Cribbage and Snuff in prison visitation

Mary-Ellen visited me last Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Visitation is an odd prospect. Each party comes from their world to a break room of small closely packed tables and vending machines.  Here they are allowed to co-exist and interact until 4pm then we have to retreat from the brief overlap to our respective worlds.

We sat at different assigned table and different sides of the room each day.  I had the better view, that looked into the room rather than a close wall.  This is so the monitors can see my face and take notice of me swallowing contraband. 

So, we played cribbage, ate processed and packaged food, talked, and avoided contrabandish activity.  I had to reschedule a conflicting medical appointment for chronic sinus pain on Saturday.  I proposed to tell the nurse, at the re-scheduled appointment, that something to induce sneezing could be a treatment starting point.  Mary-Ellen suggested wasabi too.  During the Sunday visitor bathroom break I tore open  a small black pepper packet and contemplated the varigated grains.  This real pepper was worlds from the ground-to-silt tree bark substitute in the chow hall.  I pondered the implications of snorting some - decidedly contrabandish behavior.  I settled on pushing my finger onto the pepper flakes to get a sample stuck to the finger tip and pushing the pepper into each nostril, discretely. Mary-Ellen returned to ask what I was doing. 

"Pushing pepper into my nose," was my response.

"Do you think it will work," she asked.

I replied, "I can't tell."

We resumed chatting, eating, and playing cribbage, without any further thought to the merits of nasal ingestion of black pepper,  After 20 minutes I sneezed a half dozen times. (Have not had sinus pain since.)

Mary-Ellen closed out the afternoon with the only 24 point hand of the weekend.  Upon departure she said, "Keep on doing all the things you're doing," in reference to letters to state legislators, sentence commutation to the governor, and inter-state transfer request to the Dept. of Corrections.

Please stay tuned for all these political / bureaucratic interactions.

Jason

Note from MEP  /  The chow hall only allows packets of aspartame as officials are concerned inmates will make hooch out of sugar packets.