Gotta give her points for resourceful thinking

OK, I admit it: I'm a fundraising curmudgeon. I HATE all those catalogs and flyers and so forth and so on.

So far, we've had Tupperwear, wrapping paper, walk-a-thon, read-a-thon, makeup, and cookie dough.

Now Tupperwear, I love. Couldn't afford right now, but love.

The Sally Foster gift wrap is good stuff, too. High quality. Thumbs up.

Anything-a-thon may get annoying when you're getting FOUR identical envelopes all at the same time, but I just do a flat pledge and there we are.

But the cookie dough...y'all know about my baked-goods snobbery, right? I admit it: I like almost NO cookie I didn't bake. Mrs Fields can get some of my money...coincidentally (not!), guess where I first learned to bake cookies?

Anyway, the tubs of plastic with semi-solid dough-like substance in it, which makes 36 cookies for twelve bucks?

Ahem. Tell you what, my darling school: How about I just write a check straight to the student fund instead? You get the whole twelve bucks, I get to deduct the whole twelve bucks (yes, it's tax deductible, at least for our school - YMMV), and I DO NOT have a tub of noxious waste waiting to defile my baking sheets. (Did I mention my baking snobbery?)

Which brings me to the one thing common to ALL these fundraisers that REALLY burns my turnovers, which is the "free" prizes.

Sell one, get this (yawn) whatever.

Sell four and get this AWESOME ZINGER-WHAMMER, WOW-WOW-WOW!!!

This, naturally, leads to begging, pleading, bribery, threats, tears and other skullduggery in an attempt to coerce their doting momma into buying hundreds of boxes of whatever.

Whiiiiiiiiiich leads me to Boo Bug, who wanted me to buy cookie dough.

Really, reeeeeeeally badly.

I said NO. I told her it was toxic waste squeezed from the bowels of Satan. I even gave her a check and told her that she should be proud. That was how much the school would get for TEN of those nasty tubs, and isn't that the whole point, sweetie?

She thought about it for a minute, then asked, "How much is bird seed?"

Uhhhhhhhh...I really don't...

"BECAUSE! MAYBE! You could make the cookies for the birds! They like anything, even store-bread!" Ah, bread snobbery! I'm passing it right along to the next generation.... "And it might be cheaper because I 'member YOU said bird seed was 'spensive, last year...!" (She starts dropping letters when she gets excited andalsoherwordsallruntogetherlikethis!!!

SEE, this is the danger you face, when your kids are smarter than you...still said no, but had to give her points for thinking outside the box, there...

(Bird seed is way less expensive, and cookies are bad for them. We discussed this at length. Along with the fact that she really didn't need another flam-whammer OR the didja-which.)