Mega-Mommy

I had planned to work on my story today. I expected both kids to be in school and the house to be quiet so I could focus. Alas, J woke up this morning with a wretched head cold so I let him stay home today. I figured I could still work on my story - he's 9 and can entertain himself with books, toys, TV, and if I let him, video games. Then he came to me and asked me if I would help him build a MegaBloks set he got for Christmas. And because he was sick I said yes. Oh...what was I thinking?

This set has 1161 pieces. Now some of that includes the figures that came with it but still, that's a lot of pieces. No problem I thought because MegaBloks does what Lego does, right? Lego is considerate of its builders and divides their sets into bags, labeled 1, 2, etc. It's wonderful because it gives you great stopping points when you need a break. You only open the bag you are working on and the other pieces are safely tucked away in their bags, waiting for you to reach their part. Since Lego does it I figured MegaBloks did it too. Sadly I was wrong...

MegaBloks just dumps pieces all willy-nilly into bags. The pieces for step one were scattered among 4 different bags. To make this go faster we decided to sort out that 10+ bags of pieces. Then I took a closer look at the pieces. Almost all of them are a dark greenish-black. J's carpet is dark blue. This was never going to work. I would go blind before I even made it to step 5. Thankfully I had an extra white sheet which I put down on the floor. So much better! We began sorting but 15 minutes in we were still sorting. Two bags just got dumped into green Ikea bins because they were filled with tiny pieces that I sure as hell wasn't sorting.

Finally, we started building. About 10 steps in 'we' became the royal we - J began to lose interest in building it. I don't blame him. His nose was running pretty much non-stop, his eyes were watering, and the sheer number of pieces was overwhelming even for me. I told him to go rest and I would continue working on it. Yes, that just secured my nomination for Mommy of the Year.

I started around 10:30. By 1:00 I was at step 53...out of 142. I had to take a break. After some lunch, a much needed shower, and a dose of ibuprofen, I went back to work. I am now at step 90 out of 142. I don't know if I can stand up straight anymore. Hindsight is 20/20 they say, and if I had to do it over again I would have set up shop at the desk in our office instead of on the floor. I don't know if my back will ever be the same. I may have to treat myself to a massage after finishing this damn set.

But I will finish it. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. The pile of pieces is getting smaller and the plane I'm building is getting bigger. But if I ever meet someone from MegaBloks, I will be punching them in the nose for not breaking the set up into parts like Lego does. Seriously, would it be so hard to do that? I think not. And once I am done with it, I may or may not let J play with it. :-)