Lots of things. I've always collected things. Mostly trinkety stuff, but you know, I've got this obsession for antique chairs now. Chairs aren't really trinkety. One of the first things I started collected was my FIA animals.
They are tiny little rubbery animals that are cuh-RAY-zy cute. I bought three last month. And got two for my birthday from my mom. I first started getting them from the Flint Institute of Arts (FIA) when my dad worked there when I was really little. I do not think they are any less awesome now. Plus, you usually find them only in cute little downtown toy stores or in museum gift shops which means that your day is already going awesome. I am including a closeup of some of them below so you can see CLOSEUP how adorably cute they are.
I also collect old books. Sometimes I get them from antique stores. Some I got from my grandma. She didn't really want me to take them home for some reason so I talked her into it by telling her that when she wanted to read them she could have them back. The fantastic rusty locks are from my grandpa's barn. Ryan took those without asking, but I don't think she could justify needing rusty locks.
Then I have this collection of my other grandpa's harmonicas. I'm not sure those count as a collection because I wasn't really the one collecting them... They're like... an heirloom collection. There are a few really tiny ones. He used to play them in WWII. I like to look at them and think about where they've been. My mom knows a song on the harmonica and she made us (we GOT to) all listen to her play it when her side of the family came up for Christmas. A little harmonica recital if you will.
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I also collect antique photographs of little kids. Some of them are sooooo cute. Ryan thinks it is incredibly morbid but he is wrong. (I almost typed 'dead wrong', but decided that was a bit insensitive considering the subject matter.) It makes me depressed that someone just got rid of these family pictures and so I go through the boxes of them at antique stores to take care of them for whatever crap family got rid of them in the first place. I want to do this with them on the wall in our finished basement by the sewing machine I refinished from my grandma's house:
Then there are the new collections. This is an unintentional collection started which I call, Strange White Porcelain Figurines. Two of them I got from antique shops, (guess which two), and the bird is a gift from Christmas. The bird didn't want to stand near Monk-Monk and LongLegs at first, but she's decided that it isn't wise to judge by appearances and they are all BFF's now.
Then there are collections which continue to grow due to gifts. I call this collection, Wood Family. I told my dad that, because these are the things my family holds conversations around, and he said that they all speak different languages. They are from Africa, Mexico, and Russa. And a couple of Americans to show the foreigners around. Sometimes I carry the bird in my pocket because it feels like a little worry stone. And sometimes I type things that, in retrospect, I realize put words to my weirdness. Certainly it wasn't me writing a blog about collecting miniature rubber animals into my 30's.
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