Frustration.
I am explaining how I sort of worked through the frustration I felt after getting your letter, not to put guilt on you, but to show how one tries to deal with stress in prison.
I am not expecting our relationship to be stress free. I am hoping, as I will explain in a bit, that certain issues can be better expressed; but do not feel you did anything wrong. I do not want or expect you to walk on eggshells so to speak.
I just realized that this coming Thursday is the expiration date shown on the label of the
NY Times. I was going to write a letter to Mom and Dad, but opted to call instead. I also sent a letter with one of the labels in it.
I am torn between calling home (I did not mention it when I called last Friday) or just dropping a letter in the mail that they will not get till next Wednesday. See, this is just another of those frustrating things.
I guess the biggest issue in your letter was the last three paragraphs. My take is you do not have to feel guilty telling me no. See, here I am telling you how to feel. Per my earlier letter, I realize the
Catch-22 of this. I cannot tell you how to feel. Your feelings are just that: your feelings. So the following is more an attempt to explain why I asked you about doing some purchasing.
If you feel guilty saying no to me, thus the rant about all you do for me, then one thing I can do is not ask. But as you will see, I wanted to explain what the options were, taking into account your previous objections, to see if anything was possible.
I realize your tolerance is low when dealing with "doing things" for me and that when roadblocks come up, I want to reach out and club those parties that make difficult your attempts to complete your various random acts of kindness.
I am thinking of the aborted attempt to "surprise me" with the
Harry Potter books for my birthday last year. No one had every tried to make my birthday special since the first one I had in the county jail in North Carolina when Karen made special arrangements for a birthday visit.
So I was all excited. I knew I was getting a gift, books, but at the time I did not know the contents. Then
Club Fed in its infinite wisdom, decided to fuck things up. It was not the first time they had done that, but that was the worst time to do it.
There have been the ornery
U.S Post Office workers, and the changing regulations about using media mail (book rate), and again
BOP changing regulations about who could send books and the local prison deciding how many. Yes, I put myself in here but you sir, have done a noble job to make the time a lot better for me.
I do not know how this is going to read, but I am going to err on the side of wordiness just so you can see how my mind is working. So you were willing to spend a sizable chunk of change to send me the books. The
hot pot is a one-time purchase that I will use every day and I thought it was something you could do with a minimum of effort. I do not mean to sound presumptuous, but I do not ask you to spend your money on me without some degree of trepidation.
You also had asked in one of your recent letters, after you had turned down my initial request to do food shopping while Mom and Dad were in Georgia, if you could occasionally send me a food package. You had said it would be a random event, but you did not want to have to check with Mom and Dad. That was the last thing that you had said.
Since the issue of coordination with my parents was no longer an issue, I decided to give you the possibilities that might work for me. To use a legal term, I felt there was a "change in circumstance", not just me trying to wear you down or badger you to do something you already refused. That is why I brought the issue up.
I also had changed my expectation of trying to maintain a constant supply of fresh fruit, looking at the package option as a treat and special occasional type of event.
