"We are lonesome animals, we spend all our life trying to be less lonesome."
—John Steinbeck

10-16-16

Dear readers,

Howdy! It's Sunday afternoon and I'm sitting outside in the sun on a beautiful Fall day. We haven't had lot of beautiful days recently.

My birthday was last week. It was largely overlooked which sucks. I always remember people on their birthdays, but I'm not the type to "advertise" that my b-day is coming up and most often people don't even bother to ask when it is.

While I'm griping, I'll tell you about some of the awful changes that have occurred since I got here.

First of all, when I came here, the showers were great. There was a handle to turn it on and you would adjust the temperature to hot or cold to suit you and there was a lot of water pressure. They were great.

Then, a few months ago, they installed a horrible new shower system. It turns on based on touching a round, flat button that responds to your touch. There is one temperature, which is at best lukewarm. Last week, that "warm" became cold and I froze my ass off. Plus, there's no water pressure so the water barely sprays out. I have had goosebumps many—hell, most of the time, this summer taking showers and I'm sure I'll freeze this winter.

The other thing are our toilets. They always had the same touch-sensitive button, but you could flush it as much as you needed. That's all gone. Now, if you flush it twice within 5 minutes, it'll turn off for an hour and you can't flush it again until that hour is up. It's insane.

This is not a topic I like to bring up, but just imagine that you're locked in your cell with your cellie and you have to go #2. You can't flush twice or you're stuck. Or say your cellie urinates and leaves the cell, and you come in and need to use #2 and don't know that he already flushed. There's been a few times that I've ended up with crap in the toilet for an hour—literally. It's disgusting.

There's no reason for either of these changes. I'm told the prison pays a flat rate for water so no money is saved. As for the toilets, I know of guys who've flooded their cells in the SHU (segregation) with their toilet, but in 12 years that has never happened in a regular unit.

None of the things that they do makes any sense and rarely serve any purpose but to make our lives even more miserable.

On a personal note, I know I've been going over my heartbreak a lot recently. It's still hard having to see this guy all the time, but with time, I've gotten better. I'm just really lonely.

Love and blessings,
Kelly