I am grateful for...

There are those days when you make coffee from yesterdays grounds, and prepare a PB&J with uncooked ramen noodles for lunch. You decided to buy toilet paper instead of bread, and the flavor packet becomes part of the spice cabinet. A warm liquid that could be called coffee by an optimistic soul, sputters and dies in it's attempt to wake you up. Somehow you're sleepier than before. You thrown in a load of laundry with dish soap and vinegar cause that's what you have, before getting in the shower. Naked you zone out with your hand in the water, and realize after many unremembered thoughts that it is still cold. Gas must be off again. Awesome, a hurried cold shower does what the hot bean water couldn't and now you're awake. Frazzled you realize you need to be at work in 20 minutes, and so you rush out the door. In the middle of a confusing calculation of what bills you can hold off to pay the gas bill, you are startled by the sudden blast of siren and the red and blue lights behind you. When the guy walks up he's already got his ticket pad ready, a pen touched to it. You transfer your license and registration, and get them back with a sheet of paper. A 450 dollar ticket for not wearing a seat belt, great. There is no point in telling him that it takes you more than a week to make that, he doesn't care. You get to work five minutes early, and cry in the parking lot before you go in.

I feel lucky to have these grade of problems. There was a time in my life a ramen noodle PB&J would make have made my mouth water. I look around at my life now and I'm grateful. My washer is broken, but can be persuaded to wash my clothes. Memories of blistered palms are conjured from my days of hand washing with hauled water. When you haul your own water, running water becomes magic. I've washed up in so many gas station bathrooms, that a private clean place to bathe is great in itself. I've spent months without coming into contact with a bed, so to wake up in my own room is beautiful. The example above isn't directly a depiction of my life, I don't own a car or make even 450 in two weeks. I'm rich though, truly I always have been.  

As I sit in my bed propped up by three wonderful pillows, I write to you on a lent laptop. The people in my life are the best, and together we lift each other up. Today I am drinking strong and aromatic coffee, and I feel like a queen. I'm blessed to have had a time in my life where the quality depended on how crafty I could be. I look back on all of the forests and cites I've slept in, and remember homelessness as a freedom. That is my ultimate privilege, I had a choice in the matter. It took me a time to come back out of it when I rejoined society, but that too was an adventure. I always had a few amazing people who would bail me out if I fucked up, but I didn't. I can't say that no one ever helped me, they sure did- but I never lost control of my life. For awhile I did what ever I wanted to, and that is worth more than money to me. ![18278759_778978402260015_4638478376888936967_o.jpg]() taken in St.Louis during a flood, from a time in my life that I lived in a car.