Things I Have In Common With the Homeless

Sometimes as a mother of young children I feel the group of people I have the most in common with is not other women my age, or people who vote like me, but rather, the homeless.
(Please don't take this the wrong way- I am not making fun of the homeless, but of myself.)

~Sometimes I fall asleep in very public places where most people DO NOT sleep. I am just so tired!

~I almost always have bodily fluids on my clothes. They are not necessarily mine. I am used to it and it doesn't even bother me any more.

~Most of my clothing doesn't quite fit because I didn't buy it- everything is hand me down. (The joys of children and graduate school combined.)

~I have on more than one occasion been awakened for sleeping in my car in a public parking lot. (Note to others- if a woman is IN the car with her children, nobody is screaming and the windows are open, please, just let her have a nap for goodness sake. Even if it is just outside of the Joann's Fabric.)

~People stare at me with looks akin to fright and/or pity when I walk into a grocery store with the children in tow. Seriously, there is only three of them. We are fine.

~I push a stroller loaded with food, dirty clothes, and what is apparently garbage all over town. There are also children with me and they eat a lot, dirty their clothes, and I don't want to leave the garbage at the park. I am actually just trying to be a conscientious citizen. Plus, I want to stay in shape.

~I will admit that me and/or my children have on occasion been known to urinate in a public park. Seriously, why do they have bathrooms if they are always locked?

~Yes that was me with a bag on the side of the road loading up on walnuts that feel out of a tree. I will have you know that walnuts are healthy, organic, and very expensive to buy! Plus, picking them with the kids teaches them self reliance and thrift.

~I may appear to talk to myself when nobody is there and I sway side to side when I should in fact be still. I am not actually technically insane. I have a lot on my mind, thus the talking. In addition, I have been holding or rocking or nursing a baby constantly for the last six years. I can no longer sit still. Maybe someday that will wear off. But not yet.

~Sometimes I appear to yell at people randomly at the park. Again, I am not going crazy. But if teenagers think that they can drop the F-word around my three year old little girl and get away with it, they have got another thing coming. I am a mom and ten teenagers do not scare me, so watch your language!

~I do things outside of a hospital that seem like they should be done in a hospital. It is not because I don't have insurance. It is because home birth rocks.

~I am a little bit counter culture. I don't do things the way everybody else does. I don't believe all the experts and I don't always try to fit into the mold of what a person should be. People respond sometimes with fear, sometimes with hatred, and sometimes with a little awe. Either way, I'm good.