The Only Christmas Wish List You'll See from Me

Our local homeschool group is doing a supply drive and fundraiser for our local humane society during the holiday season this year. I was thrilled that the charity chosen this year was the humane society and wanted my daughter to get out there and collect as many donations as she could.

I printed out dozens of copies of the humane society's needs list. I went to Sam's Club and bought a box of those fundraiser candy bars for her to sell for a dollar each. I figured the cost of the candy bars would be my donation and the money she made selling them would be on top of that. I thought I'd go back for another box once the first box was sold.

I put her out the door in the cold to go ask our neighbors to buy a candy bar or donate items from the needs list. I thought it would go better than it did.

She has been to every house on our street and only sold ten of the candy bars. My sister is in for another ten. I guess I will buy the other sixteen from her even though it seems weird to buy something that I already bought once. I don't honestly know how else to do it though.

She had the door slammed in her face once before she could even say hello. As soon as the woman saw the box of candy bars she glared and slammed her door so hard her Merry Christmas wreath fell off the door. Think on that one for a moment.

A lot of people were friendly and told her she was doing a good thing but declined to buy a candy bar of donate supplies.

Other people donated supplies and I realized how hard it was for a nine year old girl to haul an eighteen pound box of cat litter or gallon of bleach home while carrying fliers and a box of candy bars. Ever see a box of cat litter sitting on a scooter being pushed down the street?

I told her to leave the supply list at every house because I had broken every rule of child safety and put our address and phone number on it so people could round up donations and drop them off at our house later. Yesterday a man did pull up in the driveway and drop off two sacks of supplies so it was probably worth it.

I was surprised no one gave her any old towels or blankets. I figured everyone had some of those. I'm going to launder all our throw type blankets today and put them in her box. I'll replace them later.

What it boils down to is that she worked hard and has very little to show for it. After I buy the remaining candy bars, she will have $36.00 to turn in. She has some cleaning supplies, some litter, a sack of cat treats, and a bunch of old newspapers. Probably not even fifty dollars worth of stuff.

So, my Christmas wish is that she can do better than this. My Christmas wish is that she learns that when you work hard to make a difference, you can make a difference.

The donations were supposed to be turned in tomorrow but I have asked for an extension of one week so that I can help her make that happen.

Of course, it would be against Gather terms of service for me to ask you for a donation so I'm not doing that. If anyone decides to write a check out to the Humane Society of Southwest Missouri and mail it to one Slackerdaughter this week, well, I don't know where they got that idea.

If you don't like that idea that I didn't give you, please consider making a donation to your local animal shelter this holiday season. Shelters are seeing more pets surrendered than ever before with all the foreclosures, unemployment, and generally lousy economy. Donations to all charities are down for the same reasons.