pulls down by the chow hall to investigate and sees an offender inside beating on the window. He'd been in the bathroom and when Towtruck locked up and left, he locked this guy in the building. The kid got scared when he couldn't get out and pulled the fire alarm.

Hoo boy. I wouldn't want to be in Towtrucks shoes when he comes back tomorrow. He'll be lucky if he gets left with one butt cheek to sit on.

When I get back up to the fishbowl, Captain CJ has me call Towtruck, the Fire and Safety guy and the Major at home again. And yes, he still sounds pissed off.

Things go fairly smooth for almost an hour when I hear a loud garbled call over the radio:

"Garble garble nine! garble D-wing!" Whoever it was sounds excited. Uh-oh...

"10-9 your traffic?" 10-9 means repeat.

"Garble garble nine! garble garble D-wing!"

And then "10-6 the 10-49 garble garble." Sounded like someone from the wobblehead house. 10-6 means it's under control.

Holy freaking snap. I almost said "What's next?" But I knew better.

So we are locking up two from 9 house, apparently. For fighting.

It's getting close to count and I call medical for their numbers and Lt Farmer answers.

"Whattaya need, Rev?"

"I need their count."

"Well, they're kinda busy. Doing CPR on one in the back right now."

"Really?"

"Yep!"

"Oh snap."

They got him going again and were debating on sending him out to the hospital as well. Then we got word that the guy we sent out earlier was going downhill and they were going to move him to a different hospital. Which, of course, takes more paperwork that I don't know how to do yet.

Needless to say I wanted to kiss midnight shift when they showed up. I was ready to run as fast as I could out to the parking lot before anything else happened.

Tomorrow night I am on the yard. And I'm staying there if I have to nail myself to a tree.

Thursday will be National Date Nut Bread Day and Pardon Day as well as International Literacy Day, Virgin Mary Day and World Physical Therapy Day.

I'd settle for the bread.

D'oh!

When I looked on the way out they had me scheduled for the control center again. I was happy and nervous. Tuesdays and Thursdays are transfer days.

Those are the days we trade inmates with other camps. Ours transfer out in the morning and theirs transfer in in the evening, right about shift change.

And 9 times out of 10 if count is screwed up bad enough that we have to do one of those "Send everybody back to their housing units and count them again" counts it's on a Tuesday or a Thursday.

I had yet to work up there on a transfer day. But I told myself "It's okay. Stubby will be there and he knows how to do transfers. I can watch and learn some things."

When I got to work I remembered where I was working and what day it was. And again I told myself "It's okay. Stubby will be there and he knows how to do transfers. I can watch and learn some things."

I came in and looked at the chrono and, sure enough, I was in the control center.

I said my little mantra again.

Then, just to be nosy, I looked up at the list to see who had called out.

Just one name on the list.

I'll give you three guesses.

Yup. It was him.

D'oh!

Okay, Rev. Don't panic. Let's see who is up there with me. Sgt Puddle. Excellent. I'm not completely hosed. Big'un.....of course. He's always up there these days. And... Mr Coffee.

D'oh!

I said a few more quite unladylike words right about then. And seriously considered having a sudden case of appendicitis. Or strep throat. Or pink eye. Or even strep eye and a pink appendix.

And right about that time (abut ten minutes before shift change) the transfer bus rolled in.

D'oh! Oh snap.

And silly as* me, I went on up there and started checking my numbers, feeling about as perky as a man walking to the gallows. Oh my. 43 outcounts and 4 sleepers (which screw up count something fierce some days) and 13 on the transfer bus.

To my incredible surprise, Ms Swabbie was already doing the transfers in the computer and she got them done right after I got up there. I didn't get to watch but at that point I didn't care. She had done the hardest part of the number crunching and if she didn't make any mistakes, my count should be good.

Between my ham handedness with the numbers and somebody forgetting to tell me that they had locked up two right before count it was very nearly screwed up. I had to do some fast tap dancing and recalculating and swapping numbers but it finally came out in the end.

Whew!

The places I am screwing up are simple and boneheaded. I had 2 outcounts from 10 house but I wrote down a 10 instead of a 2. Like a fool. Simple things like that are catching me up.

And to make things worse there was something big going on somewhere that involved several calls to one of the police departments in the next county, a call from the Captain for the head of maintenance and a call to the Major. I never did figure out for sure what was going on with that. But it was just enough extra input to get me flustered, apparently.

We made it through, but it was a close call.

And Stubby, wherever you are, you're a jerk.

You better have been sick and not just fishing or I swear I'll spank you.

On a lighter note, Wednesday will be Neither Rain Nor Snow Day. Maybe I'll get some good news in the mail. It will also be Google Commemoration Day, Salami Day and Grandma Moses Day.

Go wild with the celebrations.