Leggo My Lego; Another New Release Announcement!

I can already tell there’s a piece missing.

The other day I realized that we have approximately 547 pounds of Lego in the house. It’s in bins in the attic, bags in the guest room, totes in the closet…and why, I hear you ask, do you have so much goddamn Lego? Because not only is Ken obsessed with it, and has kept all the Lego ever created since he was a child, but Kate also accrued a sizable collection of Lego kits when she was younger. Even I, myself, although I hate to admit it, became a little fixated on Harry Potter Lego in the early 2000s. Wow, I also hear you say—isn’t all of that Lego worth a lot of money? Well, it would be, if it wasn’t all scattered around the house in bins, bags, and totes. I had a plan, a very clever plan I thought, to just put it all in ziplocks and sell it to one of the toy vendors at the market for a flat cost and then give the money to Kate since most of the Lego was either hers or bestowed up her as part of her inheritance to begin with, but when I broached the idea with my 23 year-old boss, he was horrified:

Boss: But you could make so much more money if you just put it together and sold the completed kits!
Me: Do I look like I have twenty-three years to deal with this?
Boss: But you said you had all the manuals—how hard can it be?

So I thought, what the heck—I’m pretty good at building stuff, and if I could make Kate a lot more cash by completing some of the models, then I’d give it a whirl. And you know what? It was almost f*cking impossible. Every bin I pulled down from the attic contained half a build, and I was running back and forth, trying to find the rest of the pieces, which had magically ended up in a number of completely different bins. Luckily, I had several bags of ‘extra’ parts—at least I hope they’re extra and not part of yet another Lego kit that I’ll never be able to finish. At one point, I spent a literal half hour looking for a long grey piece with 2 rows of 12 little knobs and I never did find it. 60 000 pieces of Lego and not a f*cking sign of it. And it’s not like the old days when I was a kid and the bricks were primary colours and 5 basic shapes—now most of the kits come with like a thousand unique accessory pieces in a variety of colours and if you don’t have them, you can’t substitute anything else to complete a set. Ultimately, I managed to finish a bunch of space alien-type Exoforce (?) kits, some cars and trucks, a few Star Wars spacecraft, and a couple of other things, and then I packed the rest of it up for another day, a day far into the future when Kate is rich and doesn’t need my Lego blood money.

And then there’s this ad for…well, is this what we’re calling them now? But I do love the use of quotation marks:

Mousetrap Update: I didn’t find it in any of the Lego bins. Also, I took apart the skirting around our kitchen island and looked under it, but the mousetrap wasn’t there either. Nor was it in the space between the stove and the counter. We have now looked in every conceivable spot that an errant mousetrap could find itself, and I’m stymied. Also peeved. Also a little freaked out, like did someone break into our house, see the mousetrap on the floor and steal it, along with my second favourite purse and a small makeup bag that were also in that kitchen and that I’m also missing?

One last update: As the Editor of DarkWinter Press, I’m thrilled to announce our release of Cecilia Kennedy’s new short story collection Twenty-Four-Hour Shift: Dark Tales from on and off the Clock! Here’s a synopsis—it’s now available on Amazon and you can purchase either the paperback or Kindle edition by clicking here!

“Punch in your time card to begin the shift. The twenty-four dark tales of short fiction in this collection explore the unsettling things that might linger on and off the clock. Here, you’ll find short stories of work-related haunts and happenings, from the truly sinister (a human-vending machine restaurant), to horror-comedy (a photo shoot with possessed bunnies). But in the hours in between, it can’t be forgotten that the roles played as parents, co-workers, and friends are no ordinary side hustle. That work never ends. And the work shift? Well, that’s the thing that makes you peek over your shoulder and ask, “What just moved?” But you have to clock in to find out.“

44 thoughts on “Leggo My Lego; Another New Release Announcement!”

  1. I’d think with 60,000 assorted Lego pieces at your disposal, you should be able to build a pretty good mousetrap by now! Who knows, you might even catch a Lego mouse in it, and that would almost have to be worth enough to buy one of those “vases”….

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  2. When I was a kid I loved Lego kits because, while it was kind of fun to build according to the manual, it was more fun to use the bricks to make things I wanted, or sometimes just stick them together in random ways. So there could be a lot of value putting all those bricks in a single big bag, slapping a price tag of, say, $10,000 on it (what a bargain!) and a sign that says “Some assembly required”. But your determination to put at least some complete kits together is admirable.
    And, as a lover of short stories, I’m so glad you’re helping to keep those alive too.

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  3. I’ve always admired the Leggo people for their quality control. As my son grew and passed through the Leggo phase we built many, many thousands of dollars of Leggo theme kits (moon base, pirate ship, Eiffel Tower, the entire town of Pompeii re-creation, life-size model of the Pentagon–the usual.) During all these projects, while I often cussed the Leggo corporation, all their employees and their families because a part was actually missing from the box, (“This time it’s really happened! The needle on the mach meter of the X-15 model is NOT HERE! It’s just NOT!”) in the end, the part was always there, perhaps having skittered across the kitchen floor from that time I knocked the box off the table. Never in all that time did they fail to supply all the parts. I can’t imagine the level of attention to detail this QC Leggo employee manages to attain. Who accomplishes this? They should get a job at NASA.

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  4. At the tender age of six, I was gifted my very first LEGO set, the 1981 LEGO Fire Station (6382), a symbol of intricate creation and boundless imagination. A modest set, it was imbued with vibrant hues of red and yellow, and every brick pulsated with the promise of adventure.

    Little did my parents perceive, those tiny bricks were not just mere toys, but rather, delicate stepping stones, guiding me, their daughter, to my destiny, each piece molding my fascination and passion for fire and rescue.

    I was not merely assembling toys; I was crafting my future, weaving dreams of valor and commitment, dreams that would one day become my reality. The days spent in imaginary worlds of rescue and flames would translate into years of rigorous training and relentless dedication, eventually culminating in the coveted rank of Lieutenant. 🙂

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  7. I have stepped on soooo many Lego parts in my lifetime. As a result, any time I hear the word, “Lego,” my feet hurt. 🙂 Thank you so much for promoting my book on your blogs. I can’t wait to sell the hell out of them. Cheers!

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  8. Cecilia’s collection, check $■

    Lego’s… I recall Duplos, brick-sized plastic blocks one could build an actual house out of (child-sized, of course). My son got into those odd alien Lego creatures Bionicles. Collected them to collect them I think, still has them, I believe, in a storage locker.

    I stripped down to a duffle and a Beemer motorcycle back in my 20’s and threw everything of my childhood in the trash. Nothing remains.

    We’re moving again, which entails more ruthless arbitration as to what comes to the next domicile. Bins of Legos would never last the first of many tranches of dumpster tossing.

    Where’s the rest of the photos of your successful assemblies?

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    • Kate had a ton of Bionicles–we sold them at the market for a small fortune. Some of them are worth quite a bit right now! As for the rest of the assemblage, I packed them all away–Kate’s getting a super-sized showcase in November so they’ll go in there once it’s all ready… Where are you moving to?

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  9. Oh those Lego pieces, they are frustratingly annoying. You will probably find that one piece wen you least expect it. What’s up with those crochet vases? Seriously one can’t put water in them so they aren’t really a useful vase. The mouse trap is still missing? Talk about an Agatha Christie mystery. See what I did there, the mouse trap and Agatha Christie? 🤣😝😆.

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  11. We never did get into Leggo, but I can empathise as I remember searching high and low for a missing piece from a jigsaw puzzle. Never found it. I assume it ended up in the vacuum cleaner. Or the dog ate it. Sympathy for your mousetrap woes too, although I admit I did have a giggle. Sorry.
    The cover of the new release is fantastic. Please congratulate whoever designed it.

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  13. I’m catching up on some blog reading whilst sitting outside, and you had me laughing out loud. I’m sure the neighbours are wondering what I’m doing, by myself in the backyard, chortling to myself.

    I especially loved the Lego Blood Money.

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  14. That little grey piece? You stepped on it in the middle of the night in 2002 maybe and threw it across the room in agony and frustration, later to be vacuumed up into oblivion. I was hoping this would be a “how to” tale because I’ve thought the very thing so often, to assemble the kits as they once were and sell to support the college fund seems like a grand idea. Until it’s a reality. . .

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