Unicorn 🦄

For Christmas my darling husband bought me a nanoblock unicorn (under the pretence of Santa so I couldn’t be mad in front of the children). I hate Lego and all things construction, which in a house full of boys is not ideal to say the least. Quite simply it bores the hell out of me and I have zero patience. So Matthew decided that Santa would like to see me enjoy Lego like our children do 🙄

I was surplus to requirements at the boys’ bedtime last night (probably for about the third time ever) so determined not to be beaten by boys’ toys and planning on fuelling up with alcohol, I started trying to rip open the little plastic bags. I couldn’t even open said little plastic bags. I also couldn’t be bothered to get up to find the scissors to get into said little plastic bags (I’m totally sick of finding scissors, using scissors and putting scissors out of reach of small fingers over Christmas). Undeterred, I pulled apart the pieces and arranged them on the arm of my chair. I can tell what you’re thinking and you’re right of course. My darling husband comes downstairs and tries to stifle a laugh when I refuse to sit at the table. He says I’ll never do it without a flat surface – fair point but I’m warm and comfy here so I grab a book for my ‘flat surface’, and yes, all the pieces slide off numerous times.

I tried to operate a system: I laid out all the pieces for each step – I’m still incredulous that each step of instructions didn’t just have the correct pieces for that part in a numbered bag – do they do this on purpose or are they just stupid? I then had a Tupperware with all the pieces I didn’t yet need so I wouldn’t get confused. Hahaha. The first step took about half an hour and was seriously frustrating with no base as the pieces kept sliding all over the place. The instructions also had no words, just pictures, and lots of confusing arrows. Would words not help? Do we not have language for a reason? Even board games have written instructions 🤷🏼‍♀️

The second layer was fiddly and resulted in lots of swearing, but by the third layer I was feeling more confident even though it looked just like a few rows of white blocks awkwardly lumped together. I eventually progressed onto the nose and head, which continued to fall off throughout this tedious process. The next step was the mane which just wouldn’t lie straight at all, but I decided he’d just have to have a bad hair day/life.

The ‘instructions’ then muttered something about ‘direction of double ridges’ (the only words on the whole sheet) which flummoxed me more and which I very nearly decided to ignore. It turns out these double ridges are actually quite clever and IF you get them the right way round, you can do all sorts of revolutionary things like slide the legs left and right. The legs, which I broke twice in the making of, very nearly faced the wrong way but they were miraculously rescued. By this point I could feel my stress levels rising and kept thinking I must have added 174 pieces by now and why do people do this for fun?

There were a few complicated bits I had to get M to help me with – ovals inside ovals inside more ovals that I was apparently supposed to know what to do with by looking at a few vague arrows. To he perfectly honest it gave me flashbacks to a maths textbook and I never wanted to see it again. However, I do love unicorns and I’m not one to be beaten so I persevered, mainly for the deformed unicorn’s sake by this stage.

His horn was now crooked, he had two legs shorter than the other two, and when his head stayed on his legs fell off. I was feeling the need for tequila now, never mind mulled wine. After some extra instructions from darling husband, who was of course the reason I was in this bloody mess in the first place, I finally made it to the tail. The end was in sight! I was rather pleased with his tail and even more pleased I attached it to the right bit.

I squealed with relief when I presented it to M and awaited my showers of praise. I had just spent nearly four hours of my life making this unicorn after all, which is a seriously long concentration span for me. At first glance it roughly looked like a unicorn, or it did to me anyway, and it had a cute nose which is most of the battle I think. Darling husband didn’t agree. He said there was a hole in his face and I had used square blue pieces for his eyes instead of round pieces, and I had completely skipped Step 4. FML. Needless to say I didn’t even try to fix the damn mythical creature but passed it to M to save. An hour later, after hundreds of ‘what have you done?!’s, and exasperated sighs, my unicorn finally looked like a proper unicorn. Never, ever again.