Love Seat

I have an appointment today to send my excessive personal property home.  Any prison I have been to offers an option for you to send your property home with a visitor.  You let your visitor take the property when they come to see you and avoid paying the price to mail.

This camp does not offer that option.  Instead, you must use stamps and pay to send your package through mail.  I am scheduled to take this very option and send home a very large stack of pictures and an even larger stack of mail.

When someone takes the time to sit and write their thoughts to me, I'm touched.  I'm also quite anal and won't through out these letters.  I have all my birthday cards since I was a kid.  One day perhaps I could shred all these letters and cards and stuff a couch with the shreddings.  Then I could call it my love seat.

Well....a lot of love went into all those letters.  Hence the love seat.

How much love is in a store-bought seat anyway?  I'm just sayin'.....

They coined the phrase "spring cleaning" because of all the junk we acquire over time.  The stuff the kids outgrow.  Items that break and we have every intention of fixing, yet two years later they are still broke, hanging in the garage.  Baggage.  Junk.  So spring rolls around and we clean out our junk.  Then drag it into the yard, stab a sign into the curb and declare our junk pile a yard sale.  Someone comes along and rushes to claim these new treasures.

When you are a prisoner you have limited space for personal items.  One morning they wake you up, tell you to pack your personal items and prepare to transfer.  You begin to bag all your stuff and realize you have a pile of stuff.  Your expected to carry all those bags, while handcuffed onto a bus.  And repeat this process throughout the day.  Hard to carry all that stuff in handcuffs.

So, I'm trying to eliminate my property and send some home.  As a prisoner you never know when they'll come along and tell you to pack your stuff.

Another side effect is shake downs.  When they come in to search they go through all your personal items.  The more shit you have, the longer they stay at your house.  Personally, I'm a fan of them being in and out.  Then you run into the fact that they won't respect all your personal property the way that you do either.  Your things will end up in a pile on the floor.

I'm able to pay for shipping with stamps.  A dollar amount is placed on the package your mailing.  You then add the required number of stamps for postage.  Today I used 26 first-class stamps on my package.  Two years worth of mail and photos was placed into a box and mailed home.  By the time I am free, I will have a nice love seat.

I walk through this life here and remind myself that I'm just passing through.  The time I miss behind these bars will be made up for once I'm out.  I lived pretty hard before prison, but I'll never take even one moment for granted.

A country song asks a man what he did when he learned he was dying....he states he went sky diving, Rocky Mountain climbing, and rode a bull named Foo-Man-Choo.

Sky diving may cause my heart to explode.  I'll ride a bull though.  And I want to go up in a hot air balloon.  That will be my substitute for jumping out of an airplane.

We should all live life as if tomorrow may never come.  What have you done to make a memory?  Why don't you start by throwing a ball with your boy.  Have a father/daughter date.  Kiss your spouse and use some tongue.  Step outside the parameters of your comfort zone and live my friends.