What does a girl have to do

to be made into a LEGO mini-fig?

I assumed that the whole hullabaloo over LEGO Friends this past winter would have spurred someone to think carefully before releasing the Lord of the Rings play sets. Apparently I have too much faith in people's intelligence.

I get that some girls like the curvy pink characters, as well as the tiny hairdryers and magazines that come with these play sets. My daughter Emma even bought two of the smaller Friends sets with her allowance money. They've got some neat parts. She's not thrilled that the figures' legs don't move independently, but surmises that's because the legs are so spindly, they'd break too easily. Hmm. Is that a purposeful message? Don't tax yourselves, girls; you might break.

I don't see a problem with marketing girly-girl sets to those who like them. Emma is crazy about her Littlest Pet Shop sets and her collection of Squinkies. Both my daughters used their own money to purchase a bunch of those motorized hamsters, but they didn't just buy the pink sparkly hamsters. No, my daughters bought a bunch of the green, grey, blue & black Kung Fu hamsters, as well. They bought battle armor to go on all the hamsters, even the sparkly ones. I think the pinkest, sparkliest hamster is in fact the supreme villain of Hamsterville. They've also shelled out their own money for several LEGO Ninjago sets and a few Alien Conquest sets. (Last I heard, the aliens were preparing to attack the Heartlake City beauty shop and demand free seaweed wraps.) Between gifts and their own money, Pen and Em garnered the entire Harry Potter collection this past winter. So when the new LEGO catalog arrived and my girls saw Frodo and the ring on the front, they couldn't find the Sharpies fast enough. A few minutes later?

"Hey! Where's Arwen?"
Then, "what? There's no Galadriel?"
Finally, "no Eowyn? You've gotta be kidding me!"

They slide the first page of the LOTR spread in front of me and jab at the characters. Emma starts tallying everything up. "Look! There's Eomer! There are Mordor orcs and Moria orcs."

"They made the cave troll," Penelope interrupts.

 "There's five different Uruk-hai. They made two Ringwraiths, but left out Eowyn! I mean, don't they even know that she KILLS the WITCH KING!?"

At this point, Penelope shouts, "I am no man! Yahhhhhhhh!" and drives an imaginary sword into an imaginary Witch King's head.

Okay, maybe I'm remembering that wrong. Maybe that was me.

Hang on, I tell them. Let's not panic. Maybe they're only releasing sets for the first movie right now. That's got to be it, right? I mean, I don't see Minas Tirith, Isengard, or the Black Gate. But neither do I see an elven kingdom or an Amon Hen set.

However, there are sets for Helm's Deep (Two Towers) and Shelob (Return of the King). Plus, Arwen and Galadriel were onscreen in Fellowship, and could technically be included in the Weathertop and Moria sets.

I flip through the catalog and see Ann Lee and a vampyre bride. I note that Harley Quinn, Poison Ivy and Black Widow are included in the appropriate sets, but simply can't count the Wonder Woman keychain as an action figure. The Kingdom and Town sets each include a few women. Finally, in the Star Wars spread, I find two Princess Leia figures but no Queen Amidala.

I understand that these sets were built predominately with boys in mind. At nine, my daughters are already jaded enough to know that female figures will be few and far between, but really, LEGO? No Eowyn?

I can imagine the strategy sessions.

I mean, what did the women in the story do, really? Assuming we're only working off the movies, let's take inventory.

We can ignore Arwen because she was pretty useless, right? She only outran a posse of nine ringwraiths to get Frodo into elf territory. She only convinced her father to reforge the shards of Narsil, then trek all the way out to Dunharrow and present Anduril to Aragorn. A minor character. Aragorn might have gotten Frodo to safety without her and Elrond might have thought of reforging the sword on his own. Plus, she disobeyed her father and almost died because she was in love with a guy who had a great job waiting for him, but was more content to roam around and play tortured soul.  So, okay. Leave out Arwen.

Galadriel didn't do very much, either. True, she gave the Fellowship shelter after they escaped Moria. She did that cool telepathy thing and gave Frodo some guidance. She sent the Fellowship on their way with all those nifty little gifts that came in handy later. Remember the elvish rope that helped Sam and Frodo get down the cliff? And the Phial that Frodo and Sam used to fight Shelob? What about those amazing cloaks that hid them from the soldiers outside the Black Gate? Nah. I'm sure everything would have worked out just smashingly without all that stuff. Plus, all the telepathy did was freak everyone out, and it's not as if Frodo didn't already know that the ring was overcoming Boromir. And when Frodo offers her the ring and she had to fight its power? Seriously, how did that not wake up the entire city? That was totally unrealistic. We can skip Galadriel.

Eowyn is a tough one. She did kill the Witch King, after all. But do we really want to hold her up as an example to impressionable young girls? I mean, Eowyn balks at every order she's given. She doesn't want to lead the women and children to safety when the Warg riders attack. She doesn't want to stay in the caves with them during the battle of Helm's Deep. She obeys both orders, but you can tell she's only doing it because she doesn't see a way out. Then, she follows the Rohirrim to Dunharrow. (It's tradition for the women of the court to see the men off to battle. Shyeah. Like anybody fell for that.) She actually hides her hair in a helmet and tags along to Minas Tirith. Can you believe the gall? Do we really want to teach girls to be so headstrong? She gets away with it, too! Aragorn heals her and then she gets all lovey-dovey with Faramir. We can't have boys thinking it's okay for girls to behave this way, all brave and independent. We certainly can't have girls thinking that if they hold true to themselves and follow their heart, they'll be happy and maybe even find someone they love. No, we need to keep our girls pining away for the ones they can't have, like Aragorn, and then promise them to creeps like Grima. If Eowyn had spent more time learning her feminine duties, she would have been a better cook, too. Did you see the stew she served on the road to Helm's Deep? And she expected the men to fight after eating it? (Rohan calls Time-Out! We need to use the privvy. Why don't you tell your orcs to take a break, Lurtz? We may be awhile...) No, no, no. We need to nip this in the bud. Eowyn's out.

I see.

Some people might boycott LEGO because they left these three women -- awesome, strong, kick-ass women -- out of their Lord of the Rings play sets. Me and my daughters? We're headed to the LEGO store to build our own Eowyn, Galadriel, and Arwen.

Take that, LEGO!

You can check out any time you like

It all started when we traded in our Subaru Outback and bought a new Mazda CX9. To their credit, the folks at our Mazda dealership have been amazingly patient through most of this as-yet-unfinished ordeal.

Apparently, when we paid the Subaru off, the bank never gave us the title. They sent us something that looked like a title (turns out it was an MA-1 Form, which masquerades quite convincingly as a real title). When we signed this impostor and left all Outback-related accoutrements with the Mazda dealer, the dealer had to call us back and inform us that we didn't give them the real title. I triple- and quadruple-checked our fire-safe box. Nope, no title. No problem, right? Simple oversight. I'll call the bank and they'll send it right out. Except for the part when the bank said they lost it.

Lost it? (So, I can lose my next twenty credit-card payments with no penalty, right?) We still have yet to get a satisfactory resolution with the bank on how they can lose the title for a car in which they had a vested interest. (Though, that's probably the point right there -- once we paid it off, they didn't give a crap, right? Not their problem anymore. Delete! Delete! cacklecackle)

Okay, annoying, but since the bank was able to provide a notarized letter stating that we did in fact pay the car off quite some time ago, we can call the California DMV and request a duplicate title. So, no problem.

Except for the part where the California FTB (Franchise Tax Board) claims that we owe seven years of back taxes on the car. Sooooo, we provide proof of registration in Massachusetts, effective seven years ago. Thank you, that will be 4 - 6 weeks for processing.

Six weeks later, we call the DMV. It seems that they've just moved our piece of paper from one desk to the other a few days earlier, and we will be called within the next 5 business days.

Six days later, we call the DMV. Our paperwork is being held up because the FTB says we owe back taxes on the car. (!?!?!?!?!?) So we call the FTB (again) and remind them about the paperwork we provided seven weeks earlier proving that we don't owe them the time of day, let alone any money.

It takes five additional days for this information to filter through the rat maze that is governmental bureaucracy and reach someone at the DMV. Great! Except for the part where nobody at the DMV seems to know what to do with this information (or, more precisely, how to hit the Print button).

Today, we get The Phone Call we're surprised we haven't received some time ago . . . Mazda really can't hang on to the Outback any longer without being able to sell it. We need to buy it back. Today.

Brita . . . Forever

I may just have to return the Brita tank and filters I purchased a few days ago. They're still in the box, and nothing is apparently wrong with them, but it's the principle, you see . . . . I was watching tv this evening, and saw the new Brita commercial about the plastic bottle that's "forever in a landfill." It seems blatantly obvious to me that, while the plastic bottle would actually be recycled, and NOT "forever in a landfill," the Brita filter is actually not recyclable, and therefore WOULD be "forever in a landfill." Just a suggestion to Brita . . . someone in marketing needs to be fired. And Brita needs a commercial that makes sense.