It's A Goat Rope

My old drill sergeant would have called it a "Chinese Fire Drill." As I got older and more sophisticated I just called it a cluster-f*ck.

What it all boils down to is having too many goats and not enough rope.

They have decided, in their infinite wisdom, that it was time to tear down the little shack that we used to pat search the inmates on the way in and out of laundry and build a new bigger facility. Supposedly with the aim of strip searching them all both coming and going.

I can't really see that happening with any regularity. Not with only one officer down there and often more than a hundred offenders. The searches alone would take hours.

At any rate, they have torn down a bit of the fence to access the shack so we have decided to route the offenders all the way around the building past the semi trucks and the sallyport gate. To facilitate this we have two laundry officers, the nine yard officer and now two supervisors (if available, if not at least one) to make sure nobody runs off during their trip around the building.

Since we do a good number of our movements down there after dark, they have set up some temporary lights plugged into a hundred foot extension cord.

Nice. So they are now in an area with no razor wire on top of the fences and we have supplied them with a handy hundred foot rope.

Are we geniuses or what?

Granted, we have staff down there when they are outside of the building. Supposedly. But it only takes a few seconds for one of them to be long gone.

I really don't see a better solution to the problem, unfortunately. If we'd have had more time to think about it, we might have come up with something better, I don't know. But this is the solution we're stuck with so I guess we have to make the best of a bad situation.

But pulling this when we are already short staff just isn't cool. Every year we have to work with more inmates and less officers.

Where does it end?

One day the place will be packed full right up to the top of the fence and there will be one officer outside with half a can of expired pepper spray saying "Y'all be good now, okay? Don't make me come in there!"

Hopefully I will be long retired and far away from this place by that time.

Hopefully.

Saturday is going to be Limerick Day, Hug Your Cat Day, National Windmill Day and International Nutty Fudge Day.

There was a young man from Nantucket.....

Oops. Never mind......

Skip This Post If You Have A Weak Stomach

I sometimes talk about "The Good Old Days" down in the Hive.

But really they weren't all that good. It's always been a dangerous nasty place to work and back then it was even nastier and more dangerous. Lots of uses of force and lots of assaults on staff and lots of chances to get hurt or come down with some nasty disease or both.

One of their favorite pastimes back then was to play with their poop. Not just throwing it at us, which did happen quite often. But painting with it like toddlers in the bathtub.

I never really figured out exactly why they did that. I guess they thought they were "getting back" at us for whatever reason. It never really bothered me all that much. I didn't have to clean it up. We have other inmates for that.

This kind of shenanigans used to occur quite often. And quite often more than once a day. We worked our poor bio-hazard worker half to death some nights.

Me, I just smeared some Vicks under my nose and went on about my business.

Anyway, that practice kind of tapered off after awhile, much to our relief. It wasn't really all that much fun having to wrestle with an inmate covered in poop, believe me. More than once I had to sit in Central in a pair of borrowed pants while my uniform got washed. And I used to keep a bucket of bleach water by the back door to dip my boots in when I came home at night. We had little ones in the house back than and I didn't want to track that stuff on my carpets at home.

In those days the floors in the Hive were often awash with all sorts of nasty things, including almost every sort of body fluid you can imagine.

But it hasn't gone on in quite some time. Thankfully.

Tonight when I got down there I knew something was going on. There was a familiar.... scent in the air. It almost made me nostalgic for a moment. When i got inside they told me that two of their wobbleheads on suicide watch had been playing in their poop repeatedly throughout the day.

That made me real eager to get to work..... yeah.

Luckily, we managed to forestall any further nonsense on our shift. I guess the two idiots had gotten tired and decided to lay down for awhile. Maybe they were empty and just saving up for the next salvo, I don't know. But for whatever reason, I didn't care.

I'm just glad I didn't have to wrestle a naked man covered in poop.

And I'm pretty damn happy about that, thank you.

So here's the weekend lineup:
Wednesday will be Lost Sock Memorial Day (with a special lint candle light vigil), National Night Shift Workers Day, School Nurse Day and National Butterscotch Brownie Day.

Thursday will be Clean Up Your Room Day, Lupus Day, Windmill Day and National Shrimp Day.

Friday will be Eat What You Want Day and Twilight Zone Day as well as Child Care Provider Day and Military Spouse Appreciation Day.

Me, I'll be moving the furniture. Wheee!

That's Crazy Talk!

I only got viscerally involved in this one, but it was too good to pass up.

At one point this evening I heard the laundry officer call Sgt Uncle T and say he had one in cuffs. I stepped out front, just in case. But he went willingly and there wasn't any problem so I went back to my office and my coffee pot.

A little while later I get a call from Holler over in 30 house. He says that the ladies from laundry are there and they had a violation for me to read. Making a big show over what an inconvenience it was with a grin on my face all the while, I made my way over there.

When I get there one of the laundry staff ladies hands me a violation. I always like to read over them just to make sure they sound okay and there aren't any major errors.

In a nutshell and a bit paraphrased, it said this:
Offender Knucklehead came up to me and pointed at the other laundry supervisor and said "If you stay here for five years like she has, your butt will get just as big as hers. I don't even know how she manages to put her pants on. Maybe she uses baby oil."

I snorted out loud and had to clap a hand over my mouth. Finally I managed to croak "Did he really say that?" When she said yes I turned away to calm myself (under the guise of getting the keys to the office) and tried hard to swallow the loud guffaws that were threatening to tear out of my throat.

Regaining my composure somewhat I said "What an idiot."

While I'm reading the violation to this guy he's looking at me like I'm speaking Swahili or something. I suspect it's an act, but he could just really be that stupid, I don't know. When I get done I ask (like always) "Do you have a brief statement?"

He breaks into this big long rant, trying to reconstruct the entire conversation one piece at a time. All the while Tilt is standing there just in case he flies off the handle. We finally got him stopped and I distilled his rant down to "I didn't say that." and called it good.

And he was a good distraction because while I was reading that violation out loud, I came really close to breaking out in uncontrollable laughter again. Especially when I got to the part about the baby oil.

Even now I am getting cramps in my jaws thinking about it.

What a freaking idiot.

I know the laundry supervisor he was referring to. She's a nice lady and pretty tough and I think she would have snapped him in half if he had pissed her off enough. And her.... fundament.. is nowhere near as big as he was making it out to be. Just to be quite clear on that.

Not that I've been looking or anything...... I'm just saying.

So.... backing away slowly from that now......

Tuesday I'll be in the Hive. Yee-haw. Ah well, it's my Friday.
Tuesday will also be No Socks Day and Have A Coke Day as well as National Teacher Day, V-E Day, Red Cross day and National Coconut Cream Pie Day.

Have No Socks and a smile!

Or something like that.

Those Crazy People!

Got a call on the radio, not long after the start of shift, from one of the nurses down in CTC. It's at the other end of 10 house where I work and they keep the really crazy inmates down there.

Normally we don't go down there much, unless there's a problem. It's actually manned by mental health staff, without any CO's assigned to the place. It's a weird setup, but there you are.

Anyway, she sounded a little flustered on the radio so I trotted on down there. One of their little wobbleheads had been acting funny, especially around female staff. Being aggressive and watching them closely and making rude remarks and actually being a bit threatening. He had that nurses nerves frayed.

I called and said I might be locking one up and they sent Lt Wyatt down to talk to him and assess the situation. The little knucklehead had calmed down some and I let him go eat with the others while Lt Wyatt talked to the nurse. I kept an eye on our problem child.

After talking to the nurse, Lt Wyatt says "I'm locking him up."

I said "Okey dokey. I was going to do that anyway. When he gets done eating I'll cuff him up."

He says "Let me talk to him first. Maybe calm him down some. But we might end up having a use of force on him."

I grinned. I couldn't help it. That big grin just spread all over my face before I could stop it. He rolls his eyes and goes "Oh snap!" (or something like that) Then he looks at me and says "Just don't spray him, okay?"

Oh, just tie my hands.

Okay. Just for the record, I have never sprayed Lt Wyatt during a use of force.

Not that I can remember anyway. He's just a little skittish.

Well, it turned out okay. The little wobblehead cuffed up and thought about resisting for just a second. Then he felt my hand on the center of his back and decided that getting squirrely standing between two six foot tall guys who hurt people for a living probably wasn't the best idea. Lt Wyatt escorted him down the the Hive himself without incident.

So all's well that ends well, I guess.

I didn't really want to wrestle with him, anyway.

Monday is going to be International Tuba Day, Paste Up Day, and National Roast Leg of Lamb Day.

I don't think I have ever had a leg of lamb. For that matter, I've never had a tuba, either.

Rearranging The Furniture

Those of you who have been reading this mess for awhile have seen pictures of my desk. It hasn't changed all that much over the years.

And yes, it's still a mess, as you can see.

There's actually two desks, back to back. The second one is pretty much just a stuff catcher. I seem to have an aversion to empty horizontal spaces.

The wife and I bought this desk at either a yard sale or a thrift store about fifteen or more years ago. I don't think we paid more than about twenty dollars for it.

Over the years I have had to repair it several times and add pieces here and there to keep it from falling apart. It's just old press-board junk covered with a fake wood veneer.

But hey. It was a desk. It held my stuff.

This morning she tells me she had seen a desk for sale at a thrift store and did I want to go look at it? So I got shoes on and we went to look. It was a simple plain wooden desk, nothing fancy. It didn't have a hutch on top, but she said it would be easy for me to build one.

She's always so supportive of my efforts to build things. If she had an inkling of the ratio of wood destroyed to wood actually used successfully...

Anyway, while we were looking, we saw this thing.
I thought it was an entertainment center. It's mungous and heavy. Parts of it seem to be solid oak. Then, when you open the doors....
It's a desk! And a really awesome one to boot. It has a wide (wide) sliding keyboard drawer that is as wide as the desk itself. And a sliding printer drawer underneath. And a built-in breaker bar and a light.
Needless to say, I had to have the thing. Even though it was a hundred bucks (as opposed to thirty for the little plain one) I thought it was well worth the extra cash. Something like this new would probably be six or eight hundred bucks easy.

Even though it's in two sections the thing dang near killed both of us getting it unloaded and into the house. It's a good thing I have a furniture dolly to get it the rest of the way into my office or it might just have to sit there for a few years.

So I guess you can tell what I'm going to be doing this weekend. Unloading and getting rid of the two desks I have now and moving this new cool one in their place. It's going to be quite a chore but I'm sure it will be well worth it in the end.

Wheee!

Sunday is going to be Beverage Day, Buddha Day, No Diet Day, No Homework Day, Nurses Day and World Laughter Day.

A day for laughing Buddha's, no doubt.

More Monkeys!

Yargh! Some nights I come home and I have my post written already in my head by the time I pull in the driveway. I can't wait to sit down so I can pour it all out of my head and into you poor unsuspecting souls.

Then some nights, like tonight, I just sit here and there's nothing.

Things happened. Stupid stuff happened. Inmates got locked up. The Captain managed to piss me off and hurt my feelings just a little bit which pissed me off even more.

Luckily none of us got hurt and we all got to go home safe.

Well, those of us who didn't get held over to work a double got to go home, anyway. We are critically short of staff and some of the directives coming down are making that even worse.

We are all going to be working alot more overtime.

But I sit here and try to put the events of tonight in some sort of logical order or even coherent sentences and I got nothing. It's all just a mish-mash in my head right now.

I was hoping a little "free association" would help bring things a little clarity.

But that doesn't seem to be working.

I need more monkeys and more typewriters over here, ASAP!

In the meantime, I'll just slide over to the calendar like that was what I intended to do in the first place.

Saturday is going to be National Hoagie Day, Cartoonists Day, Kentucky Derby Day, National Homebrew Day and Scrapbooking Day.

Please don't run with those scissors.

That Threw Me Right Off Track

I have absolutely no idea what the dialogue in that cartoon says. Or what that thing she is threatening him with is.

The truth is I was looking for a picture to put up and I ran across this and for some reason it just blew my circuits. I cannot recall for the life of me what it was I was going to write about.

My search box in Yahoo says "chatting" so I'm assuming it had something to do with that. But whatever germ of an idea I had is just gone.

Man, I sure do hope it wasn't important.

In the meantime I'll just go check the calendar.

If it comes to me I'll let you know.

Wednesday is going to be Fire Day, The Great American Grump Out, Roberts Rule of Order Day and National Truffles Day.

Thursday will be Lumpy Rug Day, Garden Meditation Day, National Day Of Reason, Paranormal Day and National Raspberry Tart Day.

And of course Friday is National Candied Orange Peel Day, Intergalactic Star Wars Day, Respect For Chickens Day and National Orange Juice Day.

Nope. Still nothing. Snap!