the little things

 Yeah maybe I am spending a little money right now (though then again: I have the residuum of the "stimulus" check, and at some point I will have to take the AMD from the two IRAs I partially inherited from my dad*

(*I don't know WHY he spread the money out so much, it means for my brother and me it's a little more arduous. And I am going to have to remember to take them this year - last year, because of the pandemic, we didn't have to and I didn't because I was otherwise kinda overwhelmed. In 2019, I only had to take from one - he had withdrawn the other before his death)

And yeah, that money SHOULD go to a new roof at a minimum, and also with not teaching over the summer I will have to take a bit of budgeting care. But also: the prospect of things coming in the mail makes a big difference in my mood. It's silly, but there is is. 

So yesterday I ordered that toy-sewing book I referred to (and I may eventually want to get some more wool felt - the good kind - because I do want to make the stag beetle from that book and as I remember, felt was the best material for those toys). But I've also been browsing some of the small "vintage item" resellers on Etsy, since I still am not going out antiquing (which is something I super miss, and yeah, I could start doing it again). But also, trying to recapture a tiny bit of that cusp-of-tweenhood era, when I had a bit more autonomy and a bit more spending money, but it wasn't yet so deeply uncool to care about little toy animals*

(*Well, I still cared about such things even after it became deeply uncool. In junior high that was bad, in high school it was a little LESS bad because you could pretend your interest was ironic, and once I hit my 20s I was secretive enough about my private life that few people knew I collected dolls or cared about stuffed animals, and the people who did know wouldn't think much about it)

But anyway, I do remember that cusp-of-tweenhood time, those 10-11-12 year old times when stickers were still cool and having big "families" of little plastic figurines or stuffed animals was still cool and fun. And I remember those as fundamentally happy times - looking at friends' sticker collections and sometimes trading, or having a little pocket cash and a chance to go to one of the stores that sold stickers (I think I mentioned "Land of Make Believe" before - it has since closed, sadly, but it loomed large in my childhood memories - anyway, they had the excellent Mrs. Grossman stickers as well as Smurfs and small stuffed animals and other small toys)

And one thing this past year, one thing I've looked to for comfort, is to try to recapture some of the "good things" of my younger life - starting up with the monthly Mrs. Grossman's sticker packs (which I use on cards to friends, and sometimes send strips of to my niece) that I still receive (And yes, I have a LOT of accumulated stickers now but maybe I'll think of some way to use them, maybe get a wooden tray and decoupage them on it? If I could find a fixative that wouldn't ruin the stickers....). And last year I bought a few vintage Smurfs (and even new, direct from Schleich, and you can tell a difference between the old and new ones).

A big part of it is just getting stuff in the mail. I mean stuff that isn't a bill or an ad or a charity-beg. It's kind of silly and weird but the expectation of even a small package in the mail makes my week better. 

So anyway. I did order a couple of small things, from two separate stores. They might come before I leave for my mom's; if not, they'll be waiting for me in the held mail.

The first lot was a Smurf holding a lantern - I am pretty sure my brother had this one but I am also pretty sure it no longer exists in the saved toys we had left, and it's one I remember as being kind of iconic from childhood for me. Though also, purchasing it along with the other item that I REALLY REALLY wanted, got me free shipping because it hit the like $15 minimum or whatever the shop had.

The item I really wanted was a little PVC figure of "the camel with the wrinkled knees" from that (weird! if you've ever seen it) Raggedy Ann and Andy movie that came out around 1980-ish. I never even saw the whole movie, but I loved that camel - and I remember seeing a stuffed toy version of it for sale somewhere, but I didn't have enough money, and we were traveling at the time so I couldn't even go back to the store when I DID. 

But anyway. I did buy, years later, a "comic strip style" (based on an earlier illustration, I guess, and it is cream colored rather than blue) version of the camel that was made....I guess as a commemoration of one of the anniversaries of the characters? I remember I bought it at a doll show, but bought it new.

But anyway? Now I can have at least a tiny version of that camel for my own.

And yes, the idea of them coming in the mail is part of the attraction, that some day I'll come home and there will be a small box in my mailbox, and I can open it...

And then the second order, today: a bit more expensive because one of these is *unusual* (I have never seen it for sale before, and it may have just been issued in Europe) - a Smurf with a telephone (that one I remember from childhood) and a Smurfette *mermaid* In fact, a TOPLESS mermaid, but she has her arms crossed over that part. It amused me a good bit (and I am pretty sure that even in the 1980s, alpha-moms would have objected to that, so perhaps not sold here) and even though the paint was a little worn....yeah, I decided I wanted to add her to my little collection (I need to get a small shelf for these and put it up somewhere). 

That "cusp of tweenhood" era was also when I remember spending summers checking craft books out from the local library (I mentioned the Woodstock Craftsmans Manuals the other day, and there was another book devoted to toy-making that I liked). And it was just, I don't know, an era when more things seemed possible, and I still had "beginner's mind" about some things (was less self-critical about the things I made or the things I wrote - I wrote stories and poems in those days). There was a certain freedom to that time, before all the adolescent expectations kicked in, and before your peers' judgement of you became such a make-or-break thing as to how your life went. Oh, I'm sure there were negative experiences in that time, but I also remember feeling more free in some ways than I do now.