The night I almost died

Have you ever had those moments where you’re doing something normal, something routine and in the blink of an eye your normal and routine almost change for the rest of your life? Where you narrowly escape an accident?

That was me on my way to Los Angeles last Friday. Every event leading up was completely normal. I left home a little later then I intended. Stopped at the outlet mall to exchange a handbag, went to a Subway for dinner but their toaster was broken, so I drove to another Subway a mile down the road and got my sub. {it has to be toasted}

Got back on the freeway, its completely dark at this point, and eat my sub. Drop a piece of lettuce in my lap.. completely normal. Fish it out, ball up my wrapper and toss it on the floor on the passenger side. I called my mom up (don’t worry, I have a bluetooth) and we chatted for a few minutes about nothing.

And then I just drove. I didn’t feel like messing with music, I didn’t know the stations in the area I was driving through any way, so I left it off and stared straight ahead in silence as I drove 75mph in the fast lane.

I see something odd in the median way up ahead. I can’t quite make it out, its so dark, but I see what looks like the outline of a person. I couldn’t quite understand if what I was seeing was right, but as I got closer and closer, I saw a movement and realized it was in fact a person, dressed in all black.

Not just one person but 4. And they were starting to move very fast.

Reaction time is funny. I’m sure it was a fraction of a second from the time I gasped, realizing what they were doing, to the time I slammed on my brakes and laid on my horn, but it happened as if it were a movie, in slow motion.

The first 3 run as fast as their legs could take them across my lane and into the other two as they sprint across the freeway. But the 4th. The 4th didn’t clear the wall as fast as they did, and as I’m still slamming on my brakes to keep from killing the first 3, the 4th realizes he won’t make it, and jumps back behind the yellow line just in time coming within inches of my front bumper as I fly past him.

I can still see him jumping back from my SUV. Just as if the camera was on his feet, jumping behind the yellow line, its that clear to me just how close he came to getting killed… to killing me. After I passed, he took off running across the freeway to catch up with the other 3. I’m sure they thought it was the thrill of a lifetime. Running in dark clothes, on a dark night, in front of a bunch of speeding cars who are none the wiser.

But they put my life at risk. For a stupid thrill. My life!

What if I hadn’t given up texting while driving, and decided to text at that moment?
What if I was still eating my sub and that lettuce dropped in my lap and I went looking for it at that moment?
What if I was still talking to my mom distracted, or decided to search for a radio station at that moment?

The first 3 would have been dead instantly. I wouldn’t have slammed on my brakes and I wouldn’t have given them enough time to get out of the way of my speeding car, and most likely I would be dead because of the impact and no doubt losing control of the car after that.

I know I can play the ‘what if’ game all day long, but I’ve never in my wildest imagination (and its pretty wild the things I conjure up), think 4 stupid teenage boys would dare run in front of me at night, going 75mph.

I’m so eternally grateful, I had 100% of my attention on my driving and nothing else. God certainly, without a doubt, had His hand in that night and for my safety. It took about a mile before I began thinking normally and called the cops to report the boys. I doubted they’d hover where they did it, but I called any way in case they dared to do it again to other cars.

That night could have ended so differently for me.

If you’re driving, really think hard about those distractions. The text, phone call, food, music, and think if they’re really worth the risk. I hope no one else is stupid enough to risk running in front of you, but before Friday, I never thought it was a possibility.

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Why you should memorize your license plate

Because if you don’t, while driving through a very bad part of town at 11pm on a Friday night, looking for a gas station {as you’re about to be out of gas}, you’ll hear a “pop” and notice you have a warning light on on your dash.

Which will cause you to drive even deeper into the very bad part of town praying to find a gas station soon, though you notice its only serving to keep you in the housing development.

You’ll be forced to pull over in front of dimly lit apartments and houses because your car is wobbling too much from the blown tire and you’re unwilling to risk driving anymore on it. And while you’re on the phone with AAA, they’ll ask you what your license plate number is and no matter how many times you’ve attempted to learn it, its never stuck and you’re forced to get out of your car to walk to the back to read it to them.

Which will lead to the questionable seedy black man, who’s walking down the other side of the 4 lane road {at 11pm} to see you on your phone, at the back of your car, to cross the 4 lane street in order to “get a better look”. This will prompt you to get back in your car, locking the doors {but darn if the dome light still stays on}, while explaining to AAA that you are in fact in a very bad part of town and that the man is now hovering by your passenger door “waiting” for you to get off the phone.

As you continue to talk to AAA, he’ll back up to watch you through your windshield as he leans against the wall, lighting his cigarette, showing he’s not going anywhere anytime soon. The AAA agent will then ask you to give your exact location, which you can’t give because you don’t know where you are, and you don’t want to turn your GPS on as it will illuminate the inside of your car, making everything that’s in it, visible to the guy smoking his cigarette, watching you. This will naturally prompt you to declare to the AAA agent that you don’t care what it will do to your car, you’ll be driving down the road in order to get away from him.

Once your car is started, the guy will start waving for you to stop, which will make you give a “do I have stupid written on my forehead??” wave right back as you slowly drive away. A measly 2 1/2 blocks later, you pull over near a stop light, in a mildly more visible area, and give your exact location.

5 minutes later, they’ll ask if you want them to call the police to come sit with you since it’ll be up to a 45 minutes wait and you causally mention that you ‘wouldn’t mind that one bit.’ And you will sit there…and sit there..for 15 minutes before the cop arrives. He’ll confirm that you are indeed in a very bad part of town and points out that 2 blocks straight is a prostitution house. And he’ll also point out that there’s not a gas station that he would advise you to go to anywhere near your current location.

As you joke around with the cop, AAA will finally show up to fix your tire, and you thank God that your boyfriend bought a 5th tire as a spare 2 years ago instead of an actual spare.


The cop will escort you to a safe gas station, wait while you pump, point you in the direction to get back home, shake your hand and drive away..

And you drive home.. but not without thinking that all the extra drama could have been avoided had you just memorized your license plate!

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Changing the direction

No, I’m not changing the direction of my blog. Like it ever had a direction to begin with.  I’m talking about changing up your direction to and from work. Or to and from home.

Yes, this will be a paranoid post by yours truly.

Remember, I’m an expert in these things… Almost from the beginning I was told it was important to never establish a routine in prison. Never walk the tier in the same direction twice, never leave the office at the same time, never go the bathroom, make a phone call, open a cell door, eat your lunch, pop inmates out at the same time every day… doing things like “clock work” was or could very well be your death sentence (or someone else’s)

Same can be applied to your day to day life.

I have to drive through the ghetto in order to get to work. You can change the name to lessen the blow; ‘less than desirable part of town’ but either way, it’s a druggie filled area that I get to work in… I get to watch the same druggies walk by the office and in so doing see whether they’re drug free (at that moment in time) or doped up as they walk by. Not to mention the gang members, homeless, scam artists and families who love them, smoking in their baby’s face while they walk by my lovely floor to ceiling window.

I started to develop the same route to and from work. Driving the same road where they’d all be hanging out at the liquor store and in their front yards watching cars go by. Where the girl would be spraying her husband’s face with the water hose while he had to do pushups in their front walk way and him not being able to breathe…you know, the normal things couples do for all to witness.

It wasn’t until one Friday morning, I was driving down the road and there were cars and people everywhere, lined up over a block long at the Salvation Army, that this one beat up mini van was going under 5mph for reasons I do not know. I couldn’t take it any longer and blared my horn nice and long and when I finally had that inch I needed, sped past him. It wasn’t until that moment I realized I may have rocked the boat on my route a bit.

There were a lot of people out that morning who heard the horn, saw the car and no doubt, saw me. I’m sure they’re used to noise and drama but I would prefer to stay out of it, so I realized it was time I took a break from that route. For the next 3 weeks, I went a different direction to and from work. Alternating between 2 routes. It was longer and more painful since there was more traffic, but I wanted to break the routine I had created.

Now I change it up between 4 different routes. Never taking the same street twice in one day. You can call me paranoid, obsessive, crazy or whatever else you want to think of, but there’s one thing I will always be. And that’s cautious.
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They watch you. They see the direction you drive and they see the time you drive it. They know when you get home, when you arrive at work and the minute you pass by their place.

My advice to you is: Change it up. Find a different route to work, to home, to school. Make if more difficult for those who are looking to track your schedule. Oh, and of course…take those stupid decal stickers off…cause you know, that’s an obvious bullseye.

Do you take the same route every day or do you make the effort to change it up?

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Realizing it can wait

Remember the day when we all sat in the car and talked and played car games? Relied on big huge bulky maps of the entire country, separated by states, where you had to connect A5 to D2 to find your destination? When you called to let the person know you were just about to leave and wouldn’t talk to them until you pulled up in their driveway?

Since June, when I went to Milwaukee and didn’t take my laptop, I’ve felt a shift of sorts in my use of all my gadgets. I have a lot of them. The iPhone, iPad, iPod, Kindle, and my laptop. Overwhelming at times, not to mention confusing when I’m reaching for one and do a jerky arm move over everything because I can’t figure out which I’m going for.

Up until a few weeks ago, I was a master texter while driving. I can text without looking and drive with my knee like no one you’ve ever seen…until I looked down to proof read and see I was one letter over to the left and all my words were misspelled. So of course, I would then survey the road, ensuring no cars were coming toward me (because I made it a “rule” to not text when a car was about to pass me) and proceed to look down to fix all the mistakes.

I always told myself I should cut back on texting and driving. I should. But it was always too easy to grab it when someone texted. I’ve mentioned it before; I generally text a person immediately upon receiving their text. If I read it and don’t, I’ll forget to respond, so I don’t wait. I’m just about always available. Even phone. I have this thing where its hard letting a call go to voicemail.

Well, I have noticed that no matter how quickly I’ll write back, they can take up to 5, 10, sometimes 30 minutes to get back to me. Odd seeing how they just texted but its slowly sunk in these past couple weeks that its okay to wait. Its okay to let that call from that client go to voicemail at 8:30pm. It’s okay to read a text and not respond until the morning. And most importantly, its okay to not touch my phone when I’m driving.

Why? I honestly have to remind myself that the person who is texting me, or calling me took 15 minutes to write back. Or 3 days to return my call, and if they feel its ok for me to wait, then I know its ok for them to wait that 20 minute drive home to respond. Its not an emergency, its not life or death. It’s a silly text about a piece of paper, or a workout, or someone wanting to say hi.

They can wait.

For the past 5-6 weeks, I’ve made huge efforts to stop texting while driving. There have been a couple times I’ve done it but 98% of the time I wait. And you want to know something crazy? The people on the receiving end of my texts, haven’t complained one bit. Heck, I bet they didn’t even notice I took longer than normal.

Everything is at our fingertips now. GPS, video games, communication. There’s no need to wait anymore when all a person needs is to grab their smart phone and look it up while sitting in the car driving down the road. And there’s no need to map it out to such great extent as before. We can call the person on our way and say we’re coming and call them 10 minutes before we get there. And we can all zone out to our little video games, keeping us separate from our riding companions. Things are not the same as when we grew up.

I love my iPhone, but I miss those days of less. So I’m working on less. Less texting, less computer time, less zoning out just to zone out..and I have to say, its been pretty nice.

Have a safe weekend and remember, it really can wait.

via

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Your decal families

This is a PSA of sorts.

An old co worker of mine talked about it on his wife’s blog over a year ago and I remember nodding my head the whole time in agreement with everything he said.
Now a days, you can’t drive down the road, park at a store or go to a school without seeing those family decal stickers on the back window of a car.

via technabob

When you see them, what’s your first thought? Is it, ‘oh, look they have the cutest little stickers for their 2, 3, 4 kids??’ Or do you think about the dangers that come with having the amount and general age of their kids on their car, for all to see?

The vast majority of you know I used to work in prisons. In that time I had a rather close encounter…too close of encounters with hundreds and hundreds of child molesters. I read their files, I knew what they did, I knew how and what they did to those kids and the ways the kids were lured in.

Its sick.

To this day, among all my prison paperwork, I have tucked away an ongoing note that spanned over a couple days between 2 child molesters that I happened to confiscate when I saw one attempt to pass it to the other. I didn’t know what it was at first when I asked him to hand it over, but I took it, told him to go away, and began reading it. I was shocked. Not to mention disgusted.

It was a conversation about little boys in a magazine they were looking through…and their age preference of them… and then how one, who was coming up on parole, planned to elude the cops, change his name, move out of the state and find himself another little boy..or two or three.

Are you uncomfortable yet??

Now, look again at those decals. Notice the ones that go so far as to give each and every name of their family down to their baby. How much easier do you need to make it for that child molester to come for your kid?

What do all parents say to their kids? Don’t talk to strangers!! But what happens when that stranger comes up to your kid and says, ‘Hey Tommy, your mommy Cheryl told me to come pick you and Jenna up because she had to take your little sister Heather to the doctor.’

And how does he know where you live? Easy! He followed you home, thanks to your decals being so easy to spot. They are elaborate thinkers! They will do anything to get your kids. I can’t stress that enough!!

Stop making it so easy for them by putting your family on your car!! and please for the love of God
DON’T SHARE YOUR NAMES!!
If you have a friend or family member who has these, please tell them the dangers of this. If you have them, please understand the danger this presents for you and your family. We don’t need to live in a state of fear, and I’m by no means wanting to make you be in one, but I want you to be aware. Aware of what’s around you. Not to be naïve to the fact nothing could ever happen. And not to be so forthcoming with your personal information for all to see.

Its called “personal” for a reason.

this concludes my public service announcement

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My clean record

I have to acknowledge all of your fantastic comments yesterday. I loved every single one of them. You ladies are incredibly insightful; so thank you for giving me your opinions on that subject!

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They say when you’re working in a prison that its not a matter of if you’ll get assaulted but when.
Also that at some point, you will witness someone being killed or find a dead body.

I’m happy to say in my 6 years, I never was assaulted and I never saw a dead body. But that doesn’t mean that I didn’t come close to either.

I was technically assaulted. An inmate did hit me. Hit me so hard in fact, I flew a good 10ft, ending with a concussion, whiplash and a permanent partial disability, not to mention a new form of migraine.

However, it was an accident. I knew it. He knew it. The 15 Officers in the building that witnessed it knew it. So after he apologized a good 100 times and made sure I wasn’t going to say he did it intentional, he was clear to keep working, while I got checked out by medical.

There were other occasions for me to get assaulted. I’m thankful I never had a hit out on me. Or if I did, I never knew. I did have my co worker protecting me after all, but I’m fairly certain I didn’t. Though, I put myself in enough positions to have it happen. You’d be amazed at how many inmates hate having a young white female tell them what to do.

And how the young white female hated when they didn’t do something she said.
graduation day. I was such a young {and fresh looking} pup





can we all pause and acknowledge what 2 years did to my face?!! Prison will take it out of you, I’m tellin’ ya! any way…

I remember the first time I ever witnessed a fist fight. It was far away from where I was but I could tell they were about to fight. It was weird…and then they did.

But I came thisclose to having one die on my watch. I was meant to work my building one night, but got someone to work it for me instead. I hated that building, so any way to get out of it, I was all for doing.

There were 3 inmates doing drugs and one began to overdose. Since it was in the middle of the night, they thought the guy could possibly ‘walk it off’ and not tell anyone, including the Officer that was working for me that night. But when they noticed that he was only getting worse they thought the next best thing to getting medical attention {because after all that would just get them in trouble for doing drugs…} was to inject instant coffee into his vein.

should I pause so that’ll sink in…? Nah, I’ll keep going.

Wouldn’t you know, that killed him instantly. {you really should be careful with that instant coffee…}

Again, since they didn’t want to get caught, they put his blanket over him as if he were sleeping, got in their beds and went nighty night.

The poor Officer had to stay for hours to do a death report which is..well, a killer to do. {hardy har}, not to mention going under investigation for the death, until it was cleared and it was a big huge headache, that left everyone leery to work for me since ‘inmates die on her watch’.

Thanks to him, that kept my record quite clear. Morbidly, I’ve viewed several murders and murder scenes. Gruesome stuff that I’ve kept on my thumb drive that I really don’t know what to do with, since I can’t quite bring myself to watch them anymore. ..being all girly now and all.

Yet, I’m thankful I was spared. I was spared of so many situations that I truly would and even still do thank God for. I’m pretty sure He knew I could only have so many things give me nightmares.

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Whew! We're safe

Praise the Lord it was a mild tsunami for us. I'm sure you've seen on the news by now (though not sure what they're reporting), we are all safe and sound.

I just woke up 30 minutes ago...went to sleep at 5:30am! So very tired from staying up all night in anticipation of it coming.

Not knowing how it would hit, we made sure we were prepared since we are so close and thought the water might get shut off. So we washed 2 loads of laundry, ran the dishwasher, we both showered, filled up over 5 gallons of water and brewed some coffee. haha

(coffee is SO important when pulling an all nighter)

Here's some videos and pictures from last night's adventure. hhmmmm ok so I have no clue how to upload the videos so I'll just do the pictures for now.
Here is the harbor at around 1am.

(though blurry, sorry) All the boats went at least a mile out to sea.

Within a matter of minutes the water level shot up. The smoothness of the water was a bit mesmerizing.

And within minutes of it rising, it rushed back out. You can see how the pier posts are gone above and then very visible below. Not to mention the rush of water going from left to right...it always flows right to left.

This went on the rest of the morning. All the boats are still out to sea right now. It's neat to see them all sitting out there. I think its the most that have been out there at once.

Thank you ladies for your prayers and sweet comments. I'm thankful nothing severe happened, and even though my morbid brain would have liked to see waves come in and crash over (without destruction or loss of life of course) I am glad it didn't.

Did you all see the footage from Diamond Head? Where the reef on the ocean floor was exposed?! That was pretty neat to see. We were in awe of that.

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