Not helping Our Children

I was at a local Carnival this past weekend with my children. The carnival was a benifit for Operation Christmas Child. A local church in my area was trying to raise money to stuff showboxes with crappy toys for children overseas. Now before I go on, I want you to understand that Im not saying we shouldn't help those children. I just feel that we really need to focus on the children here in the US that need help. People are so quick to donate money to those child sponsorship programs to help kids in other Countries but they wouldnt think that there are children that need help only a few houses down from them.

When I was at the carnival there was a Pastor on stage and he was saying how we dont know how good we have it to be able to walk over to our faucet and have fresh water. But thats not true for everyone, Myself included. I have had to go without running water for months at a time. Do people not realize how bad it is here in America right now? I mean, You could donate $20 a month so that some child in Africa can get health care but what about the millions of Children here in America who have never been to a doctor? Right now there are 30,000,000 homeless people in America. 13,000,000 are children. There are tent cities all over this Country right now filled with people and children that have no where to go.

I recently got in an argument with an Uncle of mine after making comments about how disgusting it was that there are Celebrities spending $5000 on shoes when there are families that could use that money for things they need. My Uncle was convinced that people who end up homeless got there by there own mistakes and choices. Now, I agree that there are people who have made bad choices whether it be drugs or laziness but what about the family that didnt make any wrong choices, the father that went to College and spent 12 years working for a company only to lose his job because the company closed down?

Does it say somewhere that we should only help the people who did nothing wrong in their lives? No, in the bible it says...

Whoever brings blessing will be enriched,
and one who waters will himself be watered.

—Proverbs 11:25

Whoever closes his ear to the cry of the poor
will himself call out and not be answered.

—Proverbs 21:13

Whoever is generous to the poor lends to the Lord,
and he will repay him for his deed.

—Proverbs 19:17

How many of you have ever been asked by a stranger for spare change? What did you do? Did you first question what they needed the money for? Did you turn a deaf ear? Or did you just give in faith? Why not just give and take the blessing knowing that you may have just helped someone?

This is a sensitive subject but we are in a crisis right now, there are no jobs..I can say that I know this for sure first hand. I have been looking for employment for over 6th months, I have applied to over 60 companies, some more then once. All I have gotten was 2 interviews and a letter stating that they are overwhelmed with applications. My family for one will probably not be celebrating Christmas this year. I'm not even sure we will have a house to live in by then.

The whole point of this entry is if you have it to spare, if you can afford to give then do it. Dont toss up helping a family and buying that new designer bag and see what you get out of it.

Lice Make Them Millions!

So last week my 6 year old daughter came home from school with head lice. I of course panicked at first, then rushed to Walgreens for some "Rid". Washed her hair and cleaned the bedding and sprayed everything in the house down. The next day she still had living lice on her head. I tried treating her with the "Rid" again but it didnt work. So Friday afternoon we went to her Doctor. The Doctor prescribed me this lotion called "Ovide".

So, I dropped the prescription off at Walgreens and the next day I got a call from them that they didn't have it in stock. They transferred it to another store and they said I would hear from them by sunday. So Sunday Afternoon I get a call from the other Walgreens that my daughter's insurance denied the coverage. They said I needed to call her Doctor and have the Doctor call Medicaid and then they could fill the prescription. I had to keep her home from School on Monday, I called Walgreens on Monday and they said they still couldn't fill the prescription.

So I'm getting pissed by now, I dont want to keep her out of school any longer then I need to. So The Doctor calls Medicaid again, and they tell me it will be 48 hours before they will hear from Medicaid. Now I'm standing at the counter at Walgreens almost in tears. I figured I could just take the loss and pay for the prescription with cash, I ask the lady how much it will be and she says "$225". "Are you fucking kidding me!?!". So I leave and then finally I get a call today "Tuesday" that her prescription will be ready later. I go, pick it up and as we are sitting on the couch applying the stinky, oily substance to her hair I am reading the incredients......1 ingredient..."PINE NEEDLE OIL".

This company is passing off pine needle oil as a medication and charging $225 for like 2.5oz?

$20 street pebble

I just thought this was something funny to share will the readers. Once when I was 15, I was standing around at a lil' saints gas station bored out of my mind. When a thought came to me, I walked over to the edge of the road and picked up a white pebble about the size of my pinky nail. I bushed it off and put it on my tongue. I walked over to this crackhead "Murphy". Everyone in the neighborhood knew Murphy and knew he would do anything for a rock.

Now, Murphy knew who I was and that my mother was dating the biggest crack dealer in south Florida. I asked Murphy if he needed anything and he said "Child, I always need something". So I stuck out my tongue and flashed Murphy what was in my mouth. I told him $20 and I had never seen someone rip a $20 bill out of their pocket so fast. I spit it out in Murphy's hand and walked away, He jumped back on his bike and peddled about 40 feet before I heard the sound of rusty bike breaks against rubber. When I looked over my shoulder, Murphy was cursing in a language I doubt was even English.

Well, Murphy rode his squeaky little bike over to my house and told my mom what I had done, and do you know what she had to say?

"Murphy, that's what you get for trying to buy crack from a 15 year old".


GPS

Teenage Crack Princess

When I opened this blog, I had every intention of revealing my deepest & darkest secrets. This is one of them....

At the age of 14, I was a Crack Princess. Whats a crack princess? Well, I should let you know first of all that I have never once tried crack, but I was a crack princess because my mother was dating and we were living with the biggest crack dealer in South Florida, Jose Gutierrez. I wont be changing his name to protect any innocent for two reasons, 1) He isn't anything but innocent and 2) He died 3 years ago in prison.

When I was 11 years old, my mother had moved on from recreational use of drugs like Ecstasy and GHB to smoking crack. We knew mom was getting bad when we moved out of our upscale apartment into a 2 bedroom trailer in the middle of the ghetto. If I recall correctly, we only lived there for a few months with her 20 something boyfriend. I do remember Christmas that year, Me, my younger sister and my younger brother all received one gift to share, a Super Nintendo. We loved it, we played it all day. But the next morning, mom brought it back to Walmart.

Soon after Christmas, my sister and brother moved in with their dad and my grandparent came and took me to live with them. I spent 2 years with my grandparents, barely seeing my mother, probably because most of the time she was in jail.

But after a summer with my dad in Germany when I was 13, I came home to my grandparents and my mom came by one night and asked me to spend the weekend with her. I was so excited to spend time with her. But time with her was not at all what I got. When we arrived at her house, she was living with 3 spanish men and she told me she didn't feel comfortable having me sleep there. So she brought me down about 5 houses to her Friend Alice's house.

She introduced me and told my about her 14 year old daughter and said I would have fun. So I stayed. I didn't meet her daughter that weekend, instead I met her daughter's 18 year old boyfriend and his two friends age 17 and 20. i spent the whole weekend with them smoking weed and drinking.

I went home to my grandparents on Monday only to tell them I was moving out and going to my moms. They were so mad, they told me I could never come back to stay with them....that was a lie of course but I wont get into that now.

So my newly proclaimed 20 year old boyfriend came and whisked me away to my new house complete with no adult supervision and nothing but partying. After about 6 months, 2 sexual partners and 10 different drugs later...I moved into a house with my mom and her crack dealing boyfriend. Did I mention that her boyfriend spoke almost no English at all?

Anywho, My mom seemed to get skinnier by the day and she stopped hiding the fact that she was smoking crack from me. In fact I can recall her smoking it in front of me several times and chatting about the neighborhood rumors, like a normal daughter and her mother over coffee. Only with us there was the stench of burned rubber in the air.

At that point in my life I didn't realize how much I hated it, I could do whatever I wanted. I had been kicked out of school for possession of marijuana, I never had to pay for anything including drugs, they were just handed to me by anyone who wanted to get in good with my mom's boyfriend.

Finally, shortly after my 15th birthday, my mom had been arrested for possession charges and was sentenced to do weekends in jail for 7 weeks. Now to alot of you that wouldnt seem like much, but to an addict who would have to detox every Friday night, lay sick in bed all weekend only to get out on Monday and go right back to the drugs...it was hell. My mom convinced my grandfather to buy her a bus ticket and give her some spending cash and she left for Daytona beach. She got cleaned up...but it didn't last long..that's a whole new story.


thanks for reading.

GPS

Starving Criminal

So most would agree that panhandling is a crime, and I agree with them..because it is. But when you are down on your luck, you do what you have to do. I personally haven't panhandled in a long time, besides the once or twice I ran out of gas and had no money...I didnt see anything wrong with asking the guy at the next pump for a few spare dollars.

But there was a time in my life when I lived on panhandling and I lived for it. I got to be so good at it that I would take bets from people at how long it would take me to come up with any amount they name. Now before you get your panties in a bunch and start throwing names and accusations around, I never once panhandled when I didn't actually NEED the money. I was in no way a lazy bum. I was about 18 the first time I ever panhandled, my daughter was about a year old and my husband and I had become homeless and all we had was our 72 Cutless Supreme and the highway.

We traveled the state of Florida trying to find a place to belong. But there was only one problem....we had no money. I still remember the first time, we were in Jacksonville. We had about 75 cents to our name, we were out of gas, hadnt ate in 36 hours, and we had used our last WIC check for formula. My husband pulled into a Wal-mart parkinglot and parked. We sat there looking at eachother for over 10 minutes trying to combine our thoughts on what we should do.

Without a word, my husband jumped out of the car and walked up to the first person he saw coming out of the store. He talked to them for a mear 30 secs and walked back to the car smiling. He leaned into my window and handed me a $20 bill. I was in shock. I asked him how he got it ( I thought for sure he somehow robbed the guy he was talking to), but he said that he told the guy the truth, and he gave him the money.

Now, when you are flat on your face broke, $20 is alot of money. But it wasnt enough, where were we going to sleep? So we spent about 2 hours in that parking lot asking total strangers for help and by 6pm we had over $100!

I was so happy, but still felt so much shame for what we had to do. Like some may think, we didn't run off to the nearest ghetto and buy a crack rock or run to the liquor store...we went to Wendy's and had a nice meal, bought some diapers and formula, pumped $10 in the tank and headed to the nearest motel. We were set! Well at least for the moment.

We spent hours everyday for over a week at that walmart begging for money so we could survive, and after useless attempts to find a job with no real address or permanent phone number we knew that it was time we were on our way.

We lived like this for over 2 months, different towns & different stores. We came familiar with the best way to approach people, the ones that for sure would call the cops, the ones that would give the most and which stores had the biggest fish.

I am in no way proud of what we did but you know what, I am not ashamed. The money we got from the contribution of others was spent wisely, we weren't taking advantage of people or lying to them..we were surviving.

Dumpster Monopoly

This is my first blog...I want to start by introducing myself..you can call me GPS, short for Garbage Pale Sammy. Now why would I have a name like that you ask? Because I am a proud dumpster diver. I would confess to you that I think of myself as a professional dumpster diver.

In the coming blogs I post you will read about my adventures in surviving the world by dumpster diving, panhandling and any other way I can think of. First thing you should know about me is I am a 23 year old mother of two, I'm married and I will not disclose me location for obvious reasons.

I grew up in a decent enough home, never needed to beg for anything but I was not wealthy by any means. My mom was a single woman, worked 3 jobs to keep us happy. I first learned how to make money off of other people's garbage from my grandmother. She specialized in antiques, in fact she had her own little shop. She would take me out on the weekends scowering the neighborhoods for garbage piles. We would find chairs, nic-nics and all kinds of little treasures. Sometimes they just needed a quick sanding and maybe some paint and they would end up in her shop with a $600 price tag. Oh' the good ol' days. But I grew up fast.

I didn't really start garbage hunting for myself until I was in my late teens, I had already gave birth to my first child. I started out by just driving around on garbage days and taking furniture for myself and other odds and ends. Now I make a living off of it. So many places waste useful shit, you wouldn't believe it. drug store, retail shops, thrift stores.....its a wonderland to me.

A couple years ago McDonalds was having their yearly Monopoly promotion and while I was sitting enjoying my nuggets, staring out into the parking lot it hit me like a ton of bricks...I wouldn't have to but another super-sized fry again. Me and my husband casually walked out of the restaurant and over to the brick cell that housed the dumpster..."Damnnit' it was locked". A normal person might just give up and leave, hell' a normal person would have never walked over purposely to the stinky can behind the drive through in the first place. I had my husband give me a lift and I felt like I was in a Mission Impossible movie, soundtrack playing in the background and all. I dove into the sluge filled dumpster like a champ, tearing open bag after bag. After 20 minutes I made my way back over the wall, and after a final count I had 5 free medium fries, 6 bigmacs, 8 Mcflurrys and $80 Best buy dollars...woo hoo!

So Im sure you would like to call me disgusting but its probably because you are the person who goes and spends $15 a day collecting those game pieces every year.

I have plenty of other stories, but if I told them to you now you would have no reason to come back. So for now, savor your Big'n'tasty and I will see you soon.

-GPS

Surviving On Dumpsters

This is my first blog...I want to start by introducing myself..you can call me GPS, short for Garbage Pale Sammy. Now why would I have a name like that you ask? Because I am a proud dumpster diver. I would confess to you that I think of myself as a professional dumpster diver.

In the coming blogs I post you will read about my adventures in surviving the world by dumpster diving, panhandling and any other way I can think of. I will also be posting anything I care to share with you about my life. First thing you should know about me is I am a 23 year old mother of two, Im married and I will not disclose me location for obvious reasons.

I grew up in a decent enough home, never needed to beg for anything but I was not wealthy by any means. My mom was a single woman, worked 3 jobs to keep us happy. I first learned how to make money off of other people's garbage from my grandmother. She specialized in antiques, in fact she had her own little shop. She would take me out on the weekends scowering the neigborhoods for garbage piles. We would find chairs, nic-nics and all kinds of little treasures. Sometimes they just needed a quick sanding and maybe some paint and they would end up in her shop with a $600 price tag. Oh' the good ol' days. But I grew up fast.

I didnt really start garbage hunting for myself until I was in my late teens, I had already gave birth to my first child. I started out by just driving around on garbage days and taking furniture for myself and other odds and ends. Now I make a living off of it. So many places waste usefull shit, you wouldnt believe it. drug store, retail shops, thrift stores.....its a wonderland to me.

A couple years ago McDonalds was having their yearly Monopoly promotion and while I was sitting enjoying my nuggets, staring out into the parking lot it hit me like a ton of bricks...I wouldnt have to but another super-sized fry again. Me and my husband casually walked out of the restuarnt and over to the brick cell that housed the dumpster..."Damnnit' it was locked". A normal person might just give up and leave, hell' a normal person would have never walked over perpossly to the stinky can behind the drivethrough in the first place. I had my husband give me a lift and I felt like I was in a Mission Impossible movie, soundtrack playing in the background and all. I dove into the sluge filled dumpster like a champ, tearing open bag after bag. After 20 minutes I made my way back over the wall, and after a final count I had 5 free medium fries, 6 bigmacs, 8 Mcflurrys and $80 Best buy dollars...woo hoo!

So Im sure you would like to call me discusting but its probably because you are the person who goes and spends $15 a day collecting those game pieces every year.

I have plenty of other stories, but if I told them to you now you would have no reason to come back. So for now, savor your Big'n'tasty and I will see you soon.

-GPS