June 29th, 2023

This little flamingo wind-up toy is just one of many 'toys' you might notice if you prowled around our house for a bit.   The toys aren't overt.  It isn't as if there was a giant toy box in the middle of the living room.  But they are tucked in here and there all over the place.  And furthermore, I am absolutely unapologetic about them.

I have been accused many times of being childish and they always say it as if it was a bad thing.  For example,  I have been straight up accused of having the palate of a child - which is sort of true.  I'm not very adventurous about food and I am resistant to the concept of eating healthy food simply because it is healthy.  If I'm eating something, it's because I like it and it tastes good. If it also happens to be healthy, all the better. But no way am I eating yucky food simply based on it's determined health status. Nope. 

Additionally,  I cannot begin to enumerate the number of times I was told that I wasn't dressing my age or acting my age.  My response was, and still is, "since this is the way I am acting (or dressing) and this is the age that I am, obviously I am acting (or dressing) my age".   I guess this idiosyncratic behaviour has carried over to the way we have chosen to decorate our house.

I did not wake up one day and decide to eat a certain way or dress or act or think as certain way because someone has decided that it is a childish way to be.  It's not rebellion. Not at all.  I am just being true to myself.  And the older I get, the determined I am to be who I am.  Which is funny because I told my own children their entire lives to "be who you are"  and "don't let anyone else decide who you are".  And yet, it's taken me a very long time to do that for myself.  To be comfortable just being who I am, making no excuses and no apologies.  

Personally I prefer to think of myself as being quirky or perhaps a little whimsical.  Other folks have called it weird. And my feeling about that is, "Luckily for me, you have no vote in my personal choices".

I have no idea why these silly little things appeal to me, but they delight me beyond measure.   All of them were gifts and I treasure them.   In fact, because they were given to me, sometimes even were made for Tim or me, they mean even more.

Like I said before, these things aren't heaped in a pile somewhere, they are randomly placed here, there and everywhere.  Most of them are fairly subtle and you might not notice at first.  Here are a few of the things you might spy:

There is a toy cat's paw by the landline in the living room.  If you pull the trigger you get either a purring sound or a kitty growl.  

There are a few stuffed bears around.  One of them, the original "little bear" of the Little Bear children's book series, sits guard on the book shelf dedicated to children's books.  Which makes sense to me.  Two other bears are hanging around on the self with the photo albums.  Who knows what sort of mischief they get into when we aren't looking?

There is a tiny ceramic fish in the guest bathroom instead of a bar of soap because, well, why not?

I seem to have a number of things that spin.  Not sure why that is so, but it is.  They seem to live in unusual spots:

There is a kaleidoscope in the cookbook section of the bookshelf. Why?  I don't know, for inspiration purposes?  So I can take a moment to see things differently?  I t's just where a kaleidoscope seemed to belong.

And there is a sailboat on the table beneath the mirror in the entry

Not all of the whimsy is actually toys, some of it is just stuff I love and cannot bear to part with.  Things like, oh, I don't know, jars of things.  Why do I have these ?  I honestly could not tell you.  But they make me smile and that matters.

There are a couple of unintentional collections of things: seashells, which at least makes sense since we live by the beach and pinecones because, I don't know, why not pine cones.  I especially like the jaunty blue jay feather:
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There are two 3-D cards that I love so much I have permanently integrated them into the decor.  Decor?  I'm not sure we have decor. We have stuff we like but I'm not positive it could be called something as lofty as "decor". Anyway, the cards:

There is a small lobster trap sitting atop the books about Maine, what appears to be a  red swirled hershey kiss in the kitchen windows sill (it's actually a ring holder), a dragonfly shaped item that I believe is supposed to be for keeping earrings but instead it's in the bookcase on the "reference" shelf and a small sequined "christmas tree" in the pencil jar on my desk.

So I suppose you could say that we are childish or maybe child-like, which is far more charming.  Maybe odd or eccentric truly is the correct term.  Whatever it is, it's part of who we are.  And we have surrounded ourselves with the things we love, which in turn, makes us happy.

In the end, isn't that really the most important part?