I should have been paying more attention on the way in. I'm pretty certain that wascally wabbit was poking out of his wabbit hole watching me walk in going "Watch dat foist step, doc! It's a Lulu!"The first thing we hear is "Hey! There's no water anywhere in the camp! A water main burst underneath 6 house and blew a hole in the sally port and they had to shut off all the water to fix it."
Oh nice.
They kind of failed to mention that nobody had been able to flush a toilet (like the one in the control center) for the last six hours. Of course that was pretty obvious when we walked in. I was standing there with my eyes watering and having flashbacks of being in the Hive in the bad old days.
I suspect nobody would have minded too much if I lit up a cigarette in there. Compared to that bathroom it would have smelled like a Glade Plug-In.
I went and bought two bottles of water out of the vending machine so we could have a pot of coffee. And that helped dampen the smell some.
Coffee is such a wonderful liquid. Good for so many things.
Since I am still learning to work the desk they are sticking me on it as much as possible. It was good that I had Sgt Puddle and Miz Twang, who came off of light duty today (hallelujah!) and Stubby there, as it was transfer day and we had inmates scattered everywhere. Count was a near thing but we did survive it.
Can I remember everything that went on tonight? No. I didn't keep my notes. But I do remember at one point being outside smoking and they popped the lock to get my attention. And when I tried to come back in we discovered that the control center door was broken and not only could I not get back in, they couldn't get out!
Not really sure who was more distressed over that.
It seems that while I was out one of our Captains decided we should have an emergency count. You know, just to make sure we didn't lose anybody, even though count cleared just two hours ago. And when Captain CJ found out about it, she went just a little bit ballistic. Understandable, her being the shift commander and all. So she cancelled it.
Only to have her call back an hour later and say "Just as soon as we get medical clear of med pass, go ahead and call count."
"Umm.... what?"
Normally when we call a count at a different time we call on the radio and tell them to lock down and prepare for count.
But not this time. Caught everybody flat footed. I think they had guys out on the rec yard down at the Hive. And they had to bring them all back in before they could count.
I called it at 8:07. At 8:07 1/10th my phone started ringing off the hook.
"Did you just call count?"
"Yup"
"Oh snap!"
No sooner did I hang up then it rang again. "Did you just call count?"
I still don't have a clue why they did it that way. I probably never will.
We cleared that one and then had to do our regular count again at 10:00.
Sometimes I think they are testing me, just to see if I'll snap under pressure. I'll tell ya, if it wasn't for the crew up there, I might have. They handled everything else and let me run the desk and the radio and the paperwork.
But now I feel like I have been trampled on all night by a thousand pygmies wearing hobnailed boots.
And tomorrow if I'm up there, Stubby can run the desk.
It'll probably be the calmest day in the whole year.
Wednesday is going to be World Gratitude Day and International Banana Festival as well as World Alzheimer's Day.
I forget why, but I'm thankful for that.
