Letter ten of thirteen to mom from jail
Mail Screened at LCDC
Saturday
April 12 2008
5:50 PM
Happy Birthday Jon! I guess he had to work today so I haven’t called him yet. I imagine he will get calls from all three of us tonight. He told me he wasn’t going to go out but I bet he did last night or will tonight. He kept telling that he hoped there was snacks in the trinket box you sent. He also keeps making it seem like he is supper busy but I be he has time to relax, that and I bet that he doesn’t have to “work” as hard as he does. I am sure he is busy but I think that he is playing it up a touch. But it is his birthday so I will let it slide today. I wish I would have been able to get him something but I think he will be surprised and pleased with the cards and letter I sent him. I will make it up to him next April 12th.
It has been a pretty slow day for me but my main task of counting down days until none doesn’t seem to be as daunting as it did just ten days ago. I am back on days because 25 days seems less tom me than three and a half weeks. I am fairly excited to stick around here in the cabin and finish my degree, but then I start to think that I will be missing out on some other great opportunity in New York, Or So-CAL, but really as much as I would love to just pick up and leave I don’t think that that would lead me to the situational future I would like to have. But I have started to talk myself into moving fairly easily. I suppose I could go to school anywhere it just seems smarter or easier to finish what I had started here. I am nervous about work because even though I like the Telecommunications stuff and the money is good witch I need right now, I just don’t want to get caught up with that type of construction work without making progress on a degree. I guess I just have to except that if I truly want the things that I say I do then I will have to work for them like Jon has and is doing. And as much as I would like it to be “life isn’t all fun and games” and that is what I feel “running” away to New York or So-Cal would be. On one hand I am still young but enough time has passed and to stretch that out much longer without getting a degree will help to seal my fate as a construction worker. It’s very tuff huh Mom? Oh-well I mainly just want to call you without having a computer interrupt telling you that your son is a jailbird. I think my biggest flaw is being to concerned with what other people who I don’t even know think of me. I am unsure when or where this insecurity came from but I am sure if I can get over that little hump than everything will work out better than well.
Sunday
13 April 2008
I started my work week again today and it still after four weeks confuses me into thinking today is Monday. I guess it real isn’t though. Today was a full day but I didn’t come back from the kitchen to the pod all pissed off. I suppose I was actually in kind of a good mood. I know its opposite of what I have said before but I think the nice weather actually helped to brighten my spirits. I was however pretty tired and took a nap after have a cup of coffee and reading some of the paper.
I went outside from 3:30 until 4:00 when the close outdoor recreation for the dinner hour. Outdoor rec. opens again at 7:00 PM if it is nice enough outside. It was really nice and it felt good to shoot some hoops and do some pull ups on the jungle gym. Actually I cant even call them pull ups, I probably look like a fish struggling outside of water. Pull ups are really, really hard! The jungle gym is cool; and I would like to build one at the cabin, there is also a medicine ball to throw around. I am not sure how much it weighs but it is still kind of fun to play around with. Another toy for the cabin if we were to turn it into a “Rocky” training camp, only ½ but I still feel like I did a lot. When I came inside I continued to work out by doing; pushups, arm dips, sit-ups and leg lifts. Now I am tired again and I think that if it wasn’t for this cup of coffee with hot chocolate mixed in I would be asleep.
I will probably not send this until Tuesday in order to accumulate more pages to boar you with and to get my .41 Cents worth. It’s not that I haven’t been writing it is just I wrote Kristen a fairly long letter, that I hope she shares with you. I spoke with Jon today, he said that he liked my cards and thought that they were funny, so that is cool, he also said that he loved you snacks! He seemed content and even relaxed so he was much more pleasant to talk to then some of the previous times I had spoken with him. I guess I didn’t call you today and now I am worried that you are worried but I don’t know if I will call tonight or not because the POD is always loud at night and makes me unpleasant so I might wait. Right now I am going to lay down and take another nap. I hope it doesn’t effect my being able to sleep tonight but I am beat.
Monday
14 April 2008
All four of us ( The Bakers) were done by 9:00 or 9:30 when the rest of the kitchen goes back to the POD for break so we were able to go back too. I probably would have taken a nap but when I walked into my cell it really stunk. I have smelt it before it is my cell mate or smell mate. I am not just being silly it/he really stinks or more so fucking reeks! It is not fort or even B.O. like Ray- B.O. I think it is his hair. It smells like a dirty drain. I don’t know why I don’t notice it when I wake up at 4:30 in the morning, I guess I grow used to it in my sleep. But when I come back from work I can smell him outside of the door to my cell. It is not fart but it fills the whole room like a fart would. So anyway I spent the morning outside of my cell trying to be nice and let him sleep witch he does everyday until noon when lunch arrives or on his days off until 5:00 when dinner arrives. So I went outside from 10:00 until 11:00. We have to come in an hour before each meal arrives. Then I waited until after lunch to head back to my cell. I decided to confront him because there is no reason I should suffer because he doesn’t want to shower. They have rules about hygiene in the jail and ideally the people in this POD (the inmate workers) would be clean but I guess this guy slipped through the cracks. I honestly think that the last POD he was in including the guards got sick of him so the sent him here. If not I would hate to see/smell all of the other inmates were he came from if he is supposedly the “cream of the crop”
I thought I was pretty nice about it saying,
“Hey dude, you have got to shower somewhat regularly because this cell stinks again!”
He didn’t take it very well and started mumbling and grumbling and even got fairly confrontational, saying that I bitch too much and make all kinds of noise in the morning. I tried to explain to him that I didn’t have a choice about when I had to wake up but he did have a choice about showering. It went back and forth for a little while and I told him that I was trying to be cool by not telling a guard to take care of the smell problem and confronting him first. He grunted
“Go Ahead!”
At this point I had got my point across so I left and he stormed up to the guards desk and apparently told the guard that he wanted to live with someone who didn’t bitch as much. I think the guard told him that we have to get along. I am not sure all I know is what my smell mate told me. I told him that I have complained once for five minuets when he has stunk the place up for two weeks. We went our separate ways briefly, him at the cell door that I had opened to air the place out and me on my bunk. Around five minuets passed and he apologized for snapping at me and said that he would shower when he got back from work. He tried to blame not showering on not having shampoo last night witch I then excitedly gave him thinking that he was actually going to shower. Witch he didn’t and today was trying to use conditioner as his excuse. If someone doesn’t shower for a week there has got be some other reason than not having conditioner, I think he likes to stink. Any way even if he does shower tonight I don’t think that anything will change, tomorrow or Wednesday the cell will stink again. I don’t want to tell the guard because I wouldn’t want to be the reason anyone even this guy lost their “good” time but the truth is that this guy shouldn’t even be in this POD. So if it is smelly again I will most likely say something. He didn’t hesitate to run up to the guard and complain about me, witch I didn’t mid because I was hoping the guard would smell him and make him shower right then and there.
Everything I suppose is going well. I went back outside after lunch and stayed out until 4:00 playing basketball using the jungle gym and just lying in the sun. It was really nice today like 70 something, I even think I got somewhat of a sunburn. I slept well last night and had no trouble falling asleep and I think tonight will be the same from all of the activity and the sun. I may take a nap now
Anyways sorry this letter is as good as some of the previous ones, I think I screwed it up by mailing two last week and also maybe I am kind of sick of writing about my cell mate but he is really the only thing bothering me. Oh-well 23, 22, 21… Anyways I enjoyed speaking with you last night and I love you a ton!
Your almost 25 year old Son,
Tom
