Grandma'n it up

I'm not even thirty yet but think I've officially gone full grandma. Not in a trendy way, like those 1950s aesthetic influencer types who sew all their own clothes, but more in a "maybe I should start buying Worther's candy and wearing a cardigan" type way. 

Evidence...

1.) I've inadvertently started collecting rare breeds of chickens

I didn't mean to. It just sort of happened. 

We plan on raising these birds for eggs, and so we ordered a common breed, leghorns. They're known as good producers, and they're a popular and common breed. We put the order into a local feed store that we like, paid them, and waited. 

The first time they couldn't fill out order, it was because someone working for the postal service left the box of chicks somewhere cold and several of them died. "We're sorry." They said. "The next shipment comes in in a month, you'll get them then." 

I finally got the call, "we've got chicks in." I cheered, tossed the kids in the van, drove to the store...and was told the hatchery hadn't sent leghorns. They'd replaced that order with some fancy German breed that cost twice as much. The feed store gave us a dozen of those instead and took the loss. 

This was pretty decent of them (especially since neither failure to deliver had been their fault), but has put us in the position of having a dozen semi-exotic chickens (plus three leghorn chicks we got from Tractor Supply). 

Why, you may ask, is this a "grandma" thing? 

I suppose it isn't STRICTLY a grandma trait since there are others who pursue chicken collecting. I just associate it with aged ladies because 1.) The vast majority of people in the social media groups who get fancy breeds seem to be older ladies and 2.) While we were picking up our chicks, I saw a 60 something year old lady  almost throw a temper tantrum in the feed store because she couldn't get the (fancy) breed she wanted. 

"The Lavender Orpingtons are all sold? ((Her volume began to increase)) Oh no! They're on my list!!" ((Foot stamp)). It took the sales guy a couple minutes to calm her down. 

So in my mind, fancy breeds = old lady street cred. I'll let you decide whether or not that's a valid measure. 

2.) I've now sewn an aggressively poofy and out of style children's dress. 

I purchased a pattern dating from the 1970s from the thrift store a year or so ago, and I finally brought it to reality. 

There is a nearly obscene amount of rick rack on this thing. I went to the craft store and bought a spool of rick rack, in addition to the spool I already had, and it used all of both of them. And called for more rick rack than I actually put on it. 

I know there's a movement back towards more retro styles in clothing at the moment, but I don't think that the ruffles n' rick rack look is trendy again quite yet. But Little Girl loves it, so that's what matters. 

3.) I acquired a china cabinet and already had china AND doilies to put in it. 

Chris saw it on Facebook marketplace, paid $80 for it, and lugged it home. 

We've had a set of china that Chris's grandmother passed down, a set of miniature tea cups I got from my grandmother, some crystal we got at our wedding, and a few tea cups I found at the thrift store for a birthday tea party. That combined with the doilies, which were crocheted by my great grandmother, filled it up pretty much right away. 

I'm hoping that having all those pretty dishes out will lead to us actually using them sometimes. Right now we don't, at all (some of the crystal had never even been out of the box). I'm glad to be able to at least enjoy seeing it now, but I've seen too many sets of abandoned dishes at the thrift store, and once nice things ruined in the house of a hoarder, to just want to keep them stored away. 

That said, minimalist and modern it is not. 

4.) I have an inordinate amount of glass bottles on display for some reason. 

Speaking of hoarding. I probably shouldn't throw stones in glass houses. Or houses full of glass, as the case may be. 

I'm actually going to try and trim this collection down. I use one or two as vases sometimes, but the rest of them are just collecting dust. 

But, I mean, surely one or two might come in handy someday...

5.) My clothespin thing looks like this. 

Enough said. 

6.) I reflexively save plastic containers and use them for leftovers

None of them are Country Crock margarine spread containers though. They're mostly quart sized yogurt containers, with a couple outliers like the plastic sherbet bucket and a container that once held fresh black eyed peas. 

I especially like the ones with clear lids and have deep rooted opinions about how useful a reused plastic container is without them. Which is also a bit grandma-ish. 

7.) I have a (in my defense, small) collection of slightly creepy dolls 

They were gifts, ok?!