It’s that time of the year. Heck, it’s already halfway through 2009. This year Angela and I are taking Jinx to the Walk to Cure Diabetes this Sunday, June 7th, 2009. Over a decade ago I took Farley with me on a charity fund raising walk called ‘Walking the Dog’ so I thought that it was a good time to bring our girl with us. So far we’ve collected half of our goal of $100 which isn’t too bad considering we only thought of doing this a little more than a week ago.

I’ll be honest with you: I hate raising money. I remember having to do it in high school for year book or the Student Council Association. We’d sell candy. That friggin’ sucked. I would sell whatever I had and then when I brought the cash in they’d give me more to sell. What the heck?! They’re trusting me to lug zip lock bags full of candy around school? It got to the point where I would either get tired of trying to sell it or I’d start snacking on the crack and I wound up buying a good portion of the M&M’s, Snickers and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups myself. I was horrible at fundraising. I still am.

I feel bad for all of you guys that have kids. Now it is no longer candy but wrapping paper, popcorn, cards, figurines, stationary, oranges and nuclear warheads.

So, here I am. Almost 40 and I look at what donations I’ve made recently.

It used to be that I only donated to animal charities. After my father passed away that changed. And I always make sure to take care of my nieces if they need anything fundraising help because I can testify about how painful it was not to meet your quotas when you were forced to do that in school. Yeah, I know all the tricks that people use to duck from people who are fundraising because I do it, too. Angela reminded me to keep receipts for all the places that I donate to. This is a first for me since I normally give money and then don’t think about it any longer.

And I’ll be damned if I don’t help out the Girl Scouts when they come around with their cookies…