Uncertainty makes me say No

A lady knocked on our door today. She said, "Hi, I'm fundraising for X charity, are you interested?"

I said no.

I would have been open to giving a certain amount without any hesitation at all (say, NZ$10-15, larger amounts I'd have to think about and even larger amounts I'd have to talk to sol about :-). Unfortunately, her question was too open ended. We have two children, one was in the living room at the time (being angelic just then, but things change) and I'm babysitting a dist-upgrade on one laptop just now. There are house chores I haven't done yet.

So I said no, because I didn't know what the range of the donation would be, I didn't know how much time I'd have to spend chatting with her and I didn't know whether I'd have to *think* about anything (to begin with, how much to give). If she'd said,

"Hi, I'm fundraising for X charity, we're selling these 15 dollar T-shirts." Or these 5 dollar chocolates, or even these 2 dollar raffle tickets (*even* because I avoid games that involve pure randomness), I would have said yes immediately.

Money is tight, but time is far tighter, and frankly, I don't have any brains left to use on the weekends. Sometimes, I run out of brains on Thursday.