We see the same homeless guy every time we go to the grocery store. He stands with his sign—I couldn’t tell you what it says—just by the exit, where you’d have to be blind to miss him.

“What does his sign say?” my kids used to ask. I’d read it to them and they would ask me why I wasn’t giving him any money. I explained that when I lived in New York I saw a lot of panhandlers take advantage of kind, generous people, and then—I did this, I really did—I repeated the exact words my mother used to say to me to explain away her own guilt:

“We don’t give money to beggars because we don’t know how they’ll spend the money.”

As if we were the Royal Arbiters of Good Sense, and if only they could prove they were going to use our hard-earned money to buy vegetables or a sensible blue-chip stock (and not, heaven forbid, drugs or booze because we’d never do that), we’d happily stroke a check on the spot.

As if begging was an easy way to earn a buck.

Today as we were leaving the very same store, the homeless guy was there. Only this time he wasn’t a guy at all; he was a woman. Maybe even a girl. A pretty girl, with her arm in a cast. A pretty, homeless girl with a broken arm.

“Anything helps. God bless.” That’s what her sign said.

Almost without thinking, I grabbed some bills out of my wallet and rolled down the window.

“Anything helps,” she said, bowing slightly and taking the crumpled bills I was offering. “God bless.”

Did a man do that to her, a jealous, angry boyfriend? I wondered. Was she forced to leave a decent job because of the broken arm—a courtesy I probably wouldn’t have offered to a man with his arm in a cast. Was the cast even real, or was it just a sympathy ploy? Did I give her money just because she was a girl? Or because she was a pretty homeless girl with a broken arm? And was the homeless guy who was usually there not a guy at all, but a dozen or more different guys whose faces I’d never bothered to look at?

I honestly have no idea. But I am still thinking about her.

We love summer around here. Late dinners outside, sleeping in, glorious days at the beach (and by “glorious days” I mean “gathering and schlepping a trunk-full of gear to the edge of the country, munching on inappropriate snacks and then dragging the whole soggy, sandy lot–minus the snacks–back home six hours later”). When we’re not eating, sleeping or applying sunblock, here’s how we spend the rest of our free hours… I know, you wish you were me.

A Peek into My Life

My 5Yo had a t-shirt emblazoned with that on the front, and I always wish they’d made shirts like that when I was little and my dad was alive.

Even though I never had a tea party with him in my whole life, I dedicate this book to my dad for being the ass-kickingest dude EVER.

If you know a dad who’s clueless about all things girly, you should totally pick up a copy of Tea Parties for Dads.

And not because I get like forty cents if you do, but because it’s a fun, quirky, informative read and they’ll both thank you for it (someday).

Grassy.

Spats on the preschool playground are hardly newsworthy—unless they happen between 20 or so parents at a freaking graduation celebration and the whole school has to be put on lockdown, resulting in a cancellation of all previously planned year-end activities.

Sadly, I am not even making this up.  Click here to read my iVillage post on this ridiculous story.