Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

Oh yay, it's been so great to hear from people who are gathering their "free gifts with purchase" and sending them our way. I'm realizing this is the way to go instead of those cold-calls to businesses, especially big corporations who stare at me blankly as I start my spiel. I tried again today with our favorite place to buy groceries (I won't name names here, but frequent readers of our blog can easily guess which one), a place we've loyally shopped for years. The manager looked at me blankly (unlike the manager of Bath and Body Works who enthusiastically congratulated us on our adoption plans--love her!) and went into his spiel about how I'd have to get a letter from our agency stating their nonprofit federal number and where the donations would go.

Um, hello? All I'm asking for are 20 or so little bottles of hand lotion or bars of your hippie-dippy tea-tree oil soaps. With a lot of these corporate managers, I feel like Oliver Twist, begging for a scrap of bread, that they're going to reach across their counters to knock my cap off my head and pinch my ears, shooing me out like a rapscallion who's overstepped her bounds. I don't see how salespeople make these "cold calls"--my skin is much too thin to have my motives misread and looked at skeptically all day long.

And I didn't write this yesterday, but the furrowed brows of the lady in Nordstroms nearly drove me to tears. No kidding. I've never been good at letting anything roll off that proverbial duck's back.

Anyway, Ms. Namby-Pamby Overly-Sensitive Lori thanks you for sending things in! If you've got thicker skin than I do, you could ask store managers for donations, but I wouldn't wish that rejection on anyone (and I'm most likely going to keep asking anyway--the Nordstroms lady was proof that it can work).

This has nothing at all to do with adoption. It's the most brilliant thing I've seen in a while though. I wish I had thought of this!