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Puzzled
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We have a table in one corner of our living room dedicated to a work-in-progress jigsaw puzzle. Anyone who wanders in is welcome to work on it. It’s fun to watch the reactions of different people, because everyone has a very definite opinion on the worth of a jigsaw puzzle in the relative scheme of this thing called life. People either love ‘em or hate ‘em – there’s rarely a middle-of-the-road reaction.
I find that they’re a good distraction when I’m frustrated by a particular problem, have writer’s block, or the weather has driven me inside for an extended period of time. This can happen in the winter with rain, or early darkness, or this time of year with the nasty heat.
Butterfly is the most consistent puzzle worker. She seems to have a routine; garden, read, garden, paint, garden, piano, garden, puzzle – then do it all over again. She usually shows up here at about 6:30 in the evening to spend an hour or so working on the puzzle. Being the counter that she is (“I dead-headed 300 roses today!” or “I pulled 75 weeds!” or “I took 4 cartloads of junk to the quail pile!”), she always reports how many pieces she found. Some nights it’s only 3 or 4, but some nights she’s a veritable lucky strike of puzzlers and finds as many as 15 or even 16!
The only problem with Butterfly’s puzzling is that sometimes she “makes things work” if you know what I mean. Occasionally I check her work, just to keep the puzzle going in the right direction. This sometimes means I have to undo some of her magic and rearrange things. Oh, she’ll have gotten “close”, but this ain’t horseshoes we’re talking about. I must admit, though, that since I’ve had to do this several times, and have, of course, pointed it out in no uncertain terms, she has been much more careful.
“Hey, Tammy, do you think this is a fit?”
I don’t even bother to walk over to look. I had purposely put a bright yellow tablecloth on the table to aid in the placement of the pieces. No cheating allowed, because it always catches up with you in the end.
“Do you see the tablecloth between the pieces?” I ask her.
“Yes.”
“Then what do you think?”
“That’s what I thought. Darn.”
It’s a sad, sad thing that Butterfly was forced to skip kindergarten and go right into first grade at age 4. She could have learned so much in kindergarten.
The last two puzzles, though, have been particularly frustrating.
The first one was purchased by Fifinella at her grocery story for a whopping $3.99. I should have been suspicious right from the start. But she was excited by the good buy (she actually bought two at that price) because she thought they would remind us of our time spent living in France.
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A nice little French cafe, perhaps
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It was 1000 pieces of sheer hell that took us about 4 months to complete. Not that we didn’t enjoy every minute of it. But what the heck? There were 3 pieces MISSING!
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just some of the pieces that droves us crazy
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I promptly packaged it up with a note that ‘fessed up to the missing pieces and sent it off to the thrift shop, along with its unopened mate. I’ll be darned if we were going to suffer through another $3.99 special like that. Sorry, Fifinella. I know you meant well.
I went to Target and puzzle-shopped. I bought one of Uncle Milt’s puzzles (Milton Bradley), figuring if you can’t trust Uncle Milt, who can you trust? I was careful to pick one with lots of objects in it, lots of colors, all the things you want when you’re working a puzzle so you don’t go completely mad.
We started working on this puzzle on May 1st. Truth be known, Butterfly has done most of the work, with me doing secret inspections on her work.
I hate to keep repeating myself, but WHAT THE HECK????!!! Once again we have missing pieces, two this time.
Even more mysteriously, we have two extra pieces!
It has been suggested by some master puzzlers that perhaps Butterfly forced some pieces, because it is awfully suspicious that we have two missing pieces and two extra pieces. But both Electric Horseman and I have been over the puzzle with a fine-toothed comb to try to find any misfits, to no avail. Plus, one of the missing pieces is an edge piece, and neither of the extras is an edge. So it will remain a mystery, I’m afraid.
I’m also afraid to open the next puzzle. I’ve been given a reprieve where that’s concerned, thank goodness. A friend sent a box of three puzzles, all of which she has put together and all of which have all their pieces.
Puzzle on!
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