Mornings

The mornings are the worst. We wake up at 5 a.m., get up to brush our teeth and shave. Also we have to make our beds perfectly with a six-inch collar and 45-degree angles at the end of our beds. Of course, we can’t have any wrinkles in our beds.

After we finish making our beds and complete our hygiene, we just sit (not lay) on our beds and wait for breakfast. When we are called for breakfast, we go outside and line up. Once everyone is lined up, we march to breakfast. The chow hall is close, so we don’t have to march far. It’s only two buildings away. We go in and eat, and then line back up outside again. We only have about 10 minutes to eat our food.

Anyway, after we line up, we march back to our dorm where we get a five-minute cigarette break for those who smoke, then we go back inside where we sit on our bunks for the next hour and a half until 8 a.m. when the next [CO] shift comes on.

It seems like the mornings drag and it never seems like you get a full night’s sleep. A lot of times, I stay tired throughout the day and go to sleep really early. That’s the only way to get any decent sleep. Even then, you still have people waking you up until Lights Out. I just can’t wait to sleep in my own bed.

What passes for food here

I mentioned before that breakfast here is served at 3:30 or 4 a.m. Lunch is served at 10 a.m. and dinner is at 4 p.m.

I didn't yet go into detail about the food, but most of it is unidentifiable. Even after eating it, I'm hungry all the time and use the money my parents put in my commissary account to buy more food, such as Ramen noodles, canned meat and coffee. I mix the Ramen noodles and canned meat together to eat.

The trays we eat off of are big and bulky. They're made from plastic and are about 3" thick.

Some items we get for breakfast:

- meat and potatoes
- grits and powdered eggs
- cornflakes and a peanut butter sandwich

We get a teeny juice and milk with breakfast.

Some of the thing we get for lunch or dinner:

- meat patty and potatoes
- mac n' cheese and a hot dog
- balony sandwich and noodles

For dessert we get a scoop of rice pudding, a chocolate chip cookie or dry cake. We used to get bread pudding, but haven't gotten that in over a month.

We also get a small cup of juice.

On Thanksgiving we got turkey, something that resembled stuffing and jello. That's better than the juvenile detention center at the Pinellas County Jail though. The year I was there for Thanksgiving, we got a baloney sandwich for our holiday meal.

More than one person (including someone that had worked in the kitchen) has told me that the juice in our cups is poured from big bottles that have a skull and crossbones on the bottle. There's a warning on the bottle that says that long-term drinking of it is poison. Who knows if this is really true?

I know one inmate who was a large person when he came to the jail, but lost over 200 lbs. after being here a year and a half.