Monday, May 21, 2012

Cheap or Frugal?

The other day I got a call back from the Wonderful program asking me if I wanted to sign the girls up for the summer.  I couldn't remember why I had gone with the Playground program through the parks department, until I asked the Wonderful program about the cost for two kids, and it was like hundreds of dollars a week.

"Yeeeaaahhh...  The Playground program was like $150 for the whole month," that would have bought me less than a week at the Wonderful program, and the main difference is that the Wonderful program includes swimming, which I am not a big fan of anyway.  "When I'm choosing childcare for my children, I always go with the lowest bidder."  (I actually said this to the woman on the phone, because I find that it's best to be direct about these things.) "If I could find some random stranger off the street to watch them for like a dollar a day, I'd be like, 'Sold - my van or yours?'!"

She laughed uncomfortably and hung up.

Whipworm - Indiana Jones' favorite parasite
Source:  Wikipedia
Then just now the vet tech and I were talking about Interceptor - I guess they've discontinued it or the factory burned down or something so it's not available, and she wanted to go over the options with me.  Option A was around $40 for six months, and Option B was around $140.  "But Option B prevents Whipworms," she said.

"Are those common around here?"

"Yeah, they're in the soil," she said.

We talked about how they get Whipworms a bit more and I decided that since Penny stays home (we don't board her or go to dog parks or anything) we're just going to keep our $100 and take our chances with the Whipworms.

While we were on the phone I was on Wikipedia looking them up, and I mused, "Well if she does get them we can use them to treat people with Crohn's disease and Inflammatory Bowel Disease.  We could probably charge people, so it might not just be a money saving opportunity - we could make money!" and then we started talking about the Hygiene Hypothesis and really I think the moral of the story is that I shouldn't be allowed to make decisions about anything, take care of anyone or anything helpless, or talk on the phone.  Ever.

What do you think, am I cheap or frugal?  Or just crazy??

4 comments:

Rob Monroe said...

Go with crazy, Amy. Just go with crazy.

Bev said...

Crazy's a LOT more fun!

Amy said...

Crazy it is!

Cate said...

Ok, this post is hilarious. Now when your kids grow up and are re-hashing their childhoods in therapy, they can point to just this post as an example... ha ha I am just kidding! You just have such a funny way of putting what we all do. :)