Collectible

I am a collector. For years, I collected turtles--sculptures of all sizes and made of everything from glass to pottery. Gradually my focus shifted to frogs, and I amassed a boatload of frogs—frogs made of fabric, ceramic frogs, etc. And while I still love my inanimate amphibians (Ya-Jhu gave me an adorable frog candle

My latest collectible!

holder), the parade of new items has slowed to a crawl, and that’s probably a good thing. Because I have so many other collections to deal with. 

I collect spatulas. I have, no joke, 10 spatulas of various sizes, and Lord only knows where most of them came from. I don’t remember buying any of them. They are gathered in a large Quaker Oats box on my kitchen counter, and I stand ready to enter any pancake flipping contest, anywhere. Also on the culinary front, I have a collection of seasonal decorative cheese spreaders adorned with tiny Nutcrackers and seashells and bunches of grapes. We don’t entertain much, so my spreaders usually sit in a drawer—but again, the next time a giant wheel of

Cheese Spreaders on Parade

Brie comes a calling, I’m all set!

Moving on to my bedroom, I collect outdated (therefore useless) writer’s books and magazines: Writer’s Market 2010 shares shelf space with the Christian Writer’s Guide from 2011. Stacks of Writer’s Digest magazines feature contests that closed long, long ago.  Mind you, I always buy the newest versions of these publications, but never pitch the old ones, so my collection is getting pretty big. I also have a vast collection of high heeled shoes dating from my episodes of bipolar mania in 2006. I no longer wear heels, so my colorful assortment just gathers dust. Keeping them all, though, because—well, you never know!

In the bathroom, I am an avid collector of hair ties, bobby pins and toothbrushes (at last count there were 14 toothbrushes in our sink-side cup—and there are only 4 adult sets of teeth in the house). I also collect vintage perfumes and colognes, because surely there will come a day when my (now rancid) bottle of Esteé is back in vogue. My bathroom gallery is rounded out with an array of expired medications from now-forgotten illnesses, and bottles of mostly-empty shampoo.

I haven’t even touched on my collection of vases. Sheridan shamed me into putting many blossom-holders out on the curb with a sign marked “free” but I still have enough to set up shop as a florist. And let’s not even get into the miniature porcelain pitchers (yeah, I checked on e-Bay, they ain’t worth much) I inherited from the grandmother.

Every summer when we live in our rather spare beach rental, I swear I will start living a different life, with many fewer collections. But then we return to Oreland, and it’s back to collecting, collecting. So I guess that’s just me, and I should probably quit fighting it.

If you’re wondering what to get me for my birthday, I could really use another spatula.